Working While Parenting a Teen: Not What I Expected

Do you expect and hope that you’ll have more time for yourself and for your career as your kids become teens and young adults? Amy G did. However, she didn’t fully anticipate the emotional intensity of being a working mom of a teenager. Responding to seemingly urgent texts, keeping track of an ever-changing after-school schedule, and being an on-call problem-solver would affect anyone’s ability to focus, including hers.

There’s little research on or conversation about this phase of working motherhood, and Amy wants to help other working moms not not only get through it but enjoy it as much as possible.

She’s joined by Babson College professor Danna Greenberg, who’s the co-author of Maternal Optimism and a mother of three twenty-somethings. Amy and Danna talk though questions like, How do I recover my focus after my kid calls to unload? How might I counter people’s judgy comments about how involved (or not) I am in my teen’s life? How can I avoid becoming my kid’s de facto boss?

Guest expert:

Danna Greenberg is a professor of organizational behavior at Babson College and the co-author of the book Maternal Optimism: Forging Positive Paths through Work and Motherhood.

Resources:

• “The Upside of Working Motherhood,” from Women at Work
• “How Being a Working Parent Changes as Children Grow Up,” by Danna Greenberg and Jamie Ladge
• “How Working Parents Can Manage the Demands of School-Age Kids,” by Daisy Dowling
• The HBR Working Parents Series Collection, by Harvard Business Review

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