From the author: First published here A maternity break opens up a number of unique opportunities for mothers to make positive career changes. What does maternity leave give mothers? This happens, firstly, due to the fact that you are completely disconnected from work. For some, falling out of the working rhythm is perceived as a long-awaited long vacation. For others, on the contrary, the temporary inability to realize oneself in a profession is comparable to torture. In any case, a break from work helps to look at it from the outside, to see its shortcomings and advantages more objectively. This career stop gives you the opportunity to take stock of some intermediate results and outline future career plans. Secondly, you don’t just disconnect from work, you switch to another activity, master a new role and actively develop new skills. For example, almost every mother learns to do several things at the same time, gets rid of perfectionism, giving up her attempts to do everything perfectly after a couple of weeks of the child’s life. She masters planning skills, the basics of time management (sometimes intuitively), because... Otherwise, you won’t have time to do anything at all; you learn to read facial expressions, gestures, understand them at a glance, etc. Consequently, mothers actively develop while on maternity leave. If you think that you are completely stupid, then remember how many articles you have “shoveled” in search of information on how to strengthen a child’s health, develop his speech, and raise him correctly. Thirdly, the circle of friends is changing dramatically. The opinion of new friends in the children's sandbox or the "mom's" community on the social network on most issues may differ from the opinions of your work colleagues and childless friends. Perhaps it will be the mother of little Ilyusha (your son’s friend) who will open your eyes to the fact that it is not at all necessary to work, that you can simply realize yourself as a woman, wife, mother and at the same time be absolutely happy, for example, like her. Or, when faced with the absolute indifference of the mothers from the kindergarten group to your career successes, you will understand that not everyone considers the position of financial director a reason for black envy. Or, let’s say, your sewing or knitting skills, which you thought were very modest, will be appreciated so highly that they will inspire you to think about turning your hobby into a profitable handmade business. In any case, new points of view on work and family, on your achievements or lack thereof, shake the usual ideas, pushing you to go beyond the established framework of perception of your professional future.(read more)