When Neha Ruch left her hyper-successful marketing career after having a baby, many people in her life — including her husband — struggled to understand her decision. “I was taking a slight deviation from the path, and a lot of the questions I got were like, ‘What are you going to do all day? Do you feel like you’re giving up?’” Ruch says. Motherhood had reshuffled her priorities and forced her to examine her relationship with ambition. But despite the abundance of meaning she found in the work of parenthood, Ruch still had difficulty explaining exactly what she was doing all day to others. Her community Mother Untitled, which brings together ambitious women pausing or leaning out of their careers, was born out of a desire to change that perception of a stay-at-home mom as nothing more than a caregiver.
She began a project of profiling other women who were, like her, taking “career pauses” to focus on family life. Ruch set out to paint a complex picture of the “gray areas” in between working and stay-at-home motherhood, in part to contextualize her own experience. “It helped give me the confidence that I was part of a really incredible cohort of women that were figuring out a new way to make sense of wanting more time with their kids and wanting to stay connected to ambition,” she says. Ruch has now spent nearly a decade examining the question of what happens, what it means, and the many different ways it can look when a parent decides that the work of raising kids is going to be their primary role for a little (or long) while. Her new book, The Power Pause: How to Plan a Career Break After Kids — and Come Back Stronger Than Ever, is the latest brainchild of that project — an ultra-practical, characteristically ambitious guidebook for a new generation of parents. She lives on the Upper West Side with her two kids and her husband. Here’s how she gets it done.
On building a business during a career pause:
It took eight years. I was at home and there was always this irony of wanting to change the narrative about career pauses while being on a career pause. How do you keep yourself going with something that doesn’t make money and that not everyone understands? I got a lot of pushback on this idea, that what I was building was anti-feminist. The goal is never to encourage women to take a career pause. The goal is to put more options on the table. So if women need or want to pause or downshift, they don’t feel like they’re counting themselves out, and they can approach it with a sense that this is a part of their career story.
On her morning routine:
My kids are early risers. They wake at six and they’re allowed to go to each other’s room or do something quiet until 6:30. I will do a five-minute meditation on Insight Timer. I like the chakra cleansing; I just need a visual to get me there. Then I do a very quick bullet journal, and gratitude and intention-set. I started during COVID, because I was really full-time at home and that allowed me to decide how I wanted to show up for the day. Then I go out and we’ll eat breakfast. My husband will do the bacon and the sausage — it’s all very elaborate, it’s just my favorite part of the day. I have a no-phones policy if the kids are around. I get them ready, pack their bags, and then they come in with me while I get ready. Our walk to school is 15 minutes, and I’m still in the stage where I get to be in the kids’ class for the first ten minutes or so.
On ramping back up her work:
This fall, as a real practice in taking myself seriously, I got a little co-working space, which is right next to my kids’ school. That has been different and exciting. It’s a physical representation of a totally different stage, because my office was their playroom before. During this time leading up to the launch of the book and really growing the movement, I am working from nine to four. I am in a full-on sprint, and part of what has allowed me to do that is knowing that it’s temporary. But I miss school pickup. You get a lot from your children in those hours.
On the evening wind-down:
I block my schedule and wrap up from four to 4:30, and then I walk home. I have a babysitter for four days a week after school, and she is with us from three to six. She does pickup for my daughter. My son is often in after-school sports. My husband will do those pickups, and then we all meet at home at five. Then I put my phone away — from five to eight, I’m not on my phone — and we will do dinner and bath time and I’ll let our babysitter go. My husband and I have always watched a show to decompress at the end of the day. I will save easy cleanup work tasks for while he’s watching Lioness or Yellowstone. I don’t really want to watch it, but I know it makes him happy, and I’m getting this hour of work. We’re in bed together by 9:30.
On how she handles working weekends:
On the weekends, we block-schedule two hours each to ourselves. My husband takes his two hours to go for a run with his brother and then, I don’t know, take a long, hot shower. I use that time to work. And my in-laws are also spending time with my kids for an hour and a half every Saturday, so we get that extra time. I try to block-schedule what’s possible based on the care that’s available.
On sharing family admin with her husband:
We do Sunday admin meetings to go over who’s going to be doing pickup or drop-off, or “Did you see that email from the school?” For so long, we got used to me being the person who did that. Being able to actively reset that dynamic has been important, but it does take diligence. We also have a money meeting, which is also a family-values meeting. This practice is something I do seasonally, at three junctures. Usually, I do it the second week in January, as the school year wraps up, and then we do another one before back-to-school. It sounds regimented, but it reminds me that all these decisions we’re making are ripe for reexamination at any time. It’s a moment to say what matters to us and our family. What do we each want for ourselves? And from a financial perspective, it’s like, we’re going to move funds away from travel and we’re going to put it into more babysitting. That was necessary this year. It sounds out of reach and it sounds like a lot, but we do that for our businesses and our work all the time, and there is no more complicated of an organization than raising a family.
On prioritizing:
At the beginning of this fall, I wanted to focus on seeing this book that I’ve worked on for so long out into the world. I wanted to still feel like I was very present for my family in the hours that I have available. That means I let go of evenings out, like date nights or girls’ nights. And for someone who really prides myself on my connection to friends and my husband outside of our kids, that’s been hard. It’s meant saying no a lot. Sometimes I worry if I keep saying no, I won’t be asked back. In the beginning of the fall, I emailed literally all of my friends and I said, “I’m not going to be seeing everyone this fall because I’m working on something and I’m really trying to reserve my time with my kids.”
On turning 40:
I’m 40 this year. I feel like I’ve been saying I’m 40 for a year, so now people are like, “So you’re going to be 41?” And I’m like, “Nope.” I have wanted to be 40 for so long. I’m an only child, so I think I always sort of aged up to be in the rooms I was in. My parents didn’t have child care, so I was literally always in the room with them. I think I’ve always been pretending to be older.
On the question that guides her:
Is it pleasing you and your family, or is it pleasing everyone else? That was one of the biggest lessons I got from parting with my career. I was someone who looked for a lot of approval and a lot of belonging. For a long time, my career sort of made me feel like I’d done it. I checked the boxes that made me feel like, No one can say I don’t belong. When I had to part with that, it actually was the biggest lesson in not meeting everyone else’s approval. And when you realize that, then you’re like, What else am I doing because everyone else wants me to do it?
On what comes next:
What I want more than anything is to just continue to exist in the gray area. I want to exist in this in-between of a stay-at-home and working mother, and I want that for more women. Because the reality is that even if your kid is like, 9, they still need you, just in different ways. I might not need as much time in this season of parenthood, but part of the reason I have to be off from five to eight is because homework becomes more demanding. Social dynamics that the kids want to talk through need more headspace to navigate. I want to be there for that. If that means not building as big of a business or as big of a brand, I want to make the change. I want to continue to see this change through from a cultural perspective, but I want to do it in a way that lets me be at more pickups.