The Working Mother: Beyond Burnout

This article captures a paper I chose to write for a Psychology Course I took in November 2023.
I was in a terrible state of mind and at the time, this was my heart on a piece of paper, trying to
dissect what troubles and mental exhaustion was becoming of me. This is my vulnerability that
I am choosing to share with the World. I resonate deeply with this. Everyone has their own
understanding of how the World should run and while I appreciate constructive criticism, this is
my place to share raw life experiences and ways forward. I hope this helps others create open
dialog on their issues, as I never felt I had a place to openly express such hardship.

Donna Brodie

It Takes A Village Blogger

The Working Mother: Beyond Burnout

The increasing number of women in the workforce has brought about significant changes
in societal norms and family dynamics. As a mother of two toddlers, a full time Active Duty
service member, and a wife to a fellow Active Duty service member (who is always out to sea),
it is essential for me to understand the psychological effects of full-time working mothers as time
progresses. With this paper, I aim to explore these effects from a sociocultural and cognitive
perspective. By analyzing the psychological impact on working mothers, we can gain valuable
insights into the challenges faced and the potential benefits that may arise from, what may feel to
some as, doing everything all at once.
Sociocultural perspective has transformed immensely with technology. Our ever
changing world floods our minds with information and opinions at every swipe or tap of a tiny
screen. Societal norms and cultural expectations may influence the psychological well-being of
working mothers. Gender roles and the pressure to fulfill domestic roles while upholding
workforce commitments and school obligations simultaneously, leads mothers to carry the
burden of increased stress and potentially create long term damage mentally. This frame of
societal norms calls for a significant support system through friends, family, colleagues and
anyone who could be considered a part of a sort of village to mitigate the negative effects on
working mothers’ mental health. The support system could fail however, when the culture is
independence and workforce driven vice Eastern world cultures that strive for harmony, strong
family values, shorter work weeks, and mandatory vacations. According to 11 types of work
culture around the world (2016) the Western world in particular emphasizes on personal
achievement, independence, and self-expression. While technology and freedom to speak freely
and bluntly have tremendously positive aspects to them, they also leave a huge opportunity to be
bombarded by information from all walks of life. Spielman (2017) describes how “cultural
display rules which influence how often and under what circumstances various emotions can be
expressed” (p. 371). A postpartum mother will be likely to experience hormonal imbalances and
emotions of guilt or other stresses while expected to maintain composer for her job. When all of
it becomes too much, our society allows anyone to say anything bluntly and before you know it,
you’ve been given one terabyte of information for how your body should look, how sexually
active you need to be, how your emotions are effecting home, your children, marriage or the
workplace, and no matter what, none of it is right. An exaggeration sure but information
overload of sociocultural perspectives could very well lead to my next point: cognitive
perspective.
Those societal pressures bestowed on any individual makes me wonder how a woman’s
cognitive development is challenged once she is post-partum. Working mothers may experience
cognitive conflict when balancing their role as a mother and a professional, hence the identity
crisis many mothers describe to feel once a shift in maternal roles occurs. This can create an
internal struggle in which working mothers find it difficult to align their beliefs and values with
societal expectations. The stress of juggling multiple roles effectively leads many feeling
overwhelmed, over worked and underappreciated.
Working mothers may employ cognitive strategies to prioritize tasks and manage their time
efficiently. This is intertwined

“At this point of the paper, I had been too exhausted to continue. While this may come off as laziness
or just an utter failure to complete the task that was brought forth, I look back at it and see this
work as a piece of art. It depicts the subject speaking on a struggle that controls a major piece of
their life and further narrates that hardship through it’s incompletion. From here, I gave it one more go
to try and wrap it up, before just leaving it to it’s bare state.”

It must be pretty evident through my writing where my personal conclusions lie. I agree
with the impact of both perspectives but have the diagnoses and personal experience once I
became a mother that Western world sociocultural expectations played a huge role in cognitive
decline.

References

11 types of work culture around the world. (2016). Condeco. Retrieved from,
https://www.condecosoftware.com/blog/different-countries-different-work-cultures/
Spielman, R. M. (2017). Psychology. OpenStax – Rice University. Retrieved from
Course Resources, PSYC 142, Vincennes-Bremerton