If you identify with the first, you think in a fixed state of mind, where you feel that the destiny of a day is immutable and that you can do nothing to improve it. If you lean more towards the latter, you are using a growth mindset and believe you can get better based on effort and looking at the day differently.
Many parents have heard of mindsets and recognize how important they are to children and their learning. But as research in psychology has shown, we adults have mindsets about just about every area of life, even about the effect of our work role on our parenting.
Parents can feel completely trapped when work and life collide, as they so often do. But reframing that familiar struggle as a challenge we can take on — and might even benefit from — can be life changing. That doesn’t mean we have to work harder or sleep less to fit it all in. Instead, a growth mindset is a way to approach our struggles so we can get to a better place than where we started.
When it comes to the way of thinking that helps you tolerate and even thrive in difficult situations, research reliably reveals the positive impact of a growth mindset. In working parenting, such a mindset means being flexible, assertive, resilient, and insightful in the face of work-family conflict. This way of thinking helps you come to terms with the conflict between parenthood and work and could turn that conflict into a positive benefit.
As a study of new parents in low-wage jobs found, believing that your job can be good for you and your kids is more likely to make it that way. Latina mothers were more likely, on average, to believe that work would harm their child than African American mothers, and this difference in beliefs predicted higher levels of depressive symptoms during the first year of parenthood among mothers. Latin. Maureen Perry-Jenkins, the study’s lead researcher, professor of psychology and author of “Work Matters: How Parents’ Jobs Shape Children’s Well-Being.”“, explained that a mindset that work is causing irreparable damage to your children can “take root in the psyche. And then moms are incredibly anxious and depressed about it and of course it plays into their interactions with their babies.
Of course, believing that work can be good for your parenting doesn’t mean you can “set your mindset” out of conflict or horrible circumstances. Going from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset around parenting at work will not guarantee humane treatment. And that won’t eliminate conflict, because being actively involved in both work and parenting is bound to result in interference between the two.
But, as a professor of management and “Work and Family—Allies or Enemies? According to author Jeffrey Greenhaus, a better goal than eliminating work-family conflict might be to ensure that “the positive experiences of participating in different roles outweigh the negative ones.” This is where a growth mindset about how your job impacts your parenting can help, and here are some steps to foster it.
Start with a mindset shift
“We underestimate the power of mindsets,” says Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, professor of psychology and author of “Future Tense: Why Anxiety Is Good for You (Even While It Feels Bad).” “Not only do they shape our thoughts, they shape our choices. They shape how we understand our lives. They even shape our biology.
A growth mindset about the relationship between work and parenthood not only helps us connect with hope and motivation to build a world with fewer insurmountable challenges and more support for working parents, but it also helps us meet the challenges that no system can undo. After all, what working parent can prevent their children from getting sick at the most inopportune moment? It helps to be open to different ways to play no matter what hand of cards you’ve been dealt.
Unbridled optimism is not necessary or even desirable to adopt a growth mindset. Like Debbie Sorensen, clinical psychologist and author of the two “ACT Daily Journal” and a forthcoming book on burnout, explained, rather than viewing the conflict between your parenting and work roles “as a sign that something is wrong with us, we can accept that struggle as part and parcel of a committed and fulfilling life.”
A working parent’s version of a growth mindset recognizes that work encroaches on time spent with your children and that we’re grumpier and more tired than we’d like when we’re with them. And it can, at the same time, help us see how our unavailability helps our children develop greater personal competence and an awareness of how adults juggle demanding roles and grumpy moods.
We can go further in the relationship of friendship with conflict by absorbing the lessons of individuals who have suffered unthinkable trauma. Edith Eger, an Auschwitz survivor and clinical psychologist, describes in her recent book, “The Gift: 14 Lessons to Save Your Life,” how a growth mindset helped her endure the brutally inhumane conditions of Nazi-era concentration camps. She writes: “I cannot say that everything happens for a reason, that there is a purpose to the injustice or to the suffering. But I can say that pain, hardship and suffering is the gift that helps us grow, learn and become who we are meant to be.
A working parent’s growth mindset makes it easier to overcome daily challenges. It also helps us notice and appreciate gifts that we would otherwise overlook. We can also accept that there may be a conflict between our roles as parent and employee that we cannot escape.
And it helps us see how we can, even in the face of conflict, benefit from the many ways that participating in multiple demanding life roles enriches our lives.
The exercises in the therapy room help us connect to these gifts. Sorensen suggested practicing perspective taking by “focusing on the overall values that are truly most important to you. Remember to focus on what matters most to you and see if you can let go of the rest. Then, she advised, train yourself to deliberately enjoy the positive feelings that come from being engaged in roles you care about, like the hugs you enjoy with your little ones and the pride you feel. to be able to financially support your family thanks to your work. . You might even appreciate that having multiple roles takes away everyone’s time, boosts your creativity, and makes life interesting.
By adopting a growth mindset about parenting at work, we can both befriend conflict and foster giving. Admittedly, balancing our roles is exhausting and stressful, and it can also be enormously rewarding.
As we continue to push for a world more supportive of working parents, we can cling to the belief that growth is always possible, even during the toughest working parent days.
Yael Schonbrun is an assistant professor at Brown University, co-host of the Psychologists Off the Clock podcast, and book author, Work, Parent, Thrive: 12 Science-Based Strategies to Let Go of Guilt, Manage Overload, and Build Connection (When It All Seems Too Much).
