Showing us how it’s done
But who are the real women who juggle careers and children and what are their lives really like?
Are they driven by choice or necessity, and what helps them maintain, or lose, the balancing act?
On Day Two of our focus on working mothers, five women with different experiences describe what it’s like to cope with the competing demands of the home and workplace and how they think society views them and their efforts.
They talk about their concerns, their crises of confidence, their achievements and ambitions.
Are they having it all, or simply trying to do it all?
And is it worth it all in the end?
AS a doctor, Mary Henry was very good at telling other women how to look after themselves during pregnancy, but as a working mother, she rarely took her own advice.
“I remember going to antenatal class. I would arrive late, collapse in a heap and leave early. That is not what I was telling my patients,” she recalls.
But then, in acts of sacrifice that seemed normal in the 1960s but sound unbelievable now, she also used her annual holidays to give birth to her first child and turned up for work two days after the birth of her second.
“I worked with nice people. I didn’t have an appalling time or anything. But there weren’t many women in medicine and we simply had no role models — either as women or employers. We didn’t know what we should do. We’d never heard of maternity leave — it didn’t really exist.
“I remember a casualty officer who kept her child under the desk. She was breastfeeding and she used to take the baby out every now and again for a bit of refreshment. There was a blind eye turned to it – no-one seemed to know what else to do. It was a totally different attitude.”
Society was also very different. Dr Henry laughs now when she recalls that when she had her daughter, Meriel, she was medically classified as an “elderly primigravida” — an old first-time mother. She was only 26.
“Now the average age of first time mothers is nearly 30 [29.1 to be precise] so the medical definition has changed. But that’s not necessarily a good thing. A lot of women are putting off having children until well into their 30s because they go to college and then need to spend time building their careers and the medical profession is particularly difficult in that regard.
“But that’s not the best time from a health point of view to have children and it also means women are really only like to have two children — in fact our fertility rate is 2.1 which means as a population we’re only just replacing ourselves. Really, it should be made a bit more agreeable to have children.”
Dr Henry long campaigned to make pregnancy and child-rearing more agreeable, pushing for better health services for women.
“Things have improved but there are other problems now. Look at the shortage of NCHDs [junior hospital doctors — the government is currently rushing through registration procedures to bring in large numbers from India and Pakistan].
“There might be a lot of posts that could be filled if they allowed flexi-time working. There are more women going into the medical profession — and in all the professions — than there used to be but it’s not necessarily becoming easier for them to be mothers as well.
“My daughter is a doctor in London and has three children close in ages. She was well into her 30s when she had them but the pressures are still there. She works four days a week and that one extra day at home can make all the difference.
“I used to be quite outspoken about these kind of things. I do remember when we tried to get this going. I had to point out that men often had a day off in the middle of the week for golf! They’d say that’s different — we have to have a bit of exercise!
“It was true they worked very long hours and medicine is very stressful so I didn’t begrudge them taking time off but the fact that time off was there for golf and not for other reasons — like child-rearing — was ridiculous.”
With three children, Meriel, John and Ralph, Dr Henry’s own working life as a consultant vascular physician at the Rotunda, Adelaide and Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospitals in Dublin, and later as both doctor and senator, was always hectic and she says the backing of her husband, John McEntagart, was vital.
“The support of family is very important. My husband was very good but he was also very busy. My mother was extremely helpful but she was in Cork — in emergencies she would board the train and arrive like the cavalry and I would be so grateful.
“The one thing I did have was very good help. I used to pay a lot of money for good help. Not everyone can afford that.
“There was a very good Romanian MEP who argued if something was done about domestic violence and housing conditions, maybe women would have more children.
“You have to look at the issues that make it difficult for women to have children and if work is one of them, you have to take a more flexible approach. “I do understand the predicament of employers in bad economic times but you have to be a bit long-sighted about this.
If you lose people out of the workplace, you don’t get them back or you don’t get them back to full potential — not without a lot of retraining — so don’t lose them, be flexible.”
REGINA DOHERTY remembers the irony of the first time she ran for the Dáil, when her baby bump was often the first thing householders saw once they opened the door to her on the campaign trail.
Doherty was the replacement for the original candidate who had withdrawn when she became pregnant and now here she was, trying to convince voters she would deliver on election promises when she was months away from a delivery of a different kind.
“It was a tough canvass,” she recalls of that inaugural attempt in the 2007 general election, when she was pregnant with her fourth child. “People would look at you and your bump and you’d know by them they were saying, ‘what is she thinking’.
“There was direct negativity too — people saying I should be at home minding my kids. But you know, you don’t give an idle person something to do — you give it to a busy person. It just made me work harder and in the end I won.”
What she won, initially, was a seat on Meath County Council in the 2009 local elections, and this year she followed it up by being elected to the Dáil for the Meath East constituency.
Ah yes, the Dáil — that overwhelmingly male institution that’s notoriously incompatible with family life as evidenced by the departure of Ms Doherty’s party colleague, Olwyn Enright, who left a promising political career on the birth of her second child, explaining she would no longer be able to give the commitment required by the job.
So how is she finding it? “It’s busy but we’ve always been a busy household,” says Ms Doherty, mum to Jack, 11; Grace, 9; Ryan, 7 and Kate, 4.
“I was a full-time councillor and that suited me very well. I brought the kids to school, worked until they finished school, was home with them until bedtime and then went to meetings at night.
“That was perfect and if I am to be genuinely honest, if Phil Hogan had been the Minister for the Environment five years ago [he has major plans for reform and strengthening of the powers of local government], I may never have left. Local government is extremely interesting and you can get a lot done but I felt I could do more as a TD.”
Before entering public life, Ms Doherty was in the private sector, working her way through the ranks of the Horizon Technology Group to become a director and having her first two children along the way.
“They were exceptionally good to me but then I was exceptionally good to them. I worked up until the day they were due and I came back to work six weeks after they were born.
“I flourished in that environment because I was given control of my destiny and they got out of me what they put into me. They treated me well and I responded. But I was dropping the kids to the creche at 7am and somebody else was rearing them. I worked the hours the company needed me to work so if that was 9pm, that’s when I worked to.”
The desire to see more of her children drove her to set up in business for herself and, for a while, that gave her the flexibility she needed.
“We set it up 10 minutes drive from my house — that was like a half day for me after commuting to Dublin — and it was very successful for a number of years. And then came the recession.”
But as the downturn began to bite and business slowed, Ms Doherty didn’t lessen her pace, becoming involved in a myriad of community groups and local initiatives.
“There’s never been a time when I wasn’t busy outside the home. That’s just how it is. That’s just how I am.”
The last few months since she entered the Dáil have been busier than most but, so far, the whole family has taken them in their stride.
“The hours are unsociable — there’s no doubt about that. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, I’m often not home until 11pm.
“But I’m there in the mornings when the children wake up and I take them to school. That’s our quality time. It means I sometimes miss early morning meetings in Leinster House, but so be it. They can’t have me both ends of the day.
“I have very good family around me. If I had a husband who was any way grumpy or narky, I couldn’t do it, or if he was the type who expected his dinner on the table, there is absolutely no way because it is demanding on everyone around you.”
Husband Declan, who also works full-time, has just one stipulation. “Wednesday night is football night so that’s his night off and we have to get a special babysitter. I think that’s a reasonable request.”
The extended family are a big support too. “We moved here [from Dublin] in 1999 and my mum and dad followed in 2001 and since then my brother moved here and Declan’s mum and dad are in Ashbourne [less than five miles away].
“Grandparents make the best babysitters. During the 2007 campaign, my father, at 73, learned to change a nappy and became very good at it.
“My mother couldn’t believe it but then she still marvels at the fact that my husband does the clothes washing. Thankfully, we’re a progressive household — it was never a case of I’ll do the ironing and you cut the grass — whatever needed done was done by whoever was first home to do it.
“There are weeks when it’s a pain in the backside. I remember my childminder was sick and my mum wasn’t around and it was a bit crazy — you do have those weeks. But for the weeks that are hard, you have weeks when you really get to achieve something so you just get on with it and enjoy those ones.”
LEONA KINAHAN had it all worked out. She would go back to work part-time, initially at least, so that she could maintain an income and her skills without losing her sanity.
The latter, she felt, would be at risk if she tore from home to creche to work to creche to home every day, all the while worrying about the length of time her firstborn was spending in care and how the lack of time with mammy would impact on her, especially as her husband was, out of necessity, working abroad at the time.
“I lived 40 minutes drive from work and I was working from 8.30am to 5.30pm so I would have been dropping Eabha off at a creche at 7am — if I could find one open at that time — and probably not picking up her until 6.30pm so I’d really only have an hour with her before she went to bed. I wanted to do better for her than that.”
Qualified in packaging technology, Ms Kinahan was working in quality control in a manufacturing company supplying the construction industry so in 2006, it was still a very busy place and she offered to do as many hours as she could.
“Part-time seemed to be a runner at first. I said I’d do three days in the office and one day from home and that seemed okay with them but while I was on maternity leave, I went into a meeting with the HR manager — I still remember it because I had Eabha in my arms — and while they were a lovely company and really nice to me, they told me they couldn’t facilitate me part-time.
“It was very, very upsetting because I knew what it meant — my child or my career. I understood where the company was coming from. It is hard on companies because they need someone to fit the job rather than the other way around and they felt they needed me on the ground at all times but my heart sank.”
As things turned out, she was called back soon after and asked if she would switch to working on a consultancy basis a few days a week and she jumped at the chance. Of course, the construction industry collapsed soon after, her work quickly dried up and as a self-employed person, she found herself without entitlements.
But then Emma, now 3-and-a-half, came along, followed by Shona, 18 months, so Kinahan didn’t exactly find herself at a loss for things to do.
Nevertheless, she wanted to have her own work and decided she’d have to find a way to provide it for herself.
She came up with www.hipbaby.ie, an online baby products store specialising in organic clothes and accessories. She’d found it hard to source items made with natural, chemical-free fabrics when they were recommended for Eabha’s eczema.
Hip Baby, which she runs from her home in Rosemount, Co Westmeath, will be three years old this October and although it’s been tough setting up a business in a recession, it’s ticking over.
“It’s hard work but I have a degree of flexibility that I wouldn’t have as an employee. Sometimes that means working at midnight but at least I’m working for me and I do love doing it.
“I would always have to have my own work. I like to do something to challenge myself. You go to college and you study and you train and you prepare for the workplace and then it’s weird if you have to walk away from all that. Your own identity can get lost.”
Ms Kinahan hasn’t ruled out a return to manufacturing and her radar bleeped excitedly at the announcement of a new medical devices plant setting up in Athlone where packaging technology will play a big part. But the major deterrent at the moment is the cost of childcare.
“It’s a huge issue. It would not be worth my while now to go back to work and pay to have the three girls in full-time childcare. I think that’s the biggest issue for most women with more than one child — they can’t afford to work.
“We kind of say, ‘oh it doesn’t matter, it’s good to stay at home, your kids grow so quickly and you don’t get the early years back’. But you should look at the bigger picture. They go to school and you’re trying to get back into the workplace and there are people a lot younger than you doing the job you used to do but they’re more advanced at it because technology moves so quickly and you’re now five years behind. You try to do the best by them but then you are penalised when you go back to work.”
Ms Kinahan says there is at least one way in which she would be a better employee if she went back to work now — she would be much more understanding of her co-workers’ needs.
“There’s often a bit of resentment when a woman takes time off or gets flexible working. I’ve seen it from both sides of the coin. I sort of thought other women were slacking off. It was my own naivety because I had no idea what was involved with children…
“You’re battling ignorance really. I suppose we’ll just have to keep battling.”
AS a solicitor who regularly handles employment-related cases, Eleanora Taylor has come to a firm conclusion: the hand that rocks the cradle is loth to rock the boat.
She often has consultations with prospective clients suffering unfair treatment in the workplace — including women who return from maternity leave to find their employer’s attitude towards them has changed for the worse — but she says that usually the only ones who proceed with a case are those who feel they have nothing to lose.
“If someone has been unfairly dismissed, they’ll probably do something about it, but it’s different when they’re still at work,” she says. “Regardless of how unfairly they feel they’re being treated, they just feel so lucky to have a job in this economy that they say they find it difficult to assert their rights. They feel that if they rock the boat too much, they won’t have a job.
“It’s very easy for me to sit in my office and tell them that, under the law, your employer can’t treat you like this and these are your remedies, but they have to weigh it all up.”
Another deterrent to going down the legal route is the length of time the process takes. It can take up to nine months for a complaint to be heard by the Rights Commissioner and, in general, the waiting time for an Employment Appeals Tribunal hearing can be anywhere from 14 to 20 months. That is off-putting for many women.
“All the legal entitlements in the world are not much good to you if you’ve lost your job, can’t pay your mortgage and have to wait over a year and a half to get justice,” says Ms Taylor.
Right isn’t always on the employee’s side. Ms Taylor also acts for employers and says she is heartened by the number of good ones and the genuine efforts they make to ensure they create and maintain a good working environment.
But as a working mother, she says that even in the best workplaces, balancing child-rearing and a career brings particular challenges. “It would be great to think it’s all about choice — that you could choose to work or be full-time at home. But most women I know, including myself, when they consider are they going back to work or going back full-time or part-time, it’s not a simple decision of whether they want to — it comes down to money.
“Most people I know, with one child, can afford to go back to work. — they can cover the cost of the crèche. But once they have two or three, it becomes too expensive. It would cost them money to go back to work.
“Things like that are the big obstacle and it naturally flows that if you have two or three kids over five or six years and you’re out of work for that time and then you go into a job interview, it’s harder to present yourself in a positive light.
“That’s the barrier I see to women and as a result, there are an awful lot of brilliant women, really capable women, who do not go back to work. The losers are the businesses and schools and organisations where they worked.”
Ms Taylor, mum to Keegan, who will be two next month, made some big decisions after he was born. The legal profession had taken a huge hit in the downturn and things deteriorated in the six months she was on maternity leave.
There simply wasn’t enough work to support her full-time position and she was offered contract work on her return. It was far from ideal but it spurred her to act on ideas that had been forming while she was on leave.
“I found the break away from work really clarified for me what I wanted to be doing career-wise and it seemed like the perfect time for me to set up on my own.” So in May last year she opened Taylor Solicitors in Blarney, Co Cork, and hasn’t looked back.
That was not before she got a taste of being a working mum in a situation where you have two bosses — your employer and your child. “I had to work my notice at the firm where I was employed so I was back to work for a month and my son was in the crèche for the first time and he picked up every bug going.
“I found it incredibly stressful worrying about him but also having to ask to leave the office and wondering what people thought of me. Even if you have great employers, you can’t help feel people think differently of you because I would have been the same way before I had my son.
“I would have looked at people with children who were missing because a child was sick and thought what, again? You have no idea until you have a child what kind of impact it can have on your work.”
Keegan is cared for partly in the Cork County Council staff creche, as her husband is assistant chief fire officer, and partly by her mother-in-law.
“It’s great to have him with family but increasingly that’s not an option for a lot of women because women are having babies later and their own mums are older. You can’t expect your mum or mother-in-law to run around after a toddler at a time in their life when they should be taking it easy.”
Working for herself gives Ms Taylor greater flexibility but life is still hectic. “I’m up at six and I have so much done by nine, I can’t believe the only thing I used to do was shower and have breakfast.
“I do think it’s businesses that lose out when women don’t go back to work because the thing we are great at is being organised, focused and very productive. These are the type of people we need in the workplace.”
Ms Taylor says she would miss working if she had to chose between a job and home. “My family is my top priority and they are without a doubt my motivation for working to create a successful business, but I love my career. As a family, we have our ups and downs, but we work hard to make it all work. I just appreciate that I am extremely lucky to be able to do both.”
AS head of technology services with a global consulting firm, Hilary O’Meara has guided client companies through multi-million euro IT investments on which their success or very survival depends.
Yet one of the most daunting things she’s done in the workplace was to withdraw from a top-level meeting because it clashed with her daughter’s school play.
“I had a huge dilemma. A project board meeting got moved suddenly to a different date and that was the date of my child’s first ever Christmas play,” she recalls, remembering the twin dreads of appearing uncommitted to work or letting down an excited 5-year-old.
But really, there was only one choice for her, so she took a deep breath. “I said I really want to go and see my daughter and they said ‘fine — send somebody to the meeting in your place’. I was honest about it and I got a hugely positive reaction. If you are prepared to ask, you might be surprised at the reaction you get.”
Of course, it helps if the environment is conducive to raising family matters and there’s a reason why O’Meara’s employer, Accenture, annually makes it into the list of the top 100 companies for working mums compiled by US magazine, Working Mother.
The company’s Accent on Women programme, actively encourages women, whatever their family status, to advance their careers through mentoring and training.
O’Meara, who joined the company’s Dublin office fresh from college in 1993, feels she definitely benefited and she is now one of the three women on the 10-strong executive leadership team.
Currently on maternity leave with her third child, 4-month-old Katherine, she blazed a trail by being promoted while pregnant with her first child, 5-year-old Aisling, and again while out on maternity leave with her second, 3-year-old Eoin.
Yet, despite everything, she admits she was nervous about breaking the news that she was expecting.
“You do worry, and I know from talking to others who are out on maternity leave that they feel the same way. You wonder, am I good enough to handle it all? And then you think, well, they’ve survived six months without me so I am dispensable.”
Her boss’s words of welcome on her return to work the first time, however, have remained reassuring ever since.
“He said it’s not about the hours you put in in the office, it’s not about how much I see you, it’s about getting results.”
On a practical level, what that means for O’Meara is that if she has to leave the office to attend to a family matter, there is no-one standing around with a stopwatch.
“Technology has been hugely enabling. I have broadband in my home so I have 24-7 access to the office. If something happens that I have to stay at home, I can still get online, do the calls and keep things moving.
“Or if you take a couple of hours out to meet your child at the school gate now and again, you can catch up in the evening when they’re gone to bed or early on a Sunday morning. You still get a good week’s work done but it fits with my lifestyle.”
Flexibility is a two-way street. Despite being on maternity leave, O’Meara recently attended a half-day meeting at work and she is monitoring her emails from home.
“I didn’t have to go to the meeting but it was about planning for the next year so I wanted to go. I want to stay connected and see what’s going on.
“I’m not being the power woman — I’m interested and I want to do well. The culture of being supportive to women works both ways. It shouldn’t be all about take, take, take. If you’re being given the support and being paid on maternity leave, I remember that.
“Then if there’s a time I have to stay late, I stay late. I give and they give. It means I go to work in a positive state of mind and do a better day’s work.”
There are other life-savers for the working mother. “I have a husband who gets it. We share this fifty-fifty. He doesn’t leave me to do all the cooking or all the washing. We made that decision when we both decided to work and that’s essential.”
The other essential is good childcare. “My children love their childminder so even if they were sick, if I really couldn’t stay home, I wouldn’t feel bad leaving them.”
Hilary goes on to point out to employers the reality of motherhood: “We have to be patient with our parents. You have an employee who’s the parent of a small child for a short while. Then the child grows up but you still have the employee.”
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