Returning to Work After Maternity Leave, but No Longer Wanting Your Old Job?

Why motherhood can change your relationship with work, ambition and the career you thought you wanted.

You spent years building your career. You worked hard, developed your expertise, earned your place and perhaps even reached a position you once dreamed of having. Before maternity leave, you knew your job, understood the expectations and had a reasonably clear picture of where your career was going.

Of course, there were frustrations. The demanding boss, the endless meetings, the compromises, the office politics, the working culture that expected you to be endlessly available. But you managed them. Perhaps you even considered them the price of having a successful career.

Then you had a baby.

And when you returned to work after maternity leave, something felt different.

Not necessarily immediately. You might have been excited to return, to reconnect with colleagues, to use your professional brain again and to reclaim a part of your identity that had been quieter during maternity leave.

But as the weeks passed and you settled back into your role, an uncomfortable feeling began to emerge.

What if I don't actually want this job anymore?

When the job you loved no longer feels right

One of the themes I notice in my coaching work with mothers returning to work is a growing sense of disconnection from the professional life they had before maternity leave.

These are often experienced, capable women who have invested years in their careers. They're not suddenly incapable of doing their jobs. In many cases, they're perfectly capable of doing them very well.

But they're no longer sure they want to.

You might find yourself sitting in meetings wondering why certain things matter so much to everyone else. You may feel increasingly frustrated by decisions you once accepted without question, or find that your relationship with your manager has become harder to tolerate.

Perhaps the promotion you previously wanted no longer feels particularly exciting. Perhaps the thought of another few years in the same role fills you with a quiet sense of dread.

And then there's the guilt.

You worked so hard to get here. You have a good job, a decent salary, perhaps flexibility and colleagues you like. Shouldn't you be grateful? Isn't this exactly what you wanted?

You might tell yourself that you're simply tired, that returning to work takes time, that you should give yourself six months before making any decisions.

Sometimes that's sensible.

But sometimes the dissatisfaction doesn't disappear because it isn't simply about adjusting to being back at work.

Sometimes the job hasn't changed very much. You have.

The compromises you made before motherhood

Before having children, you may have been willing to tolerate a great deal in the name of career progression.

You stayed late because that's what ambitious people did. You worked around a difficult boss because you believed the opportunity was worth it. You accepted organisational politics, unnecessary meetings or an exhausting commute because these were simply the conditions attached to the career you wanted.

You may not even have experienced these as compromises at the time. They were just part of professional life.

Motherhood can change the way you see them.

When your time and energy feel more precious, the question becomes less about whether you can make something work and more about whether you want to.

You may still be willing to work incredibly hard, but you want that effort to mean something. You may still want to lead, progress and earn well, but you're less prepared to tolerate an environment that leaves you depleted.

And perhaps, for the first time, you begin to ask yourself whether the career you've been building is still the career you would choose today.

That can be an unsettling question, particularly when so much of your identity has been tied to being successful in your profession.

How matrescence changes your professional identity

There's a name for the profound developmental transition that happens as we become mothers: matrescence.

Much like adolescence, matrescence involves changes in identity, emotions, relationships, values and the way we understand ourselves. And it doesn't necessarily end when maternity leave does.

We often think about returning to work after maternity leave as a logistical challenge. Finding childcare, organising working hours, negotiating flexibility, managing nursery illnesses and trying to remember how to have an uninterrupted conversation.

But there is another transition happening beneath the practical arrangements.

You are integrating motherhood into an identity that existed long before your baby arrived.

And that process can change your relationship with ambition, success, authority, recognition and the way you want to spend your working life.

Things that once motivated you may no longer hold the same appeal. You may feel more protective of your time, clearer about your values or more willing to question the expectations you've spent years trying to meet.

That doesn't mean matrescence inevitably makes women want to change jobs. Many mothers return feeling deeply connected to their work, and others discover a renewed appreciation for the careers they've built.

But for some, matrescence brings a growing awareness that their professional lives no longer reflect the people they are becoming.

And that awareness deserves to be explored, rather than dismissed as a temporary loss of confidence.

What if you're not losing ambition, but re-defining it?

I find this one of the most interesting aspects of coaching women through the return to work.

We often assume that if a mother no longer wants the career she previously pursued, she must be stepping back from ambition.

But what if the opposite is happening?

What if she's becoming more ambitious about the quality of her working life?

More ambitious about having autonomy. More ambitious about doing work that genuinely interests her. More ambitious about leading in an environment that reflects her values. More ambitious about having a career that supports her life rather than one that constantly competes with it.

Sometimes this means exploring an entirely different professional direction. Sometimes it means looking for a new opportunity within the same organisation, changing the kind of work you do or choosing a different leadership environment.

And sometimes it means deciding to stay, but on terms that feel more intentional and sustainable.

The important change isn't necessarily the job title. It's the sense of choice.

Instead of asking how to squeeze yourself back into your old professional identity, you begin asking what kind of working life you want to create now.

Why this can feel so frightening

Recognising that you want something different doesn't automatically make it easy to pursue.

In fact, it can be deeply uncomfortable.

You may have spent years being known as the reliable one, the high performer, the person with a clear career trajectory. Perhaps other people have invested in your progression, or you've made financial and family decisions around the assumption that you would continue along the same path.

Changing direction can feel like throwing away everything you've worked for.

You might also worry about how your decisions will be interpreted. Will people assume motherhood has made you less committed? Will they see you as someone who couldn't cope with returning to work? Are you risking your professional reputation by wanting something different?

And beneath all of that, there may be a more personal fear.

If I no longer want the career I've spent years building, who am I?

This is where the identity work of matrescence becomes particularly relevant.

You aren't necessarily rejecting the woman you were before motherhood. Her experience, knowledge, ambition and achievements still belong to you.

But you may be questioning whether the future she imagined is still the future you want.

That is a very different conversation from simply rebuilding your confidence so you can perform as you did before.

You don't have to make a dramatic career change

I want to be careful here, because discovering that your priorities have changed doesn't mean you need to resign, start a business or make a dramatic announcement on LinkedIn.

Sometimes the answer is a different role, a different team, a more supportive manager or a conversation about how your current job could work better.

Sometimes you need more time to settle into your return before you can distinguish between temporary exhaustion and a deeper change in direction.

And sometimes, after properly exploring what's happening, you realise that the career you've built genuinely isn't the career you want to continue.

There is no single right outcome.

What matters is giving yourself permission to explore the question without immediately judging your feelings as disloyal, ungrateful or unrealistic.

You can appreciate everything your career has given you and still want something different from its next chapter.

How leadership coaching can help when your old job no longer fits

When women come to coaching feeling dissatisfied after returning to work, I don't assume the answer is to help them leave their jobs.

Equally, I don't assume the goal is to rebuild their confidence so they can become the same high-performing employee they were before maternity leave.

Instead, we explore what's actually happening.

What has changed in your relationship with work? Which parts of your role still energise you, and which leave you feeling depleted? What compromises are you no longer willing to make? What are you afraid might happen if you pursue something different?

And importantly, what does ambition mean to you now?

Through my Just Matrescence® approach, I bring together leadership coaching and an understanding of the identity transition into motherhood. That means we can explore the practical career questions alongside the emotional changes that may be influencing them.

You might discover that you want to progress differently, change roles, renegotiate expectations, pursue a new opportunity or build an entirely different professional future.

Or you might discover that what you need is a different relationship with the job you already have.

The outcome isn't predetermined. It's yours to decide.

Perhaps you've outgrown the career you thought you wanted

There's something quite powerful about recognising that the choices you made before motherhood were right for the person you were then, without assuming they must remain right forever.

You don't have to justify a new direction by proving that your old job was terrible. You don't have to wait until you're burnt out, miserable or completely disengaged before giving yourself permission to consider something else.

And you don't have to become less ambitious to want a different kind of success.

Perhaps returning to work after maternity leave isn't simply about finding your feet again.

Perhaps it's an opportunity to discover where you want those feet to take you next.

If you've returned to work after maternity leave and your old job no longer feels right, I can help you explore what's changed and what you want next.

I'm Eve Ostrovskaya, an ICF PCC leadership coach and Mama Rising® Certified Coach. Through Just Matrescence®, I support mothers navigating professional identity, confidence and career decisions after maternity leave.

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