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Discover Who You Are
Without a Job Title
False Belief
My self-worth and identity are centered in my career, so I'll be a "nobody" without it. Plus, parting with my paid work means giving up on my ambition.
New Narrative
I'm an ambitious and feminist woman embracing motherhood, and that fact will help me discover an identity even more remarkable than my job title. There is no such thing as "just a mom."
The first time I had to explain "what I do" after leaving my job, I felt naked.
To my credit, I was close to it: wearing a bathing suit with a burp cloth slung over my shoulder. My husband, Dan, and I were chatting with a couple who had camped out next to us at the pool club we'd joined for the summer. Do you ever meet someone and immediately think, Oh, she's exceptionally cool? Well, the woman holding her baby on the lounge chair next to mine exuded that quality, from her gauzy coverup to her wide-brimmed hat (a look I could never pull off). She seemed effortlessly comfortable, whereas I found the situation-it was my first time parenting in a bathing suit-sweaty and awkward. We chatted about the ages of our kids and the neighborhood. Then the dads took the kids to splash in the shallow end, and it was just us two on dry land.
"So, what do you do?" she asked.
It was an innocent question-the standard icebreaker of my life up to this point. Yet it caught me off guard because, for the first time, I couldn't give my usual answer: "I run brand strategy for a tech start-up." After business school, I'd come up with this response to instantly communicate a few impressive facts about myself. "Run" meant that I oversaw a department-shorthand for "I'm talented and was promoted to manager at a young age." In marketing, "brand strategy" also carries a panache and conveys creativity and analytical thinking. Finally, "tech start-up" implied I was plugged in and with the times.
When my first child, Bodie, was born, I'd downshifted my brand strategy work to two days per week. And now, six months later, I was hatching a plan to quit. Full stop. I'd done a lot of thinking about what that change would mean for my day-to-day life, but until that moment I hadn't really considered what it would mean for my identity and sense of self. Absent my job description, I realized I lacked a sentence to summarize my ambition and what made me unique. I had a hunch that this woman had a big career, and I wanted her to see that we were, in some way, the same.
I don't remember the exact stream of words that came out of my mouth as I attempted to answer her-probably phrases like "home with my son" and "used to be in marketing"-but I do recall that I spoke for a long time without actually saying anything. I felt the need to explain and defend my choice, so I talked about having lost interest in brand marketing and the shortage of resources allocated to my department and why I'd become disenchanted with my role. Basically, I offered a mouthful of business jargon without ever actually owning my decision to be home with my kid. In retrospect, I was justifying my choice not to this mom at the pool, who had done nothing but politely inquire about my work background, but to myself. Eventually I trailed off midsentence, redirecting the conversation to something about the babies, putting us both out of our awkward misery. It was clear I had work to do when it came to embracing my new identity as an at-home parent.
I was deep in thought as we loaded Bodie into his stroller and left the pool. Why couldn't I find the words to describe this new stage of life? Why did the most obvious answer-"stay-at-home mother"-feel wrong? And why did I care what a stranger thought of me, anyway?
Let Me Introduce Myself
My name is Neha Ruch, and I'm the mother to two wildly different kids-Bodie, age eight, and Lyla, age five. Our family resides on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where we spend quite a bit of our free time shuttling between soccer practice and games, riding scooters in the park, doing craft projects at our dining table, and, like every other family, dealing with tantrums, picky eating, and ungodly early mornings. There are hard days, but I'm not ashamed to say that I love motherhood. This phase of my life has been my favorite so far.
That said, I never planned on leaving my job to raise my kids full-time.
For the decade I worked after college, I viewed my career as redemption for a few troubled teenage years when I underachieved academically (and overachieved socially) as an act of cultural rebellion and an attempt to fit into my predominantly white Massachusetts suburb. I immigrated to the United States from Mumbai at age four. Once I made it to college, I saw professional and educational accomplishment as a calling card, not to mention a way to honor my parents, who had risked a lot to give me opportunities I would not have had in India. I worked nights and weekends throughout my twenties, determined not to squander a single chance to rise up the ladder. My entrepreneur husband was attracted to my work ethic; we met at an industry conference and spent most of our courtship long-distance, venting about C-suite politics and my business school courses over FaceTime. But once I had Bodie, my world and my priorities changed. I knew in my soul that I wanted to be home.
On my first week of maternity leave, as I held Bodie in the white glider in his nursery, bottle feeding with one hand and reaching the ends of the Internet with the other, I felt a sense of calm and contentment that I'd been seeking since childhood-as if a lifetime of anxiety had been lifted from my shoulders. Don't get me wrong: I fretted over my infant like every new parent, worrying about breastfeeding (or lack thereof) and sleep (once again, lack thereof). But for the first time, I didn't worry about whether I belonged or where I stood. The prospect of exploring this new version of me as a mother and letting contentment and belonging transform me was too enticing to ignore.
But there was one wrinkle in my plan: leaving my career would make me a stay-at-home mother-and I knew just what my friends, colleagues, family, and corporate America thought of those.
Bodie was born in January 2016, just a few years after the publication of Sheryl Sandberg's best-selling Lean In. This movement-spawning book bolstered countless women's careers but simultaneously (and much more quietly) fostered new shame around moving from paid work to full-time motherhood or even a part-time job. Everywhere I looked, someone was proclaiming that becoming a stay-at-home mother meant resigning yourself to an indefinite future of domesticity-and that if you didn't come back from maternity leave, you should forget your dreams of a big job. Even parent-centered media platforms gave little airtime to women committing most of their workweek to home life, favoring instead content focused on keeping women striving toward leadership roles. Women planning their families seemed to have two options: obsess over their careers and embrace full-fledged boss mode (like Sheryl Sandberg), or subject themselves to a selfless, dull existence at home as a stay-at-home mother.
I wanted to stay home but had no intention of being a martyr or giving up my friendships or interests. I also knew the best days of my career were still ahead of me, and I didn't see why pausing it should damage my prospects or change how others viewed me. I was determined to create a new motherhood narrative for myself and, soon enough, for the other women I met.
At the time, I lived in a fifty-story building just south of Midtown, with young families on almost every floor. Six of my neighbors gave birth to boys the year I did, and we convened in the building's playroom every afternoon. This unofficial mom group led me to other playgroups and music classes, where I met more women. On social media and in my text and WhatsApp groups, my community of fellow at-home moms grew even more. Each woman I encountered in those early days has been etched into my memory, from the merchandiser who wanted to go back to work but was laid off days after returning from leave, to the single mother who negotiated an extended maternity leave and a part-time schedule in her C-suite role. There was a seventh-grade teacher who transitioned to a part-time role as a math specialist, and a chemical engineer who switched to three days a week at home, then full-time motherhood, because she loved spending the days with her kids so much.
None of these women fit the caricature I'd been primed to expect. We had all established careers before deciding to shift focus to parenthood. Even though our babies were still, well, babies, we were already connecting to like-minded peers, percolating big ideas, and contemplating freelance or flex work opportunities down the line. Yet, just like me, every woman I met had been on the receiving end of some unwelcome commentary about her ambition, mental health, productivity, and contribution to the world. We all felt mislabeled and limited by the stereotype of a "stay-at-home mom."
Feeling fired up by this mismatch and eager to build my newfound mom group into a broader community, I let go of my part-time consulting work and slowly, in the fringe hours of motherhood, started Mother Untitled. The website is a first-of-its-kind digital community and resource for the ambitious woman leaning into family life. Today, Mother Untitled includes a website, a newsletter, an active Instagram account, and in-person events, and I employ a small team of moms who work for the brand part-time.
For me, Mother Untitled has provided an ongoing focus group to tease apart what I call "the gray area," the vast and varied space between stay-at-home motherhood and working motherhood, where women embrace part-time jobs, volunteerism, community engagement, and personal growth alongside parenthood. Through Mother Untitled, I've discovered that women leaving their careers for motherhood crave more guidance and insight into how to navigate their years at home. They've sacrificed a lot to be there and want to make the most of it, but they don't know how. Many of them feel caught off guard by challenges and wrestle with their new identity and the perception of being lazy and lacking in ambition. They want to return to the workforce someday and worry it will be all on them to figure it out. In running Mother Untitled, I've witnessed missteps and triumphs and noticed patterns. I've also learned how to minimize the downsides of a career pause and maximize enjoyment and peace of mind. This book is my chance to share all of that wisdom-and heaps of new research and advice-with you.
The Power Pause is a comprehensive guide to approaching stay-at-home motherhood, or a downshifted, part-time career, as an enriching chapter (essentially, the opposite of a death knell for your professional life). I'm not writing this book to argue that stay-at-home motherhood is superior to working motherhood. Children are just as likely to thrive with parents who work; there is ample evidence that high-quality daycare can be more developmentally enriching than a home environment. Staying home with your kids isn't a virtue, and neither is working.
Instead, this book is here to help you tune in to what feels right for you through each phase of parenthood. And if you feel that you must stay home, either because your children have intensive needs or because your salary is too low to justify the cost of full-time childcare, this book proves you can continue to feel empowered and professionally oriented.
My time away from the workforce occurred in fits and starts-with periods of part-time work and complete pausing, consulting for clients, and immersing myself in the mission-based passion project of Mother Untitled. Learning to regularly recalibrate your career and the time you commit to it-knowing your priorities will change repeatedly-is a big part of this book. So is dismantling the stereotypes of stay-at-home motherhood and creating a new authentic and multi-hyphenate identity. In your power pause, you can become more yourself than ever. You can discover what fills your cup and how to structure your days to feel good.
And the journey begins now.
About the Data in This Book
This book references dozens of studies and surveys, and you can learn more about them in the endnotes on page 279. But I did want to call out one survey referenced more than any other. In 2023, eager to bring new research and well-deserved gravitas to the stay-at-home mom community, I partnered with Proof Insights, an independent research firm based in Maryland, to field a statistically significant survey to one thousand members of the general population and twelve hundred stay-at-home mothers. (All of these mothers had bachelor's degrees and children under 18 living at home.) My goal was to gather insight and data about the perception of stay-at-home motherhood in America and the lived experience of pausing an ambitious career for motherhood. I refer to this project throughout the book as the American Mothers on Pause survey, or the AMP survey for short. For more information on the survey or to read the full report, visit motheruntitled.com/americanmothersonpause.
Rewriting the Narrative
When I first embarked on a period of stay-at-home motherhood, I was determined to forge a new, empowered path. I wouldn't be a "traditional housewife" stuck at home in an apron, cut off from the professional world, meekly taking orders from her husband. I would be a feminist homemaker-eventually leading a generation of like-minded, well-educated moms who keep a hand in their careers and communities.
But as I began to dig deeper into the history of motherhood in America-reading books and interviewing historians and sociologists-one fact immediately became clear: the traditional portrait of stay-at-home motherhood, once idealized and now derided, has always been pure fiction. I'm not a historian, so I'm not going to deliver a detailed portrait of motherhood in America. (For that, I highly recommend a few history books that I reference throughout this chapter: Modern Motherhood by Jodi Vandenberg-Daves, Mom by Rebecca Jo Plant, and The Way We Never Were by Stephanie Coontz.) But I want to share a few insights here because once you see that your greatest fear is an invention-not a reality-it becomes much easier to sleep at night.
Copyright © 2025 by Neha Ruch. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
