PBS News Hour

ALI ROGIN: For some women, leaving the workforce to care for children or family is a choice.

For others, it is a necessity.

But Neha Ruch doesn't think a career pause means putting aside your professional ambitions.

She founded Mother Untitled, a group dedicated to challenging conventional ideas about stay at home motherhood.

I recently spoke with Neha about what inspired her new book, "The Power Pause: How to Plan a Career Break After Kids and Come Back Stronger Than Ever."

NEHA RUCH, Author, "The Power Pause": It was the height of the lean in movement, the height of the girl boss era.

2016, when I had my first son, and when I was rocking with him in that rocking chair, I suddenly felt like I wanted more time with him.

And when I decided to pause and shift my career, I had every intention on returning.

And yet I started hearing from everyone in my corner, are you giving up?

Did you waste a spot at business school?

And I was meeting all these incredible women, similar to myself, had clocked in a decade in their career, had really modern relationships with their husband, who were making strategic choices to pause or shift.

And all of them were at the receiving end of unwelcome commentary like that.

And I realized that were all facing this very outdated perception of the stay at home mother.

We never updated for the modern reality of women having children, or so they've accrued education and work experience.

They have access to digital tools and technologies.

So very few of them are shut in and stagnant like the word implies.

And really they're keeping themselves connected and creative in so many interesting ways.

And so I started the platform back then and it's grown since.

ALI ROGIN: And choosing to put your career on pause in many cases means putting on pause other elements of your life.

You know, a space and time outside the home, things that are often intrinsic to a woman's identity.

How can women prepare for that personal shift?

NEHA RUCH: I think acknowledging that it is an identity shift.

Right.

Answering the question, what do you do in this country?

Has come to stand in for who are you?

Right.

And so having to say I'm a stay at home mom somehow feels like it doesn't convey all the ways you're still active and interesting.

And so women fear that.

And I want to say first, you can just say, right now, I get to be with my kids, or I am with my kids, we'll see what comes next.

And what that does is gives you language to walk through this stage of life with confidence.

But it also reaffirms that all of those skills and accomplishments that you gained in your professional life before do not evaporate.

ALI ROGIN: And certainly you talk a lot about in the book of how sometimes it's not a choice, sometimes it's out of necessity, out of financial necessity.

But regardless of what brings you to that career pause moment, you also write about how it can be a positive in terms of your career.

It can actually help you once you are ready to upshift again.

NEHA RUCH: Right.

So career pauses are not life pauses, right?

Like we are still moving forward in many ways.

And actually, you know, when you look at how long our careers last, career pauses can actually help make them more sustainable.

And so in pausing or shifting our careers to make room for family life, we can actually make room to tune into what actually lights us up, new skills learned in caregiving.

If you've ever spent a minute with a child, right?

It's the ultimate leadership training ground.

And then we're also giving ourselves a chance to deepen our networks in nontraditional ways, explore new interests through volunteering or through online certification class or new hobbies.

Even if we don't have the same amount of time available to us, we can still get strategic about ways in which to grow that then end up serving us on our return.

ALI ROGIN: And what is your advice to women who are at the end of this career pause and are ready to return to something else, whatever they were doing.

NEHA RUCH: Before that, Well, I hope they, as soon as they feel that nudge, you know, I'm ready for something else.

The star studying themselves, taking stock of all the ways in which they are contributing, participating, volunteering, things that light them up, things that make them feel proud.

It can be advising a friend on their business, it can be volunteering for the school that accomplishes two things, right?

So I use the example of this woman down in North Carolina who took stock of all the different ways that she was staying engaged.

And one of the things that popped out was how she coordinated a bus route for her local organization.

And in looking back, what it did was reveal two things that she was really interested in project management.

And now she was going to round out her experience with an online certification class.

And then the part two was that when she went to add to her resume, career sabbatical for family life.

She was able to look at the bullets that stood out and apply fancy language like implemented highly technical infrastructure, change to local organization.

And it gave her a powerful talking point to be able to convey with confidence how she was committed to this return, but also how she had developed that experience during her time away.

ALI ROGIN: Fascinating.

Such important advice for anybody in any stage of their career, parenthood or both.

Neha Rush, creator of Mother Untitled and the author of "The Power Pause."

Thank you so much for being here.

NEHA RUCH: Oh, I'm so grateful.