What working parents carry back to their desk

Every parent I coach through their return to work tells me some version of the same thing: it isn't the job that worries them, it's everything underneath it.

By the time someone is back at their desk, they've usually been carrying the return for months. I usually work with clients around three months after their baby is born or adopted, and again after their keeping-in-touch days, just before they go back and then twice more once they're back to work. That's the shape of it, because returning to work after parental leave doesn’t just take one morning. It's a slow, layered process, and most of it happens quietly, long before anyone else notices.

The questions I hear most aren't about childcare logistics, although those matter too. They're things like: can I still do this? Will people see me differently now? Have I lost credibility? What happens if my child gets sick and I've only been back three weeks? 

People come back carrying far more than a laptop. They come back carrying an emotional load, alongside a logistical load and a shift in who they are, all at once. Most people are very good at masking that, so it rarely shows.

Confidence dips. Capability doesn't.

One of the clearest trends I see is a gap between how capable someone actually is and how capable they feel. Time away, a changed system, a different team, a body and mind that have been somewhere else entirely for up to a year; all of it can knock confidence hard, even in people who were previously very sure of themselves. In this instance, it’s important to have a space where you can say ‘I don't know if I can do this’ out loud, and work out for yourself that you still can.

Another pattern I see constantly: people assuming their own ambition has changed just because their life has. It's an easy trap to fall into yourself, too. Priorities do shift after children, but for most of the parents I work with, ambition doesn't vanish, it becomes more intentional. More focus on what actually matters, rather than everything at once. That's not a smaller version of ambition. It's often a sharper one.

What actually helps

The parents I see managing this well aren't the ones who've been rescued, or had every expectation quietly lowered for them. They're the ones who've been asked one simple question: what support helps you do your best work now? It’s not been assumed, they‘ve been asked. That shift, from assumption to conversation, changes almost everything.

Practically, the same handful of actions come up time and again - for parents, and for the managers supporting them. It's about removing the guesswork that makes an already stretched moment harder than it needs to be.

For parents:

• Name what's changed, out loud, rather than pretending it hasn't.

• Get clear with your manager on what's expected during this transition back to work, rather than guessing.

• Give yourself permission not to ‘bounce back’ to who you were - because you're not the same person who left. That's not a loss, it's a new (and exciting!) fact of your life.

For managers:

• Ask what support looks like, rather than assuming you already know.

• Talk about deadlines and workload out loud, rather than dictating them. Asking: ‘How are we going to make this work?’ gets a very different answer to ‘you need to make this work’.

• Flex around the practicalities where you can. I've seen businesses push a meeting or workshop start time back slightly so someone could do a nursery drop-off first. It costs almost nothing and it's remembered for a long time.

None of this is complicated, and neither side needs a grand gesture. A parent naming what's changed, and a manager asking instead of assuming. Those two small shifts, done consistently, do more than any policy ever will. You don't need to wait until something's gone wrong to ask for support, or to offer it. Sometimes the most useful moment to check in is simply now. Let go of the idea that going ‘back’ is even the goal. You're not going back, you're arriving somewhere new and that's worth being curious about, not afraid of.

If there's one thing I'd want any returning parent to know, it's that coaching isn't for when things have gone wrong. It's simply a space to think out loud, with someone whose only job is to help you find your own answers, at a moment when everything else is asking something of you. You don't need to wait until you're struggling to be curious about who you're becoming.

Debbie Green is founder and wellness coach at Wishfish Coaching & Development and co-host of Secrets from A Coach podcast. For more information visit: wishfish.org.uk and secretsfromacoach.com