Boundaries: How to Maintain Work-life Balance as a Working Parent
Imagine this: You're nailing that presentation at work, adrenaline pumping, when suddenly a tiny voice asks for a juice box. Or, you're reading bedtime stories, lulled into a peaceful rhythm, only to be jolted back to reality by a work email demanding your immediate attention.
This is the daily balancing act of working parents. We're constantly switching between roles, juggling deadlines and diaper changes, all while desperately holding onto our sanity and sense of self. But let's be real, this constant juggling act isn't sustainable. It leads to burnout, resentment, and a nagging feeling of never truly being present, whether it's at work or at home.
That's where boundaries come in. They're like invisible fences, clearly marking the territory where your work life ends and your personal life begins. Boundaries aren't about being selfish or neglecting your responsibilities; they're about establishing a healthy, sustainable rhythm that allows you to thrive in every aspect of your life.
In this blog, we'll dive into the transformative power of boundaries, providing practical tips and strategies for finding harmony between your work and family life.
Setting Clear Work Boundaries
How do you set boundaries for work-life balance? When remote work became normalized in recent years, the prospect of shortening the daily commute to the distance between a bed and a desk sounded fantastic. Fully virtual setups for work and hybrid work schedules had the initial allure of blending personal and professional commitments in ways that could allow employees to toggle between the demands of a full life at the speed of New York. Unfortunately for many of us, these changes to the professional landscape have eroded the invisible mental and emotional boundaries that once protected us from burnout. Work has crept into our home lives and family obligations now spill into the caverns between client meetings and project deadlines in a way we can’t sustain. We need an off button.
According to a 2021 survey from Owl Labs, 55 percent of respondents now work longer hours at home than they did in the office. Does this feel similar to your work schedule? How are you managing the balance of time between work and the rest of your life?
If you’re struggling to set healthy boundaries, here are a few steps you can take to get back on track. (You can also read this helpful article featuring our experts at Healthy Minds NYC in Real Simple magazine sharing “6 Ways to Make Coworking With Your Significant Other More Manageable”)
Four Ways to Set Healthy Boundaries for Work-Life Balance
Remember, balance isn’t synonymous with separation. You’re a whole person, and it’s impossible to shut your brain off completely to the various buckets of your life. Accept that it’s okay to have a measure of overlap in your life, thinking of work while home with your family and vice versa. The goal of work-life balance isn’t to isolate every bucket of your existence but rather to ensure each gets the attention it deserves in a way that doesn’t cause you stress. Stay realistic about the meaning of “balance” as you establish healthy boundaries.
Decide which activities in your personal and work life are essential for you to devote time and energy to daily, weekly, and even monthly. Get specific. Does attending your children's ballet recitals and soccer games feel deeply meaningful? Then, a boundary around Saturday mornings might be a balance for you. Do you value being available early mornings so you can respond to your team working in Asia before they wrap up their work day? You might decide that your healthy work boundary is starting weekdays on email at 6 a.m. but logging off by 3 p.m. Whatever healthy boundaries look like for you, adjust them based on the core needs and intentions you identify in each bucket of your life.
Create zones in your environment and schedule to complete work tasks instead of personal tasks. Though it can be tricky in New York apartments to designate separate spaces for the different parts of life, creating a small personal boundary with your physical items can be helpful. Think of these boundaries as mental triggers to help you shift into work or home mode versus inflexible or impermeable boundaries you must fight others to protect. Experts refer to this as boundary theory. For example, one of our clients uses her laptop for work and a tablet for personal web browsing. Another pays bills for home while sitting at the dining table instead of his desk, so he knows he’s focused on personal budgeting rather than business revenue projections. Find opportunities for these kinds of boundaries in your space. You can do the same thing with your schedule. If you have a Reclaim the Morning™ practice like our Co-Founder Chanel Dokun, you might protect the time before breakfast for personal planning and reflection. Lunch might be a no-work zone for you as a healthy boundary.
You can schedule a time to do nothing. White space in your calendar is valuable. When you’re not busy completing an activity, you leave room for your brain to do its most important work. The boundary of white space is a valuable way to allow your brain time to integrate new learnings and get creative; it’s also a smart way to leave room to re-balance when your life gets too hectic. When you proactively leave margin in your schedule, you can readjust and use the time to support the part of your life that feels neglected that particular week.
On a practical level, when you’re ready to begin setting boundaries around work, consider identifying workplace boundaries in three different areas: physical, emotional, and mental.
Physical boundaries include limits of access others have to your workspace and your person. Think about boundaries in this category, such as who is allowed to walk up to your desk and interrupt you or whether or not you feel comfortable shaking hands or hugging colleagues.
Emotional boundaries relate to feelings in the workspace. Indeed.com reminds us that emotional boundaries “help you separate your feelings from how someone else may feel without negating the need for empathy.” They might include a boundary for how to delegate projects or share and receive feedback.
Mental boundaries are the lines you draw around the psychological energy and effort you devote to work. This might include limiting the time you spend ruminating about the plan for a particular project or turning on an “out of office” notification when doing deep work to stay in flow.
Establishing Personal Life Boundaries
One added challenge for working parents trying to maintain a work-life balance is that it’s not just one person’s busy life to contend with and balance. Often, both partners have demanding careers. Dual-career couples need to manage life's obligations with children and juggle competing demands from their different professional lives. This dance requires high communication and alignment around core values between partners to hold onto a shared vision and mission for life amid constantly changing priorities and responsibilities. As Dr. Jan Hoistad of The Choice Partners affirms, “Just like a well-run company has a culture, a mission, and a philosophy, a well-run household is headed by you two, as a leadership team who partner for the sake of your family, your careers and the thriving life you want to keep creating together.”
How do you run your household like a well-run company? Our therapists at Healthy Minds NYC suggest that strong couple goals start with strong individual mental health and personal boundaries. First, prioritize caring for your needs in therapy by defining what setting boundaries ideally looks like for you. Then, use the insight you gain from sessions with your counselor or coach in conversation with your life partner. Share your personal boundaries and then expand from there, identifying what setting boundaries could look like for the entire family. You might create family rules around how to manage technology use when to host guests or friends in the home, or when to protect quiet time so everyone can work in peace.
Inevitably, you’ll need to figure out how to deal with work-related interruptions as you focus on setting boundaries around personal and family time. Faster Capital offers some of the following ideas for managing interruptions:
Define your availability so you can set expectations with others for when they can reach out to you and expect a response.
Utilize technology tools like calendar apps that allow you to time block or messaging apps that include an option to put up a do-not-disturb message.
Handle email, social media, and other digital interruptions by designating specific times of the day to check them rather than responding to messages and notifications as they arrive.
Be assertive and polite to colleagues and clients when they interrupt you during personal hours by informing interrupters of when you’re next available.
Which of these techniques might you want to implement for your personal boundaries?
Seeking Support When Balancing Parenting and Work
It’s possible to begin balancing work and family life, but it’s challenging to do it alone. One way to make creating a work-life balance more feasible is to enlist the support of your network to help you navigate the challenges of being a working parent. Every family faces hard times and moments of crisis where the best-laid plans get derailed with urgent issues that require our attention. Working parents who have cultivated a network they can call on in a crisis will likely have a richer family life, balancing work responsibilities even in difficult moments.
A typical support system includes extended family and lifelong friends who know us well and also desire an emotional connection with children. However, living far away from extended family members is common in New York City, where many people are transplants. Parenting the Modern Family reminds us that a support system isn’t limited to extended family. In New York, working parents might lean on neighbors, teachers, other parents, and even mentors to sustain their family life. “A good support system is one that includes several people that have different strengths. You don’t want to keep relying on the same person over and over again to the point that you burn them out!”
If you’re a working parent, take a moment now to consider who you might include in your safety net to reduce your stress around balancing work. Think about whether or not you’ve made it clear to these individuals what kind of support you need. Sometimes it’s hard to ask for help. But if you never ask, people can’t know exactly how to support you. You don’t have to be a working parent suffering in silence. Express your needs. Remember, LinkedIn advises that you use clear and concise language when trying to communicate effectively. Tell your colleagues practical ways they can lend a helping hand if you need to reduce your workload or suddenly take time away from the office. Invite loved ones to support your family life by identifying home needs like picking up dinner one night for the kids or helping with taking the kids to an unexpected appointment. People are waiting to love and support you. Plus, you can return the favor later when they have a need of their own.
If you’re in a position of influence within your workplace, we wanted to encourage you to take the extra step to strive for work-life balance for yourself and help foster an environment that supports all working parents.
According to a recent study, 64% of working parents consider changing careers to achieve a better work-life balance (Branch App). Despite the high number of working parents in need of balance, we are encouraged to see the efforts many companies are making to support the mental health and wellness of their employees.
Here are some suggestions for the types of support that are most beneficial to reduce the stress of working parents:
Focus on financial wellness first. If your company has the means and margin to do so, reduce the financial burden every working parent faces by offering benefits or stipends for families. This might mean childcare stipends, fertility benefits, or flexible parental leave.
Reduce isolation for parents in the workplace by creating employee resource groups. These micro-communities of employees in similar life stages can be valuable outlets to share tools, exchange best practices, or connect working parents with the needed resources.
Normalize the need for flexibility by focusing on output instead of presence. If your industry allows, permit working parents and the other employees on your team to maintain a flexible work schedule where hours can be shifted and moved as needed based on life’s circumstances. As long as employees are still delivering on the results expected of their role, support flexible schedules.
Ready to create more work-life balance for yourself? Meet one of our excellent New York City life coaches and therapists here at Healthy Minds NYC. You can be on your way to balance by starting therapy sessions this week. Connect with your new therapist by scheduling a free consultation with our office today.
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