‘Not having children was not an option for me’
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Lente de Vries (48) is the mother of the twins Mirre and Jip (9) and of Siebe (6). She works as a finance manager at Unilever and is the only senior manager within the group who works less than four days.
“Not having children was not an option for me. It was actually very biological, a hormone feeling that I felt down to my pores: I wanted to be a mother one day. My ex-husband and I were together for fourteen years. Babies weren’t a topic of conversation in the beginning, then we kept pushing that conversation ahead of us. He was different from me, I noticed. And so I had to make a choice: stay without children or leave and start a family alone. It was the last.
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Conscious single mother
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Since I have always worked on my career, I was able to buy a nice house. I signed up for a donor clinic when I was 37, and two years later I became a mother. Only later did I think: what have I done? I’ve made a pretty big decision for my kids, getting them conscious and raising them without a father.
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Still, I don’t do it all alone. The first weeks with the twins, a different girlfriend stayed over every night, I share milestones with family live or via Skype and I have a childminder for the days I work. On Wednesdays she goes to swimming lessons with the youngest.
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Part-time senior management
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Because things are going well at home, I can really focus on my work 28 hours a week. It’s often thought that you can’t work part-time in senior management positions, but I just threw a ball one day and that ball started rolling. In any case, I am the only senior manager at the Dutch branch of Unilever who works 28 hours, perhaps even worldwide. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be reached after 5pm. And yes, it happens that on my free Tuesday I sit down for a few hours for an important meeting. But on a working day I sometimes go and watch a performance at school, and then quickly return to the office. If you want your employer to be flexible, you should be flexible too.
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I do not feel that I am taken less seriously in the workplace because I work less than colleagues in the same position. They even think it’s cool that I’m a consciously single mother. I like my job, and I like to do it well. But I watch my time and tasks carefully. That means I sometimes turn down an extra project or a promotion because I don’t want to go over 28 hours. Well, at least not working four or five days like I did before. The time I have with my children is far too precious to me.
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Read also
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Mirjam has a rainbow family: ‘In the beginning not everyone understood that’ >
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Time for yourself
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It is really exactly as I had hoped. How nice that I was allowed to be the mother of three healthy and happy children. I thoroughly enjoy motherhood. From cozy weekends at home or camping in the mountains. On vacation I really recharge, and there I finally have time for myself. I even turn down the offer to drink wine with the neighbors at the campground so I can read a book while the kids are asleep. That may be the biggest challenge if you’re raising kids on your own alongside a busy job: taking time for yourself. But just as with education and career development, this also stands or falls with good management and setting boundaries.”
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This article can be found in Kek Mama 03-2021.
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