Getting Sticky With Neha Ruch

Photos by Tommy Rizzoli, Words by Anamaria Glavan

The world loves putting women into dichotomies: the Madonna or the whore, the wife and mother or the childless singleton, the working mom or the one who stays at home. It’s exhausting (and annoying, frustrating, all the synonyms for “dumb”) to be seen in such black-and-white terms. And in the case of the stay-at-home mother, there’s an unspoken message that the role lacks tangible value—that it’s the antithesis of ambition. Neha Ruch wants to change that narrative.

Neha is the founder of THE POWER PAUSE (formerly Mother Untitled), a platform working to reframe how we define stay-at-home motherhood. Her book, THE POWER PAUSE: How to Plan a Career Break After Kids – and Come Back Stronger Than Ever, is an essential read. 

“The whole book is really a set of new language for career pauses and for family life,” Ruch says. “Each chapter rearchitects a trope or false narrative we’ve been handed, whether that’s around identity, finances, child care, or even how we think about our résumés. It’s all language.”

Below, Neha talks about the sticky shaping of career identity, one that extends far beyond the confines of a corporate 9-to-5. About fractured work models, restructuring your time, and reclaiming ownership of your accomplishments. The old binaries are dead; long live flexibility. 

Pause and power go hand-in-hand

I loved kids early on; they brought out a different side of me. I took life pretty seriously and kids made me loosen up a bit. But I never saw motherhood as something separate; it just was.

My mother was one of the first to worry about my decision to pause and initially downshift. I interviewed her for the book, and she said something that really stuck with me: I just worried that if you didn’t make money, you didn’t really have a voice in the room.

That was such an eye-opening moment. That’s how she had felt, which was never my perception. My dad deeply respected her. The only real fight he and I ever had was over a suggestion that our family household was more his than hers. He really valued her perspective. Because of that, I saw my own decision to pause as empowering and fluid. 

Not dependence; interdependence  

If you start at the top, the concept of “stay-at-home motherhood,” just from a sociolinguistic perspective, is so flawed. It implies stagnancy. It implies being shut in. The term came up in the 1970s when we were fighting so hard to advocate for our place in the workforce.

At the same time, TVs were booming across the country and we were seeing sitcoms like Leave It to Beaver or I Love Lucy, even though Lucy wasn’t a mom. We actually commissioned a survey, American Mothers on Pause, with 1,200 at-home parents and 1,000 members of the general population. To this day, if you ask people who they think of when they hear stay-at-home mom, they’ll say June Cleaver or Lucy Ricardo. But if you ask who comes to mind as a working mom, they’ll say Michelle Obama, Sheryl Sandberg, Beyoncé. That power chasm is archaic, binary, and out of touch with the fluid reality many of us live.

The Power Pause is a whole new vocabulary. It’s about valuing the in-between. It puts language and worth to nontraditional work, including caregiving, and shifts us from saying I’m just a mom to something that fully embraces the richness of that choice.

Chapter by chapter, we reexamine ambition. We reexamine financial dependence, which is a big one. Instead of “depending,” it’s this idea of interdependence. That’s foundational if you’re making a career shift in a two-parent household. You need to be able to say to your partner: Yes, I may now depend on your income, but you’re depending on my ability to care for this household and manage the emotional and intellectual labor. That makes us truly interdependent. And when we present new language at every turn, it becomes easier to invest in ourselves and to grow alongside our kids.

Everything can ebb and flow 

If I pull back for a week, I remind myself that balance isn’t about a perfect equilibrium. I like the idea of a blend. It’s smudgy. Some weeks my kids need more. Some weeks my work needs more. I think about it more like a month, not a day.

For me, I have a personal limit on how many nights I go out. That limit has changed. When my kids were little and went to bed at 6:00, I went out all the time. Now they need help with homework. It’s a different stage. But I also let my friends and family know: this is where I’m at, and I’ll re-evaluate. 

I also learned to let go of a lot. I identified the parts that stressed me out and figured out how to either outsource or simplify them. When I thought about how I wanted to use that time, it wasn’t about what looked impressive. It was about what felt authentic. In your career, success is marked by clear benchmarks, promotions, salary bumps. In motherhood, those metrics vanish. It’s easy to fall into the trap of measuring yourself by how clean your house is or how well-behaved your kids are. And trust me—once they get older, that’s a surefire way to feel like a failure.

I’ve found that the most effective health “hack” is removing the friction between intention and action. For me, that means cutting out wait times and unnecessary logistics. One way I’ve done that is through Sollis Health. They make it easy to get care — whether it’s an MRI for my chronic knee issues or a flu shot — without long phone calls or time in waiting rooms. In a season of life where flexibility matters, having that built into my healthcare makes a big difference.

I’ve also added a personal trainer who comes to the house a couple mornings a week after the kids are out the door. That structure and accountability help me start the day clear and grounded.

Talking about money is not taboo 

We’ve had money meetings for years. Before we had kids, even, we treated our household like the most important organization. We run it like we run our businesses: with budgets, income in, income out, and values-based planning. Whether it was saving for travel or budgeting for a mortgage, it was all intentional.

He could see every line item in our budget (mine for Ubers was egregiously high). But when I eventually downshifted to part-time work and then paused completely, it helped us be methodical. We could look at the numbers and say, This is how it will work. We’d shift money away from certain expenses and realize we were saving a lot. Childcare, housekeeping, food prep, all of that added up. And when we brought in a part-time babysitter years later, that came out of a joint household budget. We planned for it. That system was foundational for us to walk through this shift together.

Chicken nuggets a la carte 

The middle section of my book is really about stepping into a Power Pause as a reframing of stay-at-home motherhood. It says: Yes, I’m parting with my paid work to care for my kids but this is also time for me to grow. To do that, we have to let go of false expectations, like the idea that if you become a stay-at-home mom, you must become a supermom. Absolutely not. 

Eventually, I realized a belief many women fall into—including myself—is: If I’m not doing paid work, I don’t deserve support. As your kids go through different stages, you start to realize that they’re not best served by a parent simply being around. They’re best served by a whole healthy adult. No one should be expected to work 24/7, including caregivers.

If you want to explore, grow, or even just have some quiet time to think, you need to make time. There’s no imaginary free time. You either lean on your partner, get unpaid help, or invest in some level of support. And we tend to think of it as full-time nanny or daycare or nothing. But there’s so much in between.

We’ve also been fed this very curated idea of what parenting should look like. There was a great article by Lauren Smith Brody for Harper’s Bazaar called The Invisible Nannies of Instagram, and it’s true, because we see these perfect portraits: the beautiful home, the nourishing meals, the arts and crafts. But there are missing corners. I might have done crafts with my kids but you didn’t see that I served them chicken nuggets for dinner and my house was a mess. 

An easy way to deepen relationships? Ask for help 

We’re not seeing the context people are operating in. Are their parents nearby? Do they have flexible work? We’re lucky to have grandparent help, and I’m explicit about that, but most people aren’t. So we’re operating in a vacuum, not realizing that help is not just okay but necessary. And worse, we assume everyone else is just as overloaded as we are.

And we feel guilt for asking for help when in fact, one of the hallmarks of truly intertwined relationships is asking for help. It makes it easier for others to ask, too.

Our kids benefit from knowing different people and seeing that everyone does things a little differently. That’s not confusing. It adds to their lives. We have a wonderful after-school babysitter four days a week plus some weekends. My kids are almost 10 and almost 7 now, and she’s an NYU grad and an aspiring actress. They are funnier because of her. Truly. 

That’s the part of child care we often overlook. We’ve dumbed down caregiving to tasks: putting kids to sleep, doing laundry, changing diapers. But the real work is in the intricate community-building around your kids. It’s the language you use to explain big ideas in an age-appropriate way. It’s navigating a new diagnosis or advocating within the school system or with insurance providers. That is the true intellectual and emotional labor of parenthood and it’s often dismissed. 

Be strategic about when you say “yes”  

Before you even think about scheduling or networking or productivity, figure out your true personal goals. What do you want your day to feel like in five years? Not just your job title but how do you feel in your body? What does your home feel like? What’s your relationship like with your kids, your partner, your parents? That vision isn’t who you’ll be tomorrow but it will shine a light on what really matters to you.

If your personal goal is to feel calmer in five years, maybe today that means five minutes of meditation. Or one podcast a week on women and anger. If your professional goal is to write again, maybe today it means one blog post a week. If your family goal is to be playful, maybe it’s a dance party every Monday. These things sound small but they dignify your time. They remind you that life isn’t just happening to you. You’re still in motion.

Call it "Restructured," not “Helped with restructuring” 

One thing I recommend besides the five-year plan is keeping a Notes app or Google Doc where you jot down bullets: a conversation that lit you up, something on social you lingered on, a school volunteer moment that made you proud, or even something you did with your partner that felt fulfilling. The point isn’t to make the list make sense, just a collection of sparks. Because especially for women who’ve stepped out of the paid workforce, when you look back at the end of a year, those small notes can reveal a surprising throughline.

There’s a woman in North Carolina I interviewed for the book who said, I reorganized the bus route at my kid’s school. It sounds like something any parent would do, but she realized: I love project management, who knew? She started pursuing that more intentionally. And when she put together her return-to-work portfolio, she didn’t call it a break. She wrote, Re-architected infrastructure for a local organization. The work is there. The dots do connect. And when you take pride in it, without dumbing it down, it becomes powerful.

The old binaries are dead; long live flexibility 

I’m really mindful of women who don’t have the luxury of stepping back. If you're in that position or if you're trying to return, there are ways to negotiate what you need. The old binaries—stay-at-home mom vs. working mom—they're dead. Most of us exist in this vast in-between where we’re constantly adjusting, dialing things up and down depending on the season.

Right now, one in three women working outside the home are planning to pause in the next two years. One in two will downshift their hours. And 90% of those who pause will return. This in-between is not a gap, it’s a strategy.

One example I love: a woman at HSBC negotiated a two-day workweek. She did it by calling a friend, who called another friend, who had already negotiated the same thing. She borrowed that plan, brought it to her manager, and proposed a six-week trial contract. It made it easier for everyone to say yes. It’s all about knowing what you’re willing to trade—whether that’s salary, benefits, or title—and being clear about that going in.

For women returning to work, I’m really bullish on the rise of women starting their own businesses and hiring other women in fractional roles. It’s creating a powerful ecosystem. These women aren’t working 40 hours a week but they’re top-tier talent. I personally have five women working 10 hours a week each. Together, they make one full-time role. One is a former VP of Development from The Skimm. One came from Time magazine and handles publicity. They don’t want full-time hours, but their insight, priorities, and strategic thinking are invaluable. Their 10 hours are worth more than most people’s 40.

That was me too, for a while. When I had one child, I worked two days a week. That was my balance. That season worked for me.

The five-year plan 

When I ask myself now—Where do I want to be in five years?—it’s a question I’ve been actively working on.

Publishing this book and watching it shift headlines and shape conversation has been a long game. It took nine years and it didn’t always look like this. Right now, I want to continue doing this work in new formats. I want to keep serving this community. And I want to do it in a way that allows me to be at school pickup and feel healthy. I’m in my 40s now and I want to keep living in this in-between. I want to keep carving out space for this work so that other women can, too. 

We were shown one portrait of success: sleek, linear, constant upward motion. Anything that centered family life was once seen as antithetical to ambition. But I think we’re rewriting that now. And for me, this is my risk-taking: to live inside the nuance and stay attuned to what really matters.

Did you know that U.S. adults spend ~8 hours per month coordinating healthcare for their families? Sollis Health offers exceptional immediate care with concierge medicine that's on-demand 24/7 in New York, South Florida, Southern and Northern California. Keep your family out of the ER 99% of the time with expert medical teams, on-site imaging and labs, care navigation, rapid specialist referrals, and much more. Learn more at sollishealth.com/membership