My mother didn’t tell anyone at work that she had kids

“My mother has been working since I can remember. I grew up in a suburban town in the South and lived there until I was 18, when I moved to New York City for college. The majority of my friends’ mothers were PTA moms, who spent their days working on elementary school fundraisers, going to barre classes, and gossiping. This meant I didn’t have many other people to compare my mom with, because she was one of the few working mothers I knew. Although more than 70% of moms with kids under the age of 18 are part of the workforce, in a middle-class white suburb in South Carolina, stay-at-home moms are the norm.

These days she’s a regular freelancer for Fast Company, but while I was growing up, she wrote for a number of other publications, squeezing her work around our schedules. That meant she was doing interviews in our car in the school pick-up line or writing an article on her laptop on the bench outside of ballet class.

It wasn’t until I was 8 years old that I found out that her coworkers didn’t even know I existed. The first time I remember realizing this was when Mom took me with her to pick up a check from a local magazine where she was the business editor. One of the publishers, upon seeing my sister and me, said, “Whose kids are these?” It felt like a slap to the face. Learning that my mom didn’t acknowledge my existence felt like she didn’t want me to exist.”