WorkLife Presents: Mom’s at Work – a podcast on the harsh realities for working mothers
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Being a working mother has never been easy — but in today’s world, the challenges are piling up faster than ever.
International Women’s Day (March 8) is a moment to celebrate progress — but also to confront the realities that women, particularly working mothers, still face every day.
That’s why WorkLife and Digiday Media have launched a limited six-episode series, which dives into some of the raw, real experiences of juggling careers and caregiving in an era of skyrocketing childcare costs, workplace hurdles and relentless financial pressure.
Being a mother is the greatest joy in the world, yet it’s also one of the toughest jobs, especially since the workplace hasn’t been built with mothers in mind. The motherhood penalty still exists, and while many employers are working to fix this, there’s still a long way to go before workplaces are truly supportive and free from bias.
And yet, the workplace has transformed dramatically in the past five years — reshaping conversations around work-life balance, remote flexibility, mental health and fair compensation. No group feels this shift more acutely than working mothers. But now, with the pendulum swinging back toward a return to the office, many working mothers are feeling the strain once again.
In this podcast series, we explore some of the challenges working mothers face throughout their entire motherhood journey, beginning with fertility, maternity leave, returning to work and then balancing a career with their parenting responsibilities. And we’ll look, too, at how employers are working harder to improve conditions and benefits, and where they’re still woefully absent or even magnifying the problem.
Being a working mom is hard. Being a working mom with a child who has extreme medical needs? That’s a whole other level. In our first episode, we speak with Katie Martin, EVP and managing director of Front Row, a U.S. marketing agency for beauty brands. Like many mothers, she juggles the multiple hats of being a mother and carer for a child with extreme medical needs while also working full time.
We also bring in sociologist and author Jessica Calarco, who unpacks why working moms across the U.S. are struggling more than ever, and Kelly Jones, chief people officer at Cisco, who explains why companies need to go beyond just offering benefits — they need to embed flexibility into their culture to truly support and retain working moms.
We also speak with Jessica Calarco, sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Holding it Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net,” about what the current realities are for working mothers across the U.S.
We also check in with Cisco’s chief people officer Kelly Jones, on why it’s critical that flexibility is a part of organizational culture that benefits all workers, parents and non-parents. And it’s on senior leaders to model it.
These are the stories we need to tell. This podcast isn’t just about the struggles — it’s about the resilience, the support systems that make a difference and the ways we can push for change.
WorkLife Presents is hosted by Jessica Davies, founding editor of WorkLife, Sara Patterson is producer, and Tim Peterson is the executive editor of audio and video for Digiday Media.
If you’ve enjoyed listening, please subscribe, rate and review us on Apple Podcast, Spotify or wherever you are listening. For more coverage, visit Digiday.com and WorkLife.news.