Lorem Ipsem
I’m a working mum. And I like being a working mum. I like that I have a career. A passion. Something I’ve built and continue to build alongside raising my daughter. And I like having a term for it — one that’s clear, specific, and honest about what my life actually looks like right now.
I hear the criticism. And honestly? I don’t disagree with it. We don’t routinely call fathers “working dads.” The term can imply that staying at home isn’t work, which of course it is. Both these points are more than fair. I just approach the term differently. For me it’s never carried that weight — it’s always simply described something I’m proud of.
Because here’s the thing about language — it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists in context. And in context, “working mum” means something specific, something useful, and for a lot of women, something they’re proud of too.
I work with mothers who have a career and want one. Women who are trying to progress, build something, hold onto their professional identity while navigating everything that motherhood throws at them. That is a specific experience with specific challenges — and it deserves a specific name.
Calling them “working mums” isn’t a slight against anyone. It’s a way of being clear about who I’m talking to and who I can help.
And in today’s economy, let’s be honest — a lot of mothers aren’t just working because they want to. They’re working because they have to. The bills don’t pause for the patriarchy. For many women, having a career isn’t a lifestyle choice; it’s a necessity. A term that reflects that reality deserves its place.
Yes — we don’t widely refer to fathers as working dads. And that asymmetry is real and worth naming.
But my husband is a working dad. He works and he parents, fully and without the assumption that one compromises the other. I’m under no illusion that everyone has that — I know I’m fortunate. But to swing so far in the other direction that we pretend the term working mum is inherently demeaning feels like overcorrection, not progress.
Progress, to me, looks like both terms carrying equal weight. Not erasing one to protect the other.
Using the term “working mum” is not a comparison. It is not a hierarchy. I am not suggesting that mothers who aren’t in paid employment don’t work — anyone who has spent a day as a stay-at-home parent knows that’s absurd. The emotional load, the logistics, the invisible labour — it’s immense, and it’s different, and it deserves its own conversation.
I help mothers who have the desire and ambition to build a career. That’s not a value judgement about any other way of doing motherhood. It’s just who I am here for.
I’m a working mum. The women I work with are working mums. It’s not a label I use lightly, and it’s not one I use to exclude — it’s just the clearest, most honest way I know to say: I see you, I understand your world, and I’m here for you specifically.
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