The festive season is a magical time of year. The twinkling lights, mulled wine, and the joy on children’s faces make the cold days and dark evenings feel warm and bright. But for working parents, it’s not all glitter and joy. Managing work, parenting, and festive expectations can quickly become overwhelming.

Let’s explore the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful of this season, and how to navigate it with grace.. and sanity!

Returning to work after parental leave presents a unique set of challenges, especially for parents in client-facing roles in professional services sectors (e.g. legal, consulting etc.). These professionals, who often juggle financial targets, extensive travel, and round-the-clock availability, face significant pressures when reintegrating into the workforce. Not to mention (but we will), the often intense / unrealistic pressure / expectations working parents put themselves under when returning.

Through thousands of hours of coaching our many WOMBA clients, we’ve seen firsthand the impact this transition can have on parents, such as: lack of confidence, second-guessing themselves, burnout at work and home, and a reluctance, reticence or fear to share their pregnancy/parental identity with clients. 

In this blog, we’ll explore some of these challenges and, importantly, how businesses can support working parents to ensure a smoother, more equitable return to work and in return, retain their talent.

If you find yourself offering an elaborate explanation about how home life is affecting your work, 'Mumsplaining'. But what exactly is mumsplaining, and why do we feel the need to justify our personal responsibilities in the professional environment? More importantly, how can we reframe this behaviour through a more inclusive lens, recognizing that it’s not just mothers who face these challenges, but fathers and caregivers of all kinds?

Photo by Humphrey Muleba on Unsplash

"It takes a village to raise a child ", comes from Africa. The communal involvement in child-rearing starkly contrasts with the more individual approach often seen in the UK. There are many benefits to building your village of support, as a working parent.

As the summer holidays approach, working parents across the UK face the dual challenge of managing their workload while ensuring their children have a memorable and fulfilling break. Balancing professional responsibilities with family time can be daunting, but with some strategic planning and a touch of creativity, it is possible to make the most of the summer months. Here are some tips and resources to help you navigate this busy period.

As a society, we still have wildly outdated presumptions and expectations about what women want and what they should be. It’s this expectation that contributes to women feeling they must prove they can do everything and be everything, to everyone.

And for working mums in particular, the constant shift between mum mode and worker mode can be really challenging and in reality, is in sharp contrast to the ‘superwoman’ ideologies that many women feel they need to attain.

WOMBA looka at both sides of Lily Allen's comments as it relates to working parents, as there is absolutely merit in what she says, but not everyone will have the same experience, or agree.

What do you think?

Recently, the UK Government’s has made a promise to working parents:

By September 2025, working parents will be able to claim 30 hours of free childcare a week, over 38 weeks of the year, all the way through from nine months up to their child starting school.

The promise of 'free childcare' has sparked both hope and skepticism for working parents. We at WOMBA, believe that while the intention behind the pledge is noble, it risks exacerbating existing inequalities rather than alleviating them.

Alison Green speaks to Workplace Wellbeing about how organisations are still failing to implement significant or lasting change, despite their recognition in the huge value in supporting working parents – and have dedicated a lot of time and resources to doing so.

With recent research revealing the challenges mums and dads face in balancing their jobs and home lives, Helen Sachdev talks to People Management UK and outlines how organisations can help working parents

Helen Sachdev, director of specialist coaching practice for working parents WOMBA (Work, Me and the Baby) agrees. “Job sharing leads to greater role resilience and career progression. It offers talented employees the incentive to remain in an organisation, especially those with young children.”

Any mum who’s tried to keep their career in tact after having children will tell you it’s no mean feat.

Between the extra long days, the worries people think you’re not taking your job seriously and the guilt that comes from working overtime and not feeling present enough for your child, it’s A Lot.

Our new piece of research has seen mums open up about the difficulties – and sometimes impossibilities – of juggling work and motherhood.

For working dads, COVID-19 considerably changed their relationship with work and family.

And yet, despite dads wanting to participate more actively in family life, our joint research study with Hult International Business School (Ashridge) – exploring how working parents experience the transition to parenthood in an organisational context – found that many have found it difficult to take on a greater parental role.

For working dads, Covid-19 considerably changed their relationship with work and family. Not only did it prove to be an awakening – with many dads for the first time appreciating the challenges of juggling work and childcare – it was also a period that showed parents a different and better way forward. Now, many have no intention of returning to the outdated, pre-pandemic routines that prove to be barriers to a healthy work-family balance.

WOMBA director, Alison Green, writes in HR Director sharing four ways working dads are pioneering gender equality.

WOMBA Director, Alison Green, writes in People Management, the most read and visited HR media brand in the UK, about how working dads have become the pioneers of gender equality.

As more fathers challenge the status quo of paternity leave policies in a post-pandemic world, they are inadvertently driving change, says Alison.

WOMBA director, Alison Green, contributes to an article in d&i Leaders on how inclusive new working practices are.

The traditional 9 to 5 is fast becoming obsolete, with the past three years seeing a dramatic shift in flexible working practices from flexible hours, hybrid working to the four-day week.

The U.K. government gifted an early Christmas present to millions of workers by proposing a new law that will grant the right to ask for part-time hours or home-working arrangements from the first day of a new job.