Note From the Founder - The Myth of the Pause & Hard Parenting Truths

For those of you that have not come across Neha Ruch (@motheruntitled), she offers an interesting perspective, that has recently got me thinking. "The Power Pause" she calls it - the step away from corporate life to raise children - is a profoundly powerful shift, not something to be ashamed of, or to feel lesser than, she argues. 

Whilst I resonate with what she says deeply, it got me thinking about the idea of a "pause". People talk about stepping away from work to raise kids like it’s a sabbatical in Bali. A “pause.” A break. As if you’re just pressing a button and everything—your career, your ambition, your identity outside of motherhood will be waiting for you, frozen in time, when you return.

But let’s be clear - there is no pause. There is only an exchange.

If I step away from work, I’m not “pausing” my career, I’m trading professional growth, financial independence and a piece of my identity for something else entirely. Something more intimate, more intangible, but equally significant. And if I keep going, if I continue threading work into my already chaotic days, I’m making a different trade - one that may cost me presence, patience, or the quiet, simple joy of being with my kids without the weight of a to-do list in my head.

The problem with calling it a “pause” is that it downplays the cost. It makes it sound like an easy, temporary break when, in reality, it’s a profound shift - one that comes with real consequences, both seen and unseen. Careers don’t sit in a neat little box waiting for you to pick them back up. Industries change, networks fade, and the world moves forward whether you’re in it or not.

At the same time, childhood doesn’t sit still either. The early years don’t wait. The small hands gripping yours, the sleepy voices whispering “stay with me” at night - these moments have their own expiration date. They will pass whether you’re fully present for them or half-distracted, answering emails in the glow of your phone screen.

And the hardest part? You won’t know if you made the right choice until it’s too late to change it.

You won’t know whether the years you poured into your career left an invisible distance between you and your child until they’re grown, until they stop turning to you for advice, until you realise that the values shaping their worldview came from somewhere else - friends, influencers, the internet.

You won’t know whether the years you devoted to staying home meant giving up too much of yourself until you’re staring at an empty nest, wondering if you still have it in you to pursue the dreams of your former 30 something-thing year old self.

And even then, will the consequences be on you? That’s a whole other debate altogether.

How Much Control Do We Really Have Over Who Our Kids Become?

This is what’s been keeping me up at night: the question of how much involvement actually matters. I recently watched the new Netflix show Adolescence, and it shook me. Could that situation have been prevented? Could any of it?

Because here’s the thing, you can dedicate your entire life to being present for your children and still have them end up lost. You can work 60-hour weeks and raise kids who turn out independent and well-adjusted. So where’s the formula?

I saw an interesting take on Instagram the other day. It said: Kids are too attached to social media, to external validation, to the shifting opinions of the internet. If you’re not intimately involved with your kids, they’ll attach themselves to all the wrong people and opinions. And I can’t stop thinking about it. If I’m not there, who’s filling that space? If I’m not the voice they turn to, whose voice are they hearing instead?

So what’s the right route? How do we raise independent kids who aren’t fragile, who know their worth, who don’t need to measure themselves in likes and follows, but also don’t reject guidance altogether? How do we teach them the right values without suffocating them? And more than anything, how do we know we’re doing it right?

I don’t have the answers. I don’t know if anyone does. But what I do know is this - calling it a “pause” is misleading. It implies we can step away and pick back up exactly where we left off. But every choice we make, whether to work, to stay home, to be halfway in between, shapes the way our children grow into adulthood in ways we won’t fully understand until much later.

Because at the end of the day, isn’t that the real fear? Not just whether we made the right choices for ourselves, but whether those choices built the kind of foundation our children actually needed. Whether our presence (or absence) taught them resilience or left them searching for it elsewhere. Whether they are grounded in their values or drifting between whatever ideology shouts the loudest.

Did we give them enough of us? Did we give them too much? Did we raise them to be independent thinkers who make good choices—or are they just waiting for the next voice to tell them who to be?

We won’t know. Not for years. Maybe not ever. And that’s the hardest part of all.