Lauren Smith Brody

Oh, and she's got like a stomach issue, the dog.

Like, you know, we're just all about the gastrointestinal tract right now.

I really actually love the way that you asked that question because what I've realized now, so it's almost 10 years since I did that original research looking at people's return to paid work after leave.

And the research I've done since then is on sort of early and mid-year parenting and the support that you may have at work or not have for that kind of caregiving identity.

And then I also did a white paper more recently with a menopause care company called Midi Health looking at what happens when workers have support for menopause at work.

And all of those things I realized as I was trying to connect the dots are really about the subset of people who have made it work, who have the support to make it work.

There are obviously incredibly important and accurate headlines about attrition of women in the workforce, very negative headlines about the impact of all of these sort of life transitions and caregiving processes.

on women's hopes and ambitions and careers.

I like to look at what's possible.

So with the fifth trimester, before I knew that's what I was doing, I was looking at specifically these women who had come back and maintained their careers.

And we know that about 30%, 30 to 40%, depending on which study you're looking at, of new moms leave their jobs within about a year of having that baby.

And these were the ones who stayed, or at least who stayed in their careers.

And what did they do to reframe and redefine ambition and

and success in those moments to hopefully get out of some of the things they were over delivering on in their job previously so that they could then make room to keep growing or just to tread water.

Treading water needed to be okay for a lot of people too.

A lot of them were really deliberate about asking for the help they needed.

And for those who weren't able to, a lot of what I researched and looked into was how do you convince people to be okay asking for the help and support you need?

And often that comes down to understanding the business case for retaining them.

So

It feels like obviously the moral and ethical case should be enough, but very often in order to go into some of those negotiations as new parents asking for things for the first time, it's really helpful just to understand the numbers behind the economy of supporting parents.