Why “Seasons” Should be the New Buzzword in the Workplace

We need to talk about seasons. Time and years are marked by seasons. So is the whole of a life. Millennials have already discarded the idea that we get a job out of college and hold it for thirty years. We have embraced the knowledge that we may have several job changes, if not full career changes, over our working years.

What we have not yet embraced is the idea of seasons of life as it relates to work-life balance. Especially for parents. Especially for moms.

Seasons, cycles, chapters. They’re all synonomous, and as individuals we have learned to wrestle, embrace, accept, or fight them. But the truth is, we all roll through seasons and as a society, we must talk about them and learn to honor them, accept them, and make accommodations for one another.

Let’s just talk about seasons and chapters in a woman’s life since that’s where my experience lies. An average middle-class woman’s life might look like this:

Graduates high school. Goes to college and graduates. Gets a job. Gets married or enters a long-term domestic partnership. Gets pregnant and has her first child. Goes back to work. Gets pregnant and has second child. Chooses to stay home. Children go off to school full-time. Mom returns to work. Mom needs time off to care for sick children. Goes back to work. Needs time off to care for aging parents. Goes back to work. These forays into the workforce might or might not include different jobs or careers. Some moms go back to school themselves along this life path.

Obviously, there are many variations of this experience. But the general idea is that life happens. As a culture, we would do well to really wrestle with this issue and create accommodations as people come and go from the workforce.

We need to elevate caregiving in the general cultural mindset.

We need some version of universal healthcare so we aren’t tied to jobs simply for the health insurance.

People need to feel free to care for their families.

The most obvious season that has come under fire in recent discussion is pregnancy and parental leave. The thing is, we need to repopulate. As a society, we need to have babies. If you don’t want to have babies yourself, that’s totally fine. But as a society, babies need to happen. That’s just the way things work.

The effects of ignoring life seasons, especially in the life of a mother, can be really detrimental both for her and her children. Children are our most precious commodity as a family and a society. While we don’t need to coddle or spoil our children, we would do well to care for children by caring for parents. And this includes embracing all the seasons of life.

Sure, this is a little bit of a political issue, but it’s also a lot bit of a mental health issue, and lot bit of a humanity issue. We live together. We make this society happen together. We all have our gifts and our weaknesses. We would do well to give each other grace and kindness whatever the situation, and this includes mothers and parents in the workplace.

When a woman feels free to prioritize her family without jeopardizing her job, career, and income, she will be a better employee whenever she is working. She will be less stressed, less distracted, and less overwhelmed. She will be a stronger caretaker. Babies don’t stay babies forever. That mom will still be intelligent, capable, and motivated when she returns to the workforce. And her children will feel loved and cared for and ready to take on the world as competent adults themselves. Win-win.

When we ignore the season of life that is caring for young children, especially in the name of workplace competition or the general economy, we short-side everyone. Moms feel compelled to stay engaged because they need the money or want to maintain their career and thus their children may be stuck in an unhealthy care situation out of necessity because Mom can’t be in two places at once. Then she feels guilty. And if Mom stays home, she feels guilty or less than because we don’t respect caregiving as a profession.

And if a mom wants to work but needs to stay flexible, this is the 21st century. Jobs can be super flexible.

Take care of our moms and families and allow freedom for rolling with seasons, and I think we’ll see our moms blossom at work and at home.