Steel Roses is a podcast created for women by women. Social pressures for women are constant. Professionals, stay at home moms, working moms, we are here to tell you that you are not alone! This podcasts primary focus is providing real honest content shedding light on the daily struggles of women while also elevating women's voices.
All women are experiencing similar pressures and hurdles, and yet, no one is talking out in the open. If these topics continue to only exist as whispered conversations then we further permeate a culture of judgement and shame.
Join Jenny weekly as she discusses topics that effect women in a relatable, honest way.
What if motherhood doesn’t make women less effective at work—but actually strengthens the skills that make them exceptional leaders?
In this episode of the Steel Roses Podcast, we explore the findings from the 2026 Maternal Strengths Report and examine how working mothers rate their professional capabilities before and after having children. The results challenge the outdated belief that motherhood reduces a woman’s focus, ambition, productivity, or leadership potential.
We break down the most significant skills mothers report developing, including time management, prioritization, communication, negotiation, conflict resolution, trust-building, and leadership. When time and energy are limited, working moms often become highly skilled at identifying what matters most, completing high-impact work, setting boundaries, and navigating competing demands.
I also share a personal salary negotiation experience that changed the way I advocate for compensation, flexibility, and professional value.
But if motherhood strengthens so many valuable workplace skills, why are mothers still viewed through a professional deficit lens? We discuss how workplace culture often confuses visibility with productivity, availability with leadership, and flexibility with a lack of commitment.
We also explore practical ways employers can better support working mothers, retain experienced talent, strengthen leadership pipelines, and evaluate performance based on outcomes rather than hours spent in the office.
This episode is for working moms, women leaders, managers, HR professionals, and anyone interested in maternal leadership, career development, workplace equity, flexible work, employee retention, and creating healthier workplace cultures.
Subscribe to the Steel Roses Podcast, share this episode with a leader who needs to hear it, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.
Hello everyone. This is Steel Roses Podcast. This podcast is created for women by women to elevate women's voices. I have a really interesting angle to discuss with you guys today. So a couple episodes back, I had discussed this report that I saw that was being released on LinkedIn called the 2026 Maternal Strengths Report. Now, the reason why this caught my eye is because typically, even myself, majority of the information that I discuss pertaining to working moms is negative, right? The negative side of it, what we go through, the mental load, the stress level, all of the juggling, the breakdowns, all of those things. That's all very real stuff. But this report I found interesting because it talks about how motherhood actually strengthens the individual and makes them a better professional versus, you know, the original thought that women shouldn't have shouldn't even have jobs when they're pregnant. That was uh that was a thought back in the day. As soon as you got pregnant, you were fired because they didn't think you were equipped to be able to do that, to work and you know, be a professional while also being pregnant. So the most compelling findings in the report, and I'm gonna link the report, I'm gonna link the website where you can download the report in this podcast description, this episode
description. So the most compelling findings, number one, time management showed the largest report growth. Participants rated their time management ability at an average of 1.96 before motherhood and 4.40 afterward, a reported increase of 123%. Nearly 89% rated themselves highly confident in managing competing priorities under sustained time pressure. This is a powerful finding because mothers are often portrayed as distracted or less available. My God, reading that even made me mad. While the report suggests they may actually become highly skilled at operating within a limited time and constant competing demands, I can speak to this, and I'm sure everyone else on this who's listening to this episode can speak to this. The amount of pressure that's get put that gets put on your plate as soon as you become a mother is astounding. But what do we do? We adapt. Like no other being on this planet is able to adapt the way that we
are. Second, second, second finding, mothers became more strategic about their energy. This is this is a good one. Energy allocation increases from 2.26 to 4.53, 100% increase. More than 94% of respondents rated themselves highly skilled at deciding where to invest their time, attention, energy, and emotional capacity. This could connect beautifully to your past to what we've discussed in the past about mentally mental load. Motherhood does not give women more energy. It forces them to become more intentional about where that limited energy goes. So, as opposed to running at 100 miles an hour all day long, you are going to be more precise and more focused about when and where you're actually expelling the most amount of your energy. Now, most recently I had an experience like this where I knew I was fading. I knew I was gonna get tired. And so I spent the morning, midday is usually like my best times. And I spent my morning and midday on the most uh, the most difficult tasks, the task that required the most brain power, because that's really where I needed to be. And it really worked. It worked, it fleshed out flat
fine. Negotiation increased dramatically. Negotiation increased by 83% from an average of 2.25 before motherhood to 4.13 afterward. Approximately 81% reported high confidence negotiating for what they needed, including compensation, flexibility, boundaries, schedules, and rule clarity. The report makes the point that negotiation becomes a part of daily life when responsibilities, time, and expectations cannot all be accommodated at once. Well, hello, friend. Nice to meet you because that is a skill I think we all have developed really wonderfully. Mothers negotiate before they even get to work. Who's going to do drop-off? Who's staying home with the sick child? What can wait? What cannot wait? This goes back to the glass fall rubber ball method that I have talked about many, many times on this podcast. You're basically identifying the most urgent task and taking care of that and pushing everything else out. It's a honestly, it's astounding. Reading this is actually really interesting. The other part about negotiation, you know, that I wanted to know and I lost my thought for a minute. I didn't get as skilled at negotiating for my benefits and salary until after I had kids. Prior to having kids, I would just, I was just, oh, you know, what is the offer? And okay, great. I've accepted it. After I had kids, the very first time I interviewed, the very first time I interviewed after I had kids, the most beautiful negotiation technique popped into my mind. The reviewer said to me, or excuse me, the interviewer said to me, What are you looking for in this role? What is your, you know, what is your desired compensation? Or what's your target compensation? And I said, instead of answering the question, I flipped it and said, What is what is the range offered for this role? I never gave an answer. And so the the HR person says, Oh, the range is, I think it was, she was like, Oh, the range is uh, she said it was like 90 to 130 or so something something to that effect. And I said, Oh, great, that's wonderful. I'm already making 130,000, which I wasn't, I was bull faced lying. But guess what? It got Jenny Benita's a uh $50,000 increase. So keep that in mind, food for thought.
Prioritization became one of mother's strongest abilities. Prioritization increased from 56% from 2.9 to 4.52. Almost 95% of responders rated themselves highly confident in identifying what truly matters after becoming mothers, compared with only 28% before motherhood. One of the strongest lines in their report is I stop confusing urgency with importance. OMG. That could serve, this could really serve like as the whole theme for this whole discussion is once you have a child, the things that fall off your radar as like this doesn't even matter anymore, it's crazy. The amount of, I don't, I can't call it maturity. I can't quite pinpoint it. Now I'm not saying that women who don't have kids can't achieve any of these things. Absolutely. There's astounding women out there to have selected not to have children and they're amazing. They're crushing it. But for those of us who have had kids and went through this mental shift and this physical shift, this is what's coming out of it. And you're able to identify more quickly like what has to happen right this minute, because I have all this other important stuff that has to happen too. That becomes just your go-to nature, which is a beautiful, amazing thing that only is unique to mothers. Um, let
me see here. Mothers reported becoming stronger communicators, communication increased by 60%, while conflict management increased by 41%. Oh my God, I can do whole episodes about that. After motherhood, 75% reported confidence initiating difficult conversations. Absolutely. 82% reported confidence, navigated tension, disagreement, and emotionally charged situations. This challenges the idea that motherhood primarily develops nurturing qualities. The report also also suggested that it develops direct communication, de-escalation, boundary setting, and conflict resolutions. I hope you're all nodding along and saying, holy crap, yes. Because let me tell you, I work in communications. You know how I feel about communications. I love it dearly, dearly, dearly. I became much more skilled later in life. I've been working in the communications industry for 20 years, spot on. Like this is spot on my communication skills. And, you know, some of it's out of self-preservation, out of protection for your child. Sometimes you have to have dis difficult discussions with other individuals pertaining to your kid. I know people that prior to having kids could never address people directly if they disagreed with them. They weren't able to really have those difficult discussions. And after they had kids, it was the easiest thing that they could ever do because there was a reason there that was stronger than any other fear. There was this life in your hands that's stronger than anything else. And that's what's going to drive you to do greater things.
Leadership and trust building also improved. Participants reported a 34% increase in leading teams with average rating, ratings rising from 3.19 to 4.27. Trust building increased by 20%, and more than 90% of respondents rated themselves highly in that category after motherhood. The report also suggests maternal leadership may become more adaptive, relational, responsive, operationally focused, aware of other people's needs. That does not mean that mothers are all lead identically. Rather, it suggests caregiving may give many women regular practice and the skills required to build trust and lead people through uncertainty. I once had a boss tell me that there was something about me that drew clients in. And they said that he said there there's just a way about you. And the way he phrased it, he said, Jenny, there's something about you that pulls the clients to you and makes them trust you on a different level than just the client relationship. It's like the highest compliment a client services person could get. But I do try to have to lead with empathy and I do try to show that softer side because I am gonna be a pit bull for you, but I'm also gonna make sure that there's other parts that are taken care of that don't pertain to contracts. I'm gonna make sure that you feel valued as the client and then you see that we see you and that we're gonna do everything we can to make you feel like you're being held
up for success. So this report raised an important question. If mothers believe they are developing meaningful leadership capabilities, then why are they still frequently viewed through a professional deficit lens? I know the answer to this, but let me see what this report says. Let's see here, it argues that many workplaces continue to make flawed assumptions, visibility becomes confused with performance. Yes, flexibility becomes interpreted as limitation, availability becomes treated as a measure of leadership, caregiving becomes interpreted as reduced ambition, the adaptability mother, the adaptability mothers demonstrate often goes unrecognized. This could be the emotional and advocacy focused like center of this discussion as well. The problem may not be that mothers become less capable. Problem may be that the workplaces are still using outdated measurements of what capability looks like. No SHIT, obviously. If you really think about those bullets, visibility becomes confused with performance, flexibility becomes interpreted as limitation. Let me use myself as an example here. I work from home. I started working from home in 2017, pre-pandemic. I was already doing it. And to have that flexibility where I was dropping my kids off when I needed to drop them off, getting to wherever the client was that I had to go to, or working from home for the day, and then being able to throw a quick load of wash in, but also jump right back on the computer and do my work and make sure I had, you know, dinner started, but jump back on my computer at work. Have you think about it? Think about when you're in an office setting. How much time of your day, I want you to think about this. If you report live into an office, how much time in your day is spent chit-chatting? How much time of your day is spent just kind of like going to the, you know, the break room or the kitchen area or the coffee room or going for a walk with your coworkers. What think about that? Because I actually think back to the days when I used to be live, live and in person. I had to commute it in, commute in was about an hour, right? I worked in New York, so the commute in was about an hour or so, depending on traffic. And I'd get to work at about nine o'clock, nine oh five. And then I would probably break for about an hour or so midday for lunch, but I would also have breaks during the day where I'd be walking back and forth from conference rooms and you know, chatting with people. And I've been, you're kind of like in the mix and in the flow. You're not chained to your desk the whole day. Really think about this, right? But you still achieved your work, like you still got things done. Well, working from home as a mom, I mentioned, yes, the flexibility of being able to do some homemaking things and still be a homemaker while I'm working. But that also means that if I have something that I know is lacking, you know, lagging behind that I need to get done. My boss said it perfectly when she was reviewing me the ones, she said, Jenny, I know when I give you something, you're just gonna get it done. It really doesn't matter the time frame to me. I'm going to make sure that it happens. I know I have a deadline coming up that's actually pretty critical. I'm gonna be working really late tomorrow. Like it just is what it is. This is what it is. And I will adapt myself to be able to make sure that I'm here for my kids, here for my husband, but also there for my job and make sure my job is getting the attention
that it needs. So there's some recommendations in here for employers. So the report calls for organizations to treat returning, treat returning from parental leave as a supported leadership transition, not merely an administrative return. Evaluate outcomes, communication, trust, and execution rather than physical, physical visibility, train managers to interrupt assumptions with about ambition, availability, and commitment, keep mothers in leadership pipelines by continuing to offer promotions, stretch assignments, and high visibility opportunities, normalize flexibility without attaching career penalty, expand access to pumping support and post-partum mental health services, recognize that leadership can be developed through caregiving responsibility and lived experience, not only formal management programs.
The study included 354 mothers surveyed between February 20th and April 30th, 2026. 79% were based in the United States, 64% worked full-time, uh participants represented different industries, career levels, countries, family sizes, and stages of motherhood. The findings were based on retrospective self-assessment. Women were asked to rate how capable they remembered feeling before motherhood and how capable they felt afterward using a five-point scale. That can be a little bit tough. And I see here we're like it, it might be interpreted that the number's a little bit skewed because you think back, you know, and you have to reflect on what you were like prior to being a mom. One of the biggest shifts that I noticed after I had my son was my empathy. I I feel horrible saying this out loud, but it is what it is. And the people that know me now and work with me now think it's like the funniest thing ever when I talk about this. But I was pretty much a pain in the butt to work with. And I really didn't care, you know, what you had got going on at home. I didn't really care about what anything personal that you had. If we had to get a job done, I was gonna be like raising hell, making sure that things got done. Not a good person to work with, toxic, you know, like just not overall good person to work with. Yeah, after I had my son and I came back to work, the things that were crushing before and that were just like huge blows in the grander scheme of things felt less weighty. It's just it's a very strange thing to discuss, but it felt less weighty. I did personally experience a lot of shifts after I had my kids. And one of them actually was a driving force to do more, which sounds crazy. It's counterproductive, right? Because it's like you're already doing a lot. You have three children at home that are infants. You are doing it, you're you're crushing it. But to me, I had three infants. I need to make sure that I'm able to, I need to make sure that with my three infants that I'm able to provide for them. Now, yes, like my husband worked, but because of my history and because of what I went through, um, because of my history and because of what I went through growing up, I needed to make sure that I individually could care for my kids if I needed to. If push came to shove, I need to make sure that I could stand on my own two feet. That's where I ended up. So this whole thing is really, really interesting. Motherhood really does not erase ambition or capability. It may change how women work, what we tolerate, how we prioritize, and how we lead. But the question is whether workplaces are sophisticated enough to recognize those changes as strengths. I don't think in my working time frame, perhaps when I get older and I am sitting at the top with everybody else at that point, perhaps then we will see a shift. I, you know, I was thinking about this recently that the biggest shifts are going to happen when the generation that's currently leading starts to fall back. It starts to step away. And my generation, the generation that was born in the 80s that is a little bit more self aware, starts to step up and step into place. And I think that's where we're gonna see the most definitive changes. So I'm gonna link the report into the episode description so you guys can take a look at it and download it. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I appreciate all of you, and I will catch you on the next one. Take care.
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