Matrescence: The Glasgow mum looking to keep women in the workforce

The statistics on new mothers returning to work are discouraging reading. The UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission has found that at least 54,000 women each year are pushed out of the workforce after becoming pregnant, while the long-running Understanding Society study has estimated that three years after childbirth, only 28 per cent of women remain in full-time work or self-employment. That compares to 90% of new fathers.

Other studies have suggested that nearly a third of women will change jobs in the months after returning from maternity leave, and the CIPD estimates the costs for recruiting a replacement can run to as high as £19,000 at managerial level. In the current era of staffing shortages, Ms Dale believes businesses need broader and more proactive policies on retaining new mums.

“We could be doing better not just for working mothers but actually for the businesses themselves because ultimately if you look after your staff and invest in them and look after their wellbeing, they are going to stay with you,” she said. “That’s been shown time and time again.”

There is of course legislation laying out the rights of pregnant women in the workplace, and upon this most firms have built long-standing maternity leave policies. Where many policies fall down, Ms Dale contends, is with what comes after.

“There is a real issue with the return to work,” she explains. “That seems to be something that can be quite tricky and not well thought-through.

“Lots of people return back to work without having had a great deal of communication – their role has changed or is being restructured, and they just don’t feel valued any more. There is no real sense of coaching or guidance to get them back into a workplace that they haven’t been in for a while.

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“Over half of women going back into the workplace are not feeling confident, and that is not being recognised.”

From her home in Glasgow, Ms Dale has launched a social enterprise called The Maternity Pledge which is dedicated to improving maternity leave and perinatal mental health to the benefit of both parents and employers. Firms signing up to the pledge commit to five “simple pillars” designed to improve staff wellbeing and retention.

It’s an endeavour born out of her own experiences of employment and motherhood, having for many years lived and worked in London in public relations. With her own nuptials on the horizon, Ms Dale decided eight years ago to leave PR and work for herself with a business partner as a wedding planner.

“I’d seen so many mums come back into the workplace and saw the stress of it, and the struggle to get out of the door by a certain time,” she said. “Lots of my line managers were mothers and they were only meant to be working four-day weeks but they were still logging on during a Friday and working when they had their small children at home, and it just really put me off being in an organisational setting.

“It wasn’t in just one agency – it was across the board that I saw it, but I particularly took note in my last agency because I was getting married soon and I was kind of thinking ahead [to having] a family and what would I want my life to look like when I did.”

Eighteen months after Ms Dale’s first son was born in 2018, the family moved back to her husband’s native Scotland where she carried on with the wedding planning business. The realisation of “how lucky I was” to have the flexibility of working for herself – even during the Covid restrictions – was reinforced with the birth of her second son.

“But what I hadn’t expected was the mental health side of things,” she said. “I struggled so much, and found so little support for what was going on with me mentally, and it really affected me.

“In the end I paid for some counselling to try and get through it, and went and did my own research and discovered the term matrescence, so that’s where it leads into the support packs that go with The Maternity Pledge.”

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While the wedding business is still running, Ms Dale left it in October 2022 to take on the development of The Maternity Pledge full-time. Following a soft launch earlier this year, she is now in the process of signing up employers and looking expand her research into matrescence.

“For a lot of women it’s not joyful, and it’s not depression – it’s somewhere in the middle,” she said. “There is a grey area in the middle of very complex and challenging emotions that you don’t necessarily expect to feel.

“You probably don’t expect to feel like you have lost your identity or that your relationship with your partner has changed, or that you’re grieving the life you had before [even though you still] love this new child. It’s very much push and pull, and it’s very complicated.”

Q&A

Where do you find yourself most at ease?

On our patio in the early morning sun with a nice cup of coffee, but thanks to the Scottish weather and two small children in the house that doesn’t happen too often so instead I settle for relaxing with a good book and a comfy chair.

If you weren’t in your current role, what job would you most fancy?

If I had any creativity at all I would love to be an interior designer or patisserie chef but I absolutely don’t have the skill or patience for either so they’re well and truly off the cards for me!

What phrase or quotation has inspired you the most?

Tomorrow won’t be different if you don’t change something today. I love this because it can be applied to any aspect of your life, for big and small decisions, and it keeps you moving forward.

What is the best book you have ever read? Why is it the best?

The one I’ve enjoyed recently is The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. It is a dystopian look at the expectations we put on mothers and the sacrifices they make for their children. It centres around a mother who makes a terrible parenting decision and is subsequently sentenced by the courts to be re-trained as a mother to have a chance to gain custody of her daughter again. It’s brilliantly told and absolutely heartbreaking. Would recommend!

What has been your most challenging moment in life or business?

Going through postnatal depression after the birth of my first son. The transition to motherhood was incredibly difficult for me. I really struggled with my loss of identity and to connect with other mums, so it was a very isolating time. It was only after the birth of my second son when I finally sought out counselling that I started to research my experience and that’s when I found the term “matrescence”. This word was my “lightbulb moment”, and I think normalising it could positively transform the motherhood experience.

What do you now know that you wish you had known when starting out in your career?

I spent far too long in my early career not standing up for myself or saying what I really thought. It meant some of the workplace cultures I experienced could be a bit toxic. It was one of the reasons that drove me to become self-employed. It’s great to see how much things have changed now and how wellbeing has become an important part of the workplace.