Is it possible to project-manage motherhood? The professionals and cons of tackling parenting like a profession

When I became a mother for the very first time at 34, I was ready. I had the books, I took the antenatal classes. I practised the breathing. I was aware of the challenges ahead: the tiredness, the late nights, the endless nappies. I was ready. Till I had the infant.

As a specialist woman working in media and marketing, I’ve faced challenges before. I’ve worked in project management, content production and business development. I’m a double graduate from a modest background. I’ve moved countries. I’ve been the only woman within an all-male team. I’ve worked until I was exhausted. When I then found out I had a baby on the way, I was sure I had every process and tool I needed to make this, Project Baby, successful.

Working women have high standards of achievement

For many working women, obtaining professional qualifications and employed in a competitive environment requires them to work hard, push through blocks and abide by strict schedules. That’s how they’re taught to review, to work also to define achievement.

Not just that, but many women are under great pressure to over-deliver within their professions. Research by HR consultancy Lee Hecht Harrison points in its 2019 Elevating Women in Leadership report that 60 % of women say they always work hard, compared to 45 per cent of men, while 28 per cent of women say they always deliver in addition to to impress, compared to 19 per cent men.

Why do we wish to do this? One explanation is that professional competency can often be aligned with traditionally masculine attributes, even right down to our appearance. A report by psychology researchers at Princeton University found that faces that have emerged as competent are also regarded as more masculine. Consequently, women feel they have to double down to be taken more seriously.

The talents that had served me well in a specialist environment, I now likely to take me through motherhood with flying colours.

The need to be in control

Lyndsey McCullough, 42, a marketing professional in the UK with nine-year-old twins, agrees. “It does feel that there is an expectation that in case you have a successful career, it will be easy to include parenting into your repertoire as easily as taking on a new project or client.”

Teacher and mother-of-four Gemma Brolly, 37, says: “With my first child, I needed to do everything right. I was always a very organised, methodical teacher. Neglect to prepare, prepare to fail was my motto. I thought if I was well prepared, I possibly could control the majority of things. With my first child, I slowly commenced to learn there is only so much you can prepare for.”

Dr Saliha Afridi, clinical psychologist and managing director of The LightHouse Arabia wellness centre in Dubai, acknowledges that some women may feel as if parenting is simply the most recent project to be tackled, and cautions: “Some women who are achievement or goal-orientated, who haven’t ‘done the work’ to be more conscious or balanced, might see their children as projects. Women who see children as an extension of themselves, instead of separate beings, may also project a whole lot of their own goals and agendas to the child.”

Technology can be a crutch

Technology, too, plays a role in modern parenting that echoes how exactly we relate to it in society; with an increase of information comes the need to discern that information, while still staying attuned to invaluable internal insights. Our mothers and grandmothers did not get access to the wealth of online language resources to guide them, but they also did not have the pressure to demystify them.

Few parents have escaped the lure of Facebook groups, development software and the hundred of websites all purporting to offer “expert” advice on from feeding to potty training to education.

Afridi says: “Our mothers only had old wives’ tales and intuition to steer them. We have science and knowledge; however, all this information comes at the risk folks losing touch with this inner wisdom.”

Accessing and trusting this inner wisdom can be rendered difficult when confronted with the expectations of modern mothering. Popular parenting programmes and aspirational accounts on social media are reinforcing the pressures on women to keep their “performance levels” high. A 2016 iMom Project study greater than 700 mothers by researchers in the US discovered that mothers making comparisons on social networking websites experienced higher degrees of depression, and felt more overloaded and less competent as parents.

Dr Sarah Rasmi, CDA-licensed psychologist and managing director of Thrive Wellbeing Centre in Dubai, says social media is feeding into our internal tensions. “It gives us access to people’s curated worlds and lives. What we know from social psychological science is that the types of social comparisons that people engage in have too much to do with how exactly we feel about ourselves. If somebody feels confident, then we’ll take part in balanced comparisons. If we've lower self-esteem and we’re questioning our capability to balance our professional and parenting roles, then the types of comparison we take part in are going to be upward.”

Helicopter parent alert

Rasmi says perfectionism in parenting can in fact negatively impact children. “A report [on over-parenting] published [by the American Psychological Association] this season discovered that parents, and mothers in particular, who are on top of the trait of perfectionism will take part in helicopter parenting. Whenever we look to the info, the people who grew up with such parents will have poor psychological outcomes.”

Brolly says she feels that pressure. “In parenting, we have many goals, but the sense of responsibility is forever. I assume my biggest fear is never obtaining that sense of achievement, in that I have been an excellent parent.”

Rasmi addresses this common dichotomy at the core of parenthood for working mothers. “There is this notion that working women need to work like they haven't any children, but also have to parent like they don’t work. Obviously, that is a thing that is impossible to attain, and so all women end up in a lose-lose situation with a whole lot of guilt surrounding them.”

When faced with this pressure, a need for control emerges, an idea, says Afridi, we are enthusiastic about. “The more knowledgeable we become, the more anxious we become, and the more our rational brain tries to control every aspect of our lives.”

And just how do we relinquish control? “By reminding yourself that this is exactly how it ought to be, when things go right or wrong. It’s about taking all of the pressure off yourself and being in today's moment.”

Applying work ethics to parenthood

To take a project management approach isn't all bad, however. Many aspects of it could prove valuable, not merely at the start of your parenting journey, but also to keep you moving through the stages as your children grow. Time management, setting expectations for all stakeholders and having a clear goal at heart are transferable traits.

McCullough says that conversely there are numerous aspects of parenting that may impact our professional lives for the better. “There are a lot of skills that parenting can bring to the table: empathy, patience, understanding grief and loss, knowing when to walk away and taking a closer look at your priorities.”

I personally found the concept of surrender to be a powerful course corrector, reminding me to let the experience unfold. Raising children is much more than hitting a couple of milestones promptly. It’s about raising males and females, who are ready to love and become loved, to be independent and create their own successes. No spreadsheet will assist you to set that into motion.