Motherhood Penalty, Axe It

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. This beautiful crown of motherhood which is a great blessing and is the most beautiful and amazing jewelry a woman can ever adorn at times may feel heavy and also uncomfortable to don, especially when that woman has to make a whole lot of compromises and adjustments to nurture her creation(her child(ren)) with limited support. I am not getting into the challenges a new mother faces. Most times, nature takes care of gradually bringing back all that she has lost at that point...the sleep, the anxiety(and sometimes the body-shape too), but here, I am thinking about that gap in her career which sometimes doesn't seem to be getting filled-up long after her infant has grown from a Toddler/Pre-Schooler/Grade-Schooler/ to a Teen/Young Adult. Their qualifications and experience gets overshadowed by the gap period. I personally know many wonderful women whose intelligence, smartness and knowledge put me in awe, but some of them feel incomplete despite having seemingly full lives. They voluntarily took a break from their careers to tend to their kids full-time and when they wanted to get back, there were hardly any takers. They yearn for that one chance.. to prove themselves once again. Even during this time and age, the ceiling and the barrier exists. It is a shame that this ‘system’ of non-utilization of such a big part of the educated population is a huge waste of the spent resources. It is like  forcing someone to retire pre-maturely despite their intention and capability to work.

But, this  system will not change until everyone in the society begins to understand that the years spent by these women away from their desk/office, tending to their young kids does not come under the ‘No experience during the period-mm/yy to MM/YY’... It wasn’t a sheer waste. A soldier is always a soldier. Someone who knows how to create music can and will do it, even if he/she stops for some time. In fact, the sabbatical of motherhood transforms them into something like a ‘Swiss Army Knife’. It actually enriches them and is the ‘period-of-advancing-the-soft-skills’ like patience, multi-tasking, agility, time-management and dedication. 

It is time that the society and the industry  makes that conscious effort to bring that valuable work-force back into action. Some of them have given up on being back into their stream of profession(probably after some attempts to climb back on the slippery vertical wall). But, some are still trying. Inclusion of these premature retirees in the work-place can be a great and useful addition. Motherhood penalty needs to be made up for by motherhood-returnships.