Working Mother And Career: Finding A Healthy Balance Between Work And Family

There's a particular kind of quiet at two in the morning.

I check my bag in the dark and try not to let the door creak, because if my son wakes and sees me leaving, neither of us can manage it. I made that journey almost every Monday for eight months. Three hundred and fifty kilometers to Chandigarh, leaving at 2 a.m. to reach the office by ten. I cried every single time.

People asked how I managed.

I did not manage it alone. That is the whole story.

Before this, there was a different life

I worked in Bangalore from 2015 until September 2017, when I left my job to get married. In April 2018, I joined my husband, who was pursuing a master's degree in Leeds.

Two months later, we suddenly lost my mother-in-law.

She had been the person holding so much together back home. My father-in-law was now alone in the family home she had built with love.

As the elder son and daughter-in-law, we felt our family needed us. Asking my father-in-law to leave the village and the home where he had spent his whole life didn't feel right. My husband chose being there for his family over the financial opportunities of staying abroad, and I stood with him in that decision.

So, we came home.

Our son, Dhairya, was born in July 2019. The years away from work continued, and a question began to arise. Quietly at first. Then loudly.

Will I ever work again?

Then COVID unexpectedly opened the door to work-from-home opportunities, and I restarted my career in August 2021, after almost four years away.

Then the offices reopened

When offices reopened after COVID, I was asked to work from Chandigarh. My father-in-law encouraged us to move and told us not to worry about him.

But Dhairya couldn't settle.

He had grown up in our spacious village home with his Dadu always nearby. The apartment never felt like home to him. He would say, “This is not our home. This is Chandigarh.”

Eventually, my husband took him back to the village while I continued working in Chandigarh during the week.

If someone asked Dhairya, “Chalein Mummy ke paas?” he would reply, “Mummy ko wapas le aao. Main wahan nahi jaunga.” Some weeks, he wouldn't even speak to me on video calls. It hurt.

But our solution wasn't to quit my work.

My husband and father-in-law stepped forward.

Dadu is a doctor and runs his clinic from our home. He fed Dhairya, took him out, and looked after his everyday needs. When Dhairya was unwell, Dadu made sure he had his medicines on time. Feeding him became Dadu's responsibility then and still is today.

In those months, I wasn't automatically the default parent just because I was the mother. My husband and father-in-law managed our son's everyday world while I travelled for work.

We didn’t have a big discussion about changing roles. We just did what our family needed.

What finally changed

Winter came, and with it, the fog. Most mornings, you could barely see the road.

So, I did the thing I had been avoiding. I told my employer that if working from home was not an option, I would have to resign. They agreed to let me work from home.

Ask before you resign. The worst they can say is no, and you were already prepared to hear a no.

Where we are now

My son is seven. I am still with the same organization.

My husband still shares the everyday responsibility of looking after Dhairya. He is a doctor and, along with his father, runs the clinic from our home, while I work full-time from home. We manage Dhairya and our work around each other’s schedules.

It never felt like my husband was ‘helping’ me with our son. He is a parent, as much as I am.

A family does not need fixed roles. It needs people willing to step up so the other can grow.

For us, parenting has been less about who is ‘supposed’ to do what, and more about standing beside each other when life asks us to change the plan.

Anjali Sharma is the voice behind The Balanced Working Mom, where she shares insights on marriage, motherhood, and career, and guides Indian women through the many roles they balance. She also works as an SEO consultant for a Lisbon-based company and lives with her family in Punjab.

Published on: September 28, 2026