I went back to work the day after giving birth – women need the offer of flexible maternity leave

I had my fourth child at 50 and learned how a flexible return to work can make a difference for women who want it

When I had my first son, I was 26 and a trainee lawyer in the City. Within weeks of giving birth I was back at my desk working 12-hour days while my baby son was with a nanny or at nursery. Come the evenings and weekends, my first husband and I were exhausted and longed for a moment together, but couldn’t afford yet more childcare.

Having my second son two years later, and then my daughter at the age of 36, in the midst of setting up my own firm, was similarly fraught.

Twenty three years later, at the age of 50, I was pregnant again. But when I gave birth for the fourth time last year, I didn’t take any maternity leave at all. A lot had changed since my twenties, but doing it all for the fourth-time round, without any break from work at all, keeping work and motherhood running on parallel tracks, turned out to be infinitely more relaxed.

After years of slogging away, my firm is established, I’m less stressed and I look after myself better than I ever have. Most importantly, as a business-owner, it’s me and not male bosses who make the rules. I had the flexibility I need to keep going, and so I made it work.

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I was in the office the day after giving birth. I worked from home, in and out of the office for meetings, from day one, stayed on top of everything and kept the whole show on the road. Most importantly, I wasn’t forced to keep the worlds of baby and business apart. I’ve breast-fed in the office, I’ve had my baby come into internal meetings, I just went for it. I had the support and flexibility as a business owner to break from the old, male-dominated model and set my own rules.

People were surprised by my approach. There’s a big focus now on giving women longer maternity leaves, with an attendant social pressure to take them. It’s like putting women behind a curtain, off with their babies and shut out of the world of independent money, power and influence that is reserved for men.

Statutory parental leave is brandished as if it’s a fix-all to working motherhood. The reality is that there are a lot of women who want the option to return more flexibly.

What about the women unhappily stuck at home feeling alienated as the ‘perfect’ full-time mummy, women having to return abruptly from a long maternity leave on an all-or-nothing basis and suffering as a result, women who feel compelled to put family off for the sake of their career and later find they may have left it too late?

We have to open up the boundaries between work and parenting. Offering maternity leave without the prospect of flexibility on return sends the message that work and motherhood is incompatible.

I set up my own law firm as a young single mother, determined to run things in a new way that would work for other ambitious people who also want to have children and love and be with them. I don’t want my staff to have to put off having a family. I encourage them to have children if they want to, then return to work as soon as they feel able, even half a day a week at first, in a way that fits with the gradual sense of becoming more independent of your baby.

Some mothers in my firm have taken a year off, some eight months but kept covering their important clients and matters, some have taken three months then come back in a stepped way, some have kept coming in for a day a week, we work out a plan that works for them and the firm in a mature and collaborative way. There is no ‘proper’ maternity leave, in my view, to be dictated from high and then enforced by guilt and peer pressure. Within some core parameters so that nobody, neither firm nor family, gets messed up, it ought to be a cooperative plan that works for the individuals and the firm in a tailored way.

For our senior staff members we pay for top-flight childcare for every day they are back in the office until their child turns three. We’ve created special models worked out on time and outcomes, not just turning up. We take a bespoke approach to the people who really care about staying in the game and are committed to the project. And they repay us in loyalty and brilliance, making it a great investment for an employer to make.

Take it from one ambitious mother. Trust us to remain committed to our work and we’ll remain serious players. Work and parenting are compatible but we need to rip up the rulebook.

 Ayesha Vardag is a divorce lawyer and founder and President of Vardags

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