Working Mom vs SAHM Dilemma: How Nordic Moms choose?
And why "having it all" is not a thing in Scandinavia & why no one "leans in"
Hi friends! Inspired and informed by your insights and thoughts, along with deep conversations with friends from different industries from New York to Helsinki, here’s 4 radical and random observations about the mindset differences in motherhood & work in the US and in Scandinavia. Hopefully they will rock your world as much as they have mine.
The pictures in this post are from a bike ride the boys and I went to, after work and school and daycare and early dinner, to watch the early sun set and the full moon rise.
1. Staying At Home Does Not Make You a SAH Mom
Much has been written about the Nordic 9-month, fully-paid maternity leave and up-to-3-years partly-paid childcare leave compared to the lack of support in the US, but what has not been discussed is the radical difference in how American vs. Nordic moms view their identity, and their sense of self, postpartum. The first part we can’t chance, the latter part we can - at least within ourselves.
In the US, giving birth does not just make you a mom. What you decide in the 1-3 months after the birth (the length of the typical American unpaid “disability leave”), determines what kind of mom you are.
A working mom or a stay-at-home mom.
What you decide has long determined your side in the long-standing “mommy wars” of what’s the right thing to do and who has it harder. And those moms rarely mix. After all, you are at war.
This does not exist in Finland. You simply don’t pick a side.
“It’s all about how moms define their identity here and there. Even if a Finnish mom is out of work for 1-3 years after each baby is born, a Finnish mom does not see herself as a stay-at-home mom,” explained my friend Emma Saloranta Winiecki, a Finnish mom with an American husband and two kids, who has lived both in the States and in Finland with her family, and has a long career driving gender equality initiatives, currently in the United Nations.
Finnish woman’s identity—seeing herself as a working mom with talents, drive and purpose outside of the home—will not change when she leans in to the postpartum phase in her life, even with multiple pauses for multiple kids.
2. Having it all but not all at the same time
In the US, in the most competitive fields at least, the idea is that unless you keep yourself relevant and in the game, you are simply wiped off the map. Adopting the Nordic mindset offers a way to peacefully enjoy and be present at the baby and toddler phase (at least for yourself, if not in the larger context of the society). No one thinks that you are leaning out: you are just doing what everyone expects you to do which is pause.
In the US time is money and months if not years out of the hustle is an eternity; in Finland, moms are instead recommended “not to rush back as it’s such a short time.” We can’t change other’s point of view on this, but we can change our own.
Chasing my American dream in a hyper competitive field (think Devil Wears Prada), I never took a pause with Lucas or Miles (my first and second boys) because I was terrified it would be the end of my career if I did.
Like the post by clicking the heart icon at the end, if you want me to share how my American career story and how I finally found my work bliss doing it the Nordic Way.
Do I wish I had given myself time to pause and just be with my then toddler Lucas and baby Miles? Of course. Would I have been completely wiped off the map had I given myself a year to just be with them? Possibly—in those particular career fields or at least in that job. But I also wiped myself off the map for almost two years because of my burnout. Did being out of the game destroy my career? It depends how you define a career. Potentially yes, if I was to define a career in the traditional pre-pandemic corporate terms. But not in terms of what’s possible for you to do. Now, a kids’ skincare brand, a social wellness brand and this newsletter later, this is me continuing my career:-) All of which I run in the Nordic style. With balance.
DISCLAIMER: I’m not discussing motherhood & financials here even though those can play a big part - they are too unique to everyone’s situation. But should a mom in the US want to try the Nordic way, unsupported by the non-existing support structures, one solution is to get just creative. As an example, Jim and I lived on his salary before Lucas was born, and saved 100% of my salary, knowing we wouldn’t have mine at least for a bit after his arrival and expenses would go up. We also stayed in our small one-bedroom apartment, where our rent was very manageable, with Lucas sleeping in our walk-in-closet. Back then, I could have financially allowed myself that year had I adopted this Nordic Mindset, and not been so worried about losing everything I had worked for and “my place”.
3. Success Equals Joy, Not Financial Success
Since we moved to Finland for this fall, I have met numerous moms who consider themselves extremely successful. But the success—the goal post—is not a number or even a position. Here, rather, as long as you are comfortable financially, success is the joy you get from doing meaningful work, or projects, that match your education, experience, talents and purpose. You can feel very successful while you also This is respected and the respect in your work brings more joy, and it becomes a positive cycle.
After hearing this, I realized that no matter how much I moved forward in my career track in the US, I never considered myself successful, even when I had quintupled my salary, racked more executive titles, or raised funding. As if only an outside force could determine whether I had made it, or as if only numbers way way higher mattered.
What would happen if we just considered ourselves as a success just because we loved what we do?
4. You Don’t Need to Lean In, Because No One Thinks You Lean Out
In the US, I see many moms not keeping their own work in as high regard as their partner’s if their work earns them less. If they feel they have the option financially, many moms quit their jobs, careers, or projects at this juncture—with no plans to return.
In fact, in the US, this is the moment your identity is settled, maybe not by you, but by others, and you can’t be both: you are either a working mom or you are a stay-at-home mom, and like tends to hang out with the like.
In the political “new right”, the idea of ‘returning US to a place where moms can stay at home and families can get by with one income’ is a major selling point even to Ivy-League educated women, and now even on the political left, parodies present the idea that why would women need to work at all.
“Not Working if You Don’t Have To” has become a status symbol of a kind.
Recently, I personally have gotten this type of question more than once:
“Why would you work if you don’t have to?”
“It’s so surprising that you are so motivated to do any work?”
”Why would you ever complain about being stressed combining work and kids; you have zero need to work!”
As a Finn, these questions feel alien to me: Why would I not want to work? I feel like I’m quite educated, have great experience, talent, and so much to give.
DISCLAIMER: That said, the American Way of working with kids led me to burnout; that’s why I’m now working the Nordic Way which could be challenging in many standard American work structures, but possible with more creative or entrepreneurial pursuits.
4. Erasing the Motherhood Penalty in Mindset if not in Real Life
If we equate work’s value solely with earnings, and if we let outside forces determine what success means, I can see why many moms who opt out, opt out without even considering more creative ways of working outside perhaps the standard tracks. If your work does not seem meaningful or valuable to others, why do it?
But with the economic forces being what they are—the motherhood penalty is alive and well, and especially in the US I don’t see it going away anytime soon, if ever—the earnings hit is just a fact and there’s really no context in which we can compare a moms’s and dad’s (or other partners’) earnings somehow “equally.” Even in Finland, the earnings trajectory with salaries does take a hit. The value of the a mom’s work contribution must be calculated using a different scale.
This challenge is of course universal—even though the new Finnish law dividing parental leave between fathers and mothers, already in use in Sweden, is aiming to remedy that, but I wonder what choices families and moms would make if we considered the following to be true:
If your work is fulfilling your purpose and brings you joy, you are successful.
Your work is meaningful in so many ways beyond the money you earn from it.
Value your contributions: they are worth something.
5. Balance & Headspace
I’ll close with this. No meaningful work can happen without headspace: the time to clear your head, to recharge, and to think, and to ideate. I also consider taking care of children work, even if it’s your own children.
A mom tends to take on astronomically more housework and meta work (“invisible work”) if she’s at home with the kids, or if she earns less than the partner (and even if she earns the same), especially in the US, because the dad or partner needs the time and focus to keep on earning.
I consider this the Invisible Motherhood Penalty.
In Scandinavia, could one reason for the different attitudes with motherhood and working be due to the fact that—besides society overloading moms less—the house and meta work is divided at least somewhat more equally, even though not equally, and moms simply have more headspace?
More headspace think, learn, ideate, contribute, earn?
More headspace to live with more bliss & balance?
I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR:
Do you think dividing housework & invisible work more equally would give moms more headspace? How do you divide responsibilities at home? Pls say where you are from!