Working motherhood: embracing digital flexibility

The pre-digital parent trap

I've battled this constant juggling act for most of my career. When my children were young, there was no option to log in from home when a child was ill or childcare fell through. You either went to work or you didn't – with all the associated guilt, stress and career implications. With a husband who travelled abroad every other week, and family hundreds of miles away in Liverpool, I had no choice but to take time off, which really didn't sit well with my employer at the time!

The traditional workplace was designed by and for people without primary caring responsibilities. When flexibility or digital alternatives simply didn't exist, women were forced to choose between being present at work or being present for their families. This inflexibility is precisely why research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows the gender pay gap widens after women have children, reaching 33% less pay per hour by the time the first child is 12 years old.

The digital revolution

Today, we find ourselves in a very different landscape. The pandemic accelerated workplace transformations already underway, making remote and hybrid working mainstream. Pre-lockdown, every meeting was in person, consuming chunks of the day. When covid hit, we rapidly embraced the tech. From Zoom calls and Teams to AI, digital tools have created possibilities that simply didn't exist during my early parenthood.

I vividly recall a frantic dash to collect a poorly 18-month-old, only to shoot back to the office and place him in his car seat under a boardroom table so I could run a meeting with clients who'd travelled from Manchester. Not being present wasn't an option. The guilt of feeding him endless Kinder Bueno squares to keep him quiet, thinking I'd let my team down – it was an endless cycle that left me permanently exhausted and constantly feeling like a failure.

Has technology solved everything?

Of course, not – it's helped, but we've still got a long way to go. As someone who's been in this industry for over thirty years, I've seen that while digital flexibility has created more opportunities for working parents, significant downsides still remain:

• Caring responsibilities still fall disproportionately on women. According to the British Chambers of Commerce, two-thirds of women with childcare responsibilities believe they've missed out on career progression as a direct result.
• Presenteeism persists. In many organisations, remote workers face 'proximity bias' in promotion decisions. The Society for Human Resource Management found that two-thirds of 800 supervisors interviewed 'admitted to believing remote workers are more replaceable than onsite workers.'
• Boundaries have blurred. More than half (52%) of UK employees agree that work-home boundaries are increasingly blurred, according to Aviva research. You collect your sick child, try working from home while juggling their needs, but once they're in bed, guilt drives you to continue working. Your day becomes an epic marathon – you're exhausted and feel you've given neither work nor child proper attention.

Are things easier for working mothers now?

My honest thoughts? Yes and no, but how I wish it could be a definitive YES!

Yes, the infrastructure for balanced working lives exists in ways it didn't for previous generations. Digital tools, evolving workplace policies and changing cultural attitudes have created genuine opportunities for more integrated approaches to career and family.

But the same old challenges remain: societal expectations, unequal domestic responsibilities and workplace cultures that sometimes still equate visibility with commitment.

We've moved beyond the stark choices my generation faced. The technological capability for flexibility exists but what we need now is the cultural willingness to embrace it fully (fortunately I work in an agency where it is embraced!). We still have work to do, but at least now, that work doesn't have to happen exclusively in an office between 9 and 5, although we must remain vigilant about protecting our personal time and space from the always-on digital culture.