Being too busy for sports day is not a leadership flex

At a crushing time of year for working parents, leaders must ensure that caring responsibilities are not a career killer, writes Nicola Kemp.

What has really helped me is to just count myself out and recognise how busy I am.”

An agency leader is diligently explaining to me how I can better navigate the competing demands of work and school by simply counting myself out. He goes on to explain that it is simply unreasonable for schools to expect parents to attend school events during the working day. Phew! Problem solved!

We are having this conversation at a tennis tournament, during a working day. When I ask him who is picking his kids up from school, he looks slightly perplexed. His wife, of course! The one who enables him to ‘count himself out’. Because he can count on her to always show up.

Aware that my eye is furiously twitching. Perhaps because of the tiredness of the unrelenting demands of the end-of-term calendar, or sheer rage. I do nothing but thank him for his helpful advice. Although I write for a living, when it comes to explaining the motherhood penalty, I increasingly struggle to find the right words.

Systems built to suffocate

For working parents in the media at this time of year, the whiplash is almost constant. If you are childfree, you may not even realise that Cannes Lions lands slap bang in the middle of sports day season. The demands on parents of school-age children at this time of year are wild.

For parents in advertising, a 4 am flight to sports day sprint, only to find it has been rained off, is a remarkably common occurrence. The parents of the class of 2026 navigated the additional curveball of a heatwave and school closures.

In a world in which it is increasingly dangerous to make sweeping generalisations, I know that most women reading this sentence want to do less. A desire which should not be confused with a lack of ambition.

Almost every woman I know is juggling too many unpaid jobs to list. Yet the flurry of end-of-term reminders does not include a notice to stop spending women’s time like water.

The mother of all judgements

Yet while health, the weather, school calendars and pretty much every single aspect of parenting is completely unpredictable, what is alarmingly predictable is the careless judgement working parents still face.

Spare a thought for the female sales director, who was publicly berated by her CEO (who was calling in from Cannes) for not being in their London office. Never mind the fact that her young children were home from school. Surely she would look far less hot and bothered if she was benefiting from the office aircon?

As working mothers, we exist in a wider media ecosystem in which women are encouraged to see other women’s choices as innately a judgement of our own. The ridiculous stereotype of the vipers at the school gates. The women against woman narrative weaponised and monetised on the Daily Mail.

A pendulum swing of choice and compromise

I have worked with men and women who have missed the entirety of the six summers of junior school sports days, because they chose to go to Cannes Lions. Feminism is about choice, not judgement.

But we cannot be careless in perpetuating the narrative that nothing is more important than work, holding women to an invisible standard that keeps on rising.

This summer marks the end of one of the most challenging, rewarding and beautiful stages of our life as a family. My youngest daughter finishes junior school. This year’s sports day juggle was the last of the junior school era.

I could take this milestone as a reason to tell you about all the moments I missed. The times when the career compromises I faced lacked compassion. The moments where it felt impossible. The endless guilt. The times when the end of the school calendar sent me into a rage spiral (often).

Motherhood is not a creative full stop

But there is another story to tell. In a world in which so many aspects of mothering remain wordless, it’s a story worth telling. It’s about the friends we all made and came to love like family. It’s the power of the invisible labour of women who simply refuse to judge each other, stepping up for each one of us when we couldn’t be there.

It’s the overwhelming pride of watching my daughter advocate for herself, to run hard, play hard and not ask for permission. The joy of seeing her not just find herself, but choose herself.

The energy I get from seeing her fearlessness drives my own work forward. Lighting the fire that we so often dampen in ourselves, in the pursuit of someone else’s vision of what success looks like.

In the media industry, we love nothing more than to talk about growth. Yet we still do not recognise the creative and cultural expansiveness of mothering.

A disconnect that goes some way toward explaining why, in 2026, leaders are still so dismissive of sports day. In an industry in which being busy is a badge of honour, it is all too easy to crush women’s careers without noticing.

Paying attention is a choice. We can choose to create a culture in which attending a sports day is not a radical act. We can find the words, however imperfect, to challenge bias and lazy thinking. For the industry changemakers looking to tell a different story: count me in.

Nicola Kemp has spent over two decades writing about diversity, equality and inclusion in media. She is now editorial director at Creativebrief and writes for The Media Leader each month.