The Existential Crisis of the Wait-at-Home Mom

In fact, Drayton was so beside herself that last year, when she heard about the Career Comeback Program at Wharton, she hesitated to apply. She knew she was a perfect candidate for the free three-day seminar for a select group of 60 professional women from all over the country who wanted to start working again. But, “Everyone in that program’s going to be an MBA,” she thought. “I’m not an MBA.”

She applied anyway. And she got in. The first assignment, before the seminar, was for participants to post their profiles online — short blurbs about their backgrounds. “I kept procrastinating,” Drayton says. “I kept trying to figure out what I was going to put up there, thinking, ‘What if I’m not accomplished enough?’ I mean, I knew that I had been highly accomplished, but it didn’t matter anymore. That was yesterday.” The day before the weekend seminar, Drayton checked online. Of the 60 women, only one had posted a profile.

This doesn’t surprise Monica McGrath, the Wharton professor of management who runs the Career Comeback Program. In fact, the whole program grew out of a study she spearheaded three years ago, called “Back in the Game,” that examined women who were trying to “step back in.”

“They’ve all lost some level of confidence,” says McGrath. “And every time they hit a wall, it just spirals down.” Like when they send out résumés and get no responses. Or they do get a response and end up in an interview being grilled: “What did you do all those years?”

At the end of the first day of the Comeback program, after many straight hours of lectures, the women broke out into small groups. Drayton listened as one woman in her circle described all her pre-kid accomplishments — she’d written a book, worked in finance, earned an MBA. She then teared up as she admitted, out loud to six strangers, that she was most worried she wouldn’t get her confidence back.

“Everyone got so emotional,” Drayton says. “It was like a therapy session — all of us discovering that we weren’t the only ones feeling so scared.”

Feeling scared? Lacking confidence? Sitting there discussing how “not good enough” she felt? That’s not the profile of a woman who started her own business when she was 23 and made millions. But Drayton isn’t that woman anymore. And here’s the kicker — she doesn’t want to be that woman. She doesn’t want the job that woman had. When she envisions her next step, she’s not thinking “money” and “prestige,” as she was 15 years ago. She’s thinking “passion” and “meaning” and “making a difference in the world” and “doing what I love.” She has different values now — “a whole new set of criteria,” she says. She’s not simply starting over professionally; she’s starting over as a new woman.