"Mom" on Your Resume

What does that gap in our resumes or experiences, where we stayed at home to raise our young kids, mean?

Project manager.

Crisis negotiator.

Logistics coordinator.

Emotional regulation expert.

Operating 24/7 with no budget, no sick days, and no one asking how your quarterly goals were going.

We don’t include that version on our resumes. But maybe we should.

Last year, I talked to a woman who stepped away from her career in public affairs to raise her children. Five years later, she called it a restart. But when she described those years, she had managed the calendar, the budget, transportation, the emotional development of two small humans, and the entire household’s well-being. She advocated in school systems, learned how to navigate healthcare, kept the whole operation running, and then some.

That’s not a gap. That’s a graduate-level program in leadership. That is time and energy invested in a life experience unmatched in any field.

Do you think finding a way for astronauts to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere is stressful?

Have you tried to wrestle a toddler into a car seat they don’t wat to sit in while locating their shoe they lost, again, and wondering if you turned off the stove and if your coffee is still in the microwave needing yet another reheat, meaning you haven’t finished a cup of coffee yet? Also, you must plan and prepare dinner and wash, dry, fold, and put away three thousand loads of laundry, assuming you remembered to transfer it to the dryer before it starts to smell and needs to be rewashed, and you have a backup plan in case that oversight occurs.

Sure, rocket science can be challenging.

Motherhood is a grey area that requires intuition and knowledge about being a good human. An intuition that is instilled from mothers and grandmothers before us.

Navigating this phase of life, which has existed since the introduction of animal species on our planet, deserves a line on our resumes. (shout out to all the moms who are also rocket scientists!)

So why don’t we begin including it in our experience when we want to re-enter the workforce? Why do we still flinch when we see “mom” as a headline in a professional setting?

It’s likely because we’ve been conditioned to think less of a woman who takes time off to pick up sick kids from school or stay home with them when they need care. Or perhaps it’s because the same conditioning doesn’t appreciate the mental energy required to be a working mom.

We’ll put “strategic communicator” or “cross-functional collaborator” on a resume, with confidence. But somehow “raised two children while holding everything together” feels too… personal?

Maybe the problem isn’t the language. Why is it easier to say "career pause" than it is to say “built a life, shaped humans, and led a household through literal chaos”? Why do we write entire performance reviews about “grit” and “adaptability” but ignore the people who demonstrate it most consistently? Why is it noble to run a startup, but not a home?

You don’t have to burn down the system to challenge it.

Sometimes, you have to ask the right questions—and refuse to shrink.

Here’s what I know from experience:

Motherhood doesn’t dilute your professionalism. It sharpens it. You learn to listen differently, lead without ego, pivot without panic, ruthlessly prioritize, and act compassionately. You know how to hold space for someone else’s meltdown while making dinner and drafting a proposal.

It’s not pretty. But it’s powerful.

So while I haven’t added Mom to my LinkedIn profile yet, it is on my resume.

I won’t cut that chapter from my story to make a hiring algorithm more comfortable.

Because here’s what writers know:

When you edit out the truth, the story falls apart. When women edit out motherhood from their lives' narratives, we reinforce the very systems that told us it didn’t count.

Being a mom isn’t a detour from leadership. It’s the most cut-throat, honest training ground.

Have you lived through the sleepless nights, the sick days, the juggle, the guilt, the invisible labor, and still found your way back to your ambition? You don’t need to explain the gap.

You need to celebrate the growth and shout it from the rooftops like anyone who reaches a pinnacle of greatness in their career!

Add “Mom” to your professional experience today and say “Happy Mother’s Day” in the most profound way.