There is a curious mixture in his voice.
We hear the confidence of a mother, who has not given herself the right to flinch since the birth of her two children.
But also the doubts of a woman who has lost the link with the professional world - and a part of herself.
“I feel empty, I no longer find myself.
I am nothing more than a mother, and I sometimes have the impression of being nobody, as entire facets of me have vanished,” confides Melissa, sure of her choice of words, but whose voice wavers.
A native of Bordeaux, this 34-year-old mother worked for five years in Paris within the sales teams of major cosmetics brands.
At the time, she visited the stores, managed inventory and supplies, and trained the salespeople.
She became pregnant for the first time in 2019, a few months before the end of an employment contract.
“I wasn’t going to look for another one at six months pregnant,” she remembers.
I told myself that I would improvise, depending on whether or not I managed to get a place in daycare.”
To discover
The keys to supporting women in their working lives
Four years have passed.
In the meantime, Melissa gave birth in full confinement, let a year go by without having a job interview, moved near Bordeaux with her husband and son for a more peaceful life, supervised the renovation work on her new house and gave birth a second time.
Her partner kept his job in Paris, where he spends half the week.
She still has not resumed activity.
She doesn't lack the desire, but she comes up against a wall, an agglomeration of contradictory feelings.
“I would like to find myself again, to become an active woman again, but I feel guilty about looking after my one-year-old daughter while I looked after her brother until three, about being less present for my children after having given them so much .”
Added to this are material constraints, such as the difficulty in finding childcare, the priorities redefined by motherhood – no longer a question, for example, of working on weekends – but also, and above all, the deep fear of no longer worthless on the market.
“After a year, I started to lose confidence and become afraid,” she remembers, “and wondering what employers would think of my career, my choices, my image – these pregnancy pounds. which I was longing to lose…” A diffuse anxiety, sufficient to give the professional world the contours of an unknown country, of which she knew nothing.
And with whom the women we met for this article struggle so much to reconnect, when they leave him.
For the first time, someone becomes more important than you.
Everything then changes flavor
Nathalie Lanceluin-Huin, psychologist specializing in perinatal care
It is to get women out of this impasse, and prevent them from dropping out, he assures, that the President of the Republic wishes to replace parental leave with a new “birth leave”, shorter but better paid.
Because it must be said: even if gender equality is progressing in France, 96% of people who stop working to take care of a child are still mothers, according to INSEE figures from 2018. The cause , salary inequalities, the lack of nursery places, which force the couple to pragmatism... But the psyche is not unrelated to the withdrawal of women into their homes.
“Skills, memory, career and the world before are gone: for the first time, someone becomes more important than you.
Everything then changes flavor, underlines psychologist Nathalie Lancelin-Huin, perinatal specialist.
Biology, particularly hormonal, predicts, from pregnancy and after, a psychological and emotional rearrangement.
Some women can then go as far as diluting their identity.
They lose their ability to project themselves, sometimes not even recognizing themselves.
Some dedicate themselves entirely to this role, from which they derive precious gratification: a baby looks at its mother like a queen, a sun.
No one can give you as much love.”
Contrary aspirations
Adventure is also about self-discovery.
However knowledgeable, informed or supported they may be, these young mothers cannot anticipate what they will feel once their baby is born.
“I discovered myself as a mother hen,” confides Élodie, from Rennes and mother of two children, who has just celebrated her 40th birthday.
With her international business diploma in hand, she held a series of positions of responsibility in ready-to-wear, in France and Spain, before settling in Brittany with her husband, around the age of thirty.
There, she joined the headquarters of a French textile leader and gave birth, three years ago, to a little girl.
“Spending time with her then became my priority.
We were in our cocoon, getting to know each other… These moments were very powerful.
I couldn't let go of my daughter after two and a half months and followed my maternity leave with parental leave."
In her eyes, these first months take on even greater importance after hours spent devouring books and podcasts on motherhood, mother-child bonding or education.
“I see myself again,” she remembers, “walking down the street with an interview with a perinatal psychologist in my ears, and telling myself that I had a huge role to play.”
Also read: Is it harder to be a parent today than 40 years ago?
This is, without doubt, the origin of the current shift in parental territory.
After decades of conquering the world of work, sometimes at all costs, women are reconnecting with their role as mothers, driven in particular by the growing importance given by society to the education and well-being of children.
Sources of information multiply, the subject becomes the subject of public debate and scientific research is widely disseminated, such as that of psychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik in his report on the first 1,000 days.
“This awareness pushes mothers to take full advantage of their babies, and makes them feel guilty for not doing so,” underlines Nathalie Lancelin-Huin.
They are caught between two polarities.
On the one hand, the tendency to reconnect with the “natural” aspect of things – taking an interest in your pregnancy or your menstrual cycle in its physiological dimension, cooking organically, practicing positive education, etc.
On the other hand, the injunction not to stop living, not to give up fulfilling oneself as a woman, an active woman, a member of a couple, a friend, etc.
Today’s thirty-somethings are walking on a crest line that has never been so fine.”
Also read: The Dr Becky phenomenon: the New York psychologist who boosts parents' morale with her ultra-concrete advice
Home 1 career 0
From this mass of contradictory desires and injunctions, the young mothers manage as best they can, each with their calculations, their red lines and their renunciations.
A permanent arbitration, from which the career is often sacrificed.
In 2020, the share of “inactive” women – that is to say neither in work nor looking for work – increased from 12 to almost 18% with the birth of a child, then to 25% with two children including one under three years old, and finally, 52.5% with three or more children.
Meanwhile, the share of working men followed an inverse curve - the more children there are, the more their father works.
Also read: When do we work too much?
Most of the time, the women we met were not planning to take a career break.
They returned to work after their maternity leave, convinced that everything would return to more or less the same way as before.
But they encountered a different reality.
“My client portfolio had been modified during my parental leave.
When I returned, I managed twice as much turnover as before,” recalls Élodie.
At the very moment when she is running after the clock to pick up her daughter or relieve the nanny, and while her partner lets himself be absorbed by the management of his SME of 50 employees, Élodie sees her workload explode.
“I couldn't cope anymore and my manager didn't know how to help me.
It was violent.
I was neither prepared for the feeling of doing my job poorly nor for losing all pleasure at the office.
And even less, the fact of only seeing my daughter for thirty minutes a day.
Two years after her first childbirth, she decided to concentrate on the project of a second baby.
A rapid pregnancy followed by a miscarriage acts as a setback, forcing her to take a break and, ultimately, pushing her to leave her position.
“I realized that I was heading towards exhaustion and that I had no future in this company.”
Also readMental load: what are the consequences for women's health, careers and money?
Do they find one at home?
“I feel like I'm imitating my own mother, who never took a second for herself,” sighs Melissa, from Bordeaux.
I make sure the house stays spotless, I do the shopping so that we never lack for anything, prepare snacks and dinner… I put a lot of pressure on myself.
Everyone seems to find it normal that I do everything alone: in their eyes, the chance of having children prevents me from complaining.”
However, the fatigue is there, real, still weighed down by the management of limited finances.
Without a salary, you have to tinker, learn to do with less.
Pay a bill or a shopping basket rather than treat yourself to a new coat or a trip.
Find income elsewhere, sometimes with your parents, at least for a while.
And live with the feeling of being financially indebted to your spouse.
Rewrite the script
To open up the horizon, and save women from the impasse, there is an urgent need to change software.
To rewrite the script.
Experts agree: although they are essential, concrete measures - closing the salary gap, opening more places in daycare, better pay for maternity leave, etc. - will not be enough to reconcile career and motherhood.
Changing the norm actually involves reinventing the place of work in our lives and revaluing the role of parent.
In the company, the four-day week arouses interest and is already proving its worth.
The pension reform also reminds us that, in a career now spread from 23 to 67 years, we can undoubtedly interrupt ourselves for a year here or there to experience something else – welcoming a child, traveling, training… Fathers would benefit from it: in 2021, 71% of them took paternity leave – compared to 93% of mothers.
But only 0.8% used parental leave, according to the French Observatory of Economic Conditions.
However, according to Antoine de Gabrielli, expert consultant on diversity in businesses, a recent 2018 Pew Research Center study reveals that 70% of men want more time with family.
“In companies that pay a full salary during paternity leave, all fathers take it,” explains the author of the book
S'emanciper à deux
(1).
The entire system must change to allow everyone with family responsibilities to assume them.”
The major challenge is to change the way people look.
To establish in the collective imagination that women, like men, can play several roles at the same time, and in turn.
“We cannot be condemned to sacrifice our careers or not see our children grow up,” Élodie wants to believe.
A middle path necessarily exists.”
She herself, after skills assessments and extensive research, is preparing to launch an entrepreneurial project.
A way of reconciling the times that wage labor opposes.
And to draw this path, precisely, that the current generation of mothers is trying to take, when they refuse the marked paths that their own mothers have largely traveled.
Hoping not to get lost along the way.
(1)
Emancipation as a couple: the couple, work and equality
, by Antoine de Gabrielli, éditions du Rocher, 240 pages, €17.90.
Available on leslibraires.fr.