For working moms, balancing life with other obligations can be a challenge. Juggling childcare and tedious class assignments can often feel overwhelming.
In a society that demands a lot from working mothers, unfair scrutiny often awaits those who fall short of their obligations.
Still, despite society’s high expectations for working mothers, there are a few key industries where they thrive. Some careers offer flexible schedules that allow mothers to balance work with family care, while others let mothers generate income while applying the valuable skills they learned from raising children.
Below, we’ll go over some of the best industries for working moms.
Healthcare
Healthcare is a popular industry for working mothers. Careers like nursing let mothers take their caregiving, problem-solving, and multitasking skills gained from family life and apply them to a fulfilling role.
Nursing isn’t the only career in healthcare. Mothers have also explored slower-paced medical assistant roles, research roles, and prestigious physician roles. Thanks to the high demand for care, healthcare professionals enjoy good job security and competitive salaries — allowing moms to financially provide for their children.
Long working hours are a major concern for healthcare professionals. Understanding the need for better work-life balance, many of today’s companies strive to make flexible work possible in healthcare.
In the United States, the physician platform Wheel lets remote doctors take control of their own schedules. When physicians partner with Wheel, the platform matches them with opportunities that align with their schedules and skills. Companies like Wheel promote the continued adoption of telemedicine, making it easier for working mothers to balance family and work.
Education
Education is another popular career for mothers. Through motherhood, many women discover that they enjoy the company of children. Becoming an educator is all about empowering children, whether that means building their knowledge, guiding them toward good futures, or helping them navigate the difficulties of childhood and adolescence.
A teacher’s work schedule will usually align with their children’s schedule at school, so working in education gives mothers enough time to see their families. Educator salaries in the United States range from $60,660 for elementary and $62,870 for high school. Though not as competitive as healthcare jobs, teacher salaries are still enough to cover the cost of family life.
Digital Marketing
Marketing, particularly digital marketing, is one of the best industries for working mothers. Digital marketing is an ever-evolving industry that requires future-oriented perspectives, and good planning skills — two things mothers learn when raising fast-growing children.
More importantly, digital marketing is flexible and in-demand. Because most digital marketing work can be done online, a good number of digital marketing jobs offer remote work options.
Within the digital marketing field, mothers have many career paths to choose from. Creative mothers can become copywriters and content writers, whose words promote the voice and values of their clients’ brands.
More gregarious mothers who know how to draw in big audiences can become social media specialists. There are also SEO/SEM roles for the critical thinkers and UX design for the tech-savvy creatives.
Information Technology
Working mothers thrive in information technology for two big reasons. One: It’s flexible. Two: It’s lucrative. A remote work report from World Economic Forum revealed that 84% of IT professionals said that their work could be done from home.
And it has been found that the IT professionals that actually work from home face very few barriers to productivity. With reduced commute times and greater flexibility, mothers working in IT can better attend to their family’s needs.
Computer and information technology professionals have some of the highest salaries in any industry. Salary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that network and computer systems administrators make as much as $80,600 a year.
Computer programmers, on the other hand, make $93,000, while high-level computer and information science researchers make a whopping $131,490. And because these professionals are so in-demand, qualified mothers won’t have a difficult time finding work.
Working mothers have proven that it’s possible to balance building a career and raising a family. Fortunately, industries like healthcare, education, IT, and digital marketing afford them the flexibility they need to thrive.
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