Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Afghan women have been banned from working at their domestic UN office, new Pew research busts a common wage gap myth, and Fortune Well reporter L'Oreal Thompson Payton examines why so many working moms struggle with depression and anxiety. At least it's Friday.
- Not alone. Late last month, I interviewed Nathalie Walton, CEO and cofounder of Expectful, a holistic wellness app for hopeful, expecting, and new moms, for a story about anxiety and depression in working moms. Shortly after, I got the dreaded midday call from daycare. You know, the one that inevitably involves you dropping what you’re doing to pick up your child, who has a low-grade fever and has to stay home for 24 hours while you juggle entertaining and educating a toddler with work responsibilities.
“Of course,” I muttered to myself after I got off the phone. “The irony.”
Since becoming a mom nearly 18 months ago, I’ve had several of these calls. By now I’m well accustomed to the multitasking mama juggling act, but the first one sent me into an anxiety spiral. That particular call involved my daughter’s first case of pink eye. I mentally berated myself for not knowing better, for not working ahead, for not adequately planning for the unexpected.
“How could you have?” my therapist asked me during the emergency session I’d convened to discuss said spiral.
“I don’t know,” I said softly. “Good moms are just supposed to know.” Because Good Moms always know. They’re able to anticipate and plan for everything.
I remember telling my boss later that day I felt like I wasn’t doing either of my jobs well as a working mom, one who also happens to be a first-time author to boot. She assured me I was kicking ass on all fronts, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was constantly dropping the ball (and not even in the intentional TIffany Dufu way).
It’s a sentiment shared by nearly half of moms surveyed in a recent poll about mental health. Last year, 42% of working mothers were diagnosed with anxiety and/or depression, compared to 28% of the general population and 25% of their coworkers without kids. Moreover, working moms were more likely to report that their mental health had worsened in the last year.
To be fair, I’ve always been anxious. Being a firstborn daughter and overly ambitious straight-A student will do that to you, but depression was a new one for me. It started about halfway through pregnancy (thanks to PTSD caused by infertility and several failed rounds of IVF), intensified with postpartum depression in the months after my daughter was born, and reached an all-time high toward the end of last year as I attempted to do all the things all at once. After one especially exhausting 3 a.m. crying bout, I decided to break up with my therapist and find one who specializes in infertility and postpartum depression and anxiety.
And yet I know the ability to invest in and prioritize my mental health is a luxury many working moms don’t have. In 2020, 42% of birthing parents were insured with Medicaid at the time of birth.
“I had a lot of conversations with women who said, ‘My mental health is suffering and I really love your product, and I need the meditations, I need the mindfulness,’” Walton, the Expectful CEO, recalls. “But they’re telling me they have to choose between paying for gas or groceries for the month or $7 a month for an app, and they couldn’t do it.”
That reality is part of what led Walton to create Expectful’s Helping Hand program, which made the subscription-based app more accessible by offering free annual membership to parents who faced financial burdens.
We’re both working moms who have plenty of resources available to us, and yet we still feel as though we’re struggling more often than not.
“I have help, and I have everything covered, but it’s still really stressful, because it feels like if one thing goes wrong, the entire system breaks,” Walton shared. “There were so many times last year where my child was sick, and when that happens, your whole foundation breaks. Because you have to keep up with work, and you don’t have the chance to recuperate. It can really take a toll on your mental health.”
Read my full story about working moms' anxiety here.
L'Oreal Thompson Payton
loreal.payton@fortune.com
@LTintheCity
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