We plan to provide monthly resources around some of the most common questions we hear from our candidates. We thought we should start “at the top” with the question we most encounter, both implicitly and explicitly: could non-traditional work even be an option for me? And if so, what could that look like?

So, let’s get started.

Somewhere in the middle of interviewing the first fifty moms and dads about how they structured their work, a pattern started to emerge: the most frustrated parents were the ones whose work configuration was in misalignment with their values and the realities of their current needs.

Two very different sides of the same coin: One woman was attempting part-time work alongside caregiving for a child requiring significant day-to-day care. She was breathless and drained, and felt like that configuration made both work and caregiving harder than either would have been on its own. A second woman had spent the last three years doing eight days a month of strategic advisory work, while caregiving the rest of the time, and called it, without hesitation, the best of both worlds. Same general category of "not full-time," but for each of them, producing completely different experiences, energies and impacts on their nervous systems. The difference was alignment.

Based on this research, the three questions below are to help you think through which work <> life configuration may be the best fit for today.

What formerly may have largely been a career question, now, with kids or aging parents in play, is quite a bit more dynamic. A few ways to think about this:

How much of your day does caregiving actually take, and is that time predictable?

A consistent schedule, even a full one, is an early cue of potential bandwidth for more work. This, versus a schedule that may be sporadic but is marked by unpredictability and fluctuating demands. One woman we spoke to had tried a part-time arrangement while navigating significant care needs for her son, and found herself frantically answering emails at his doctors appointments. The hours were technically reduced, but the mental load wasn't. She eventually stopped working altogether because the unpredictability of her caregiving situation made any consistent commitment feel impossible to honor.

Is being at home right now mostly depleting or mostly energizing?

We may feel guilty asking or answering the question, but I think we all think about this a lot. One woman told us she was stressed and dismissive every time she was home during the early years, and that work was where she could breathe. Another said she loves her kids and loves being home, but her brain feels like mush a lot of the time, and that's a feeling she can't ignore. A third told us her son is only young once and the time with him is genuinely joyful, and paid work just isn’t as important right now. All three were in touch with what they needed to create their own sense of alignment, and all three responses have implications for the kind of work that will actually feel sustainable.

What is work actually for, for you, in this season?

This one can feel a bit more pernicious, tugging at our egos, our ambition, and our long-held expectations. It helps to think about it in two time horizons.

In the short-term, the answers are more varied: some need the income, some want purpose and identity outside the house, some are laser-focused on specific career goals that haven't faltered in a season of care.

In the long-term, almost everyone we spoke to shared some version of the same underlying motivation: keeping a foot in the door. Maintaining resume continuity, staying sharp in their field, preserving optionality for whenever this particular season shifts. The specifics look different for everyone, but the instinct to protect the career they've built, even while caregiving is the priority, was very, very common.

Knowing which of these is driving you right now, and in what proportion, matters more than people realize. It points toward different configurations, and different definitions of what success in this phase actually looks like.

My sense is people answer this question largely dependent on whatever their natural bend is towards optimism or pessimism. But you can get specific about types of ambiguity, then suss out what you’re comfortable with and what the trade offs are.

Financial ambiguity: can you handle inconsistent income, month to month?

Someone said to me that behind every person working part-time is a partner with a stable income and benefits. This is certainly not a rule, but it definitely has largely held true from what I’ve observed. So, realistically, what is that situation for you? Or do you independently have sufficient savings to tolerate inconsistent month-to-month income. It doesn’t need to be forever, but for, say, 6-months? 12-months? 24-months? Of note, a part-time, long-term configuration can offer meaningful income and stability, but still, there is work to source those roles, etc.

Commercial ambiguity: are you genuinely comfortable finding and winning your own work?

This came up in nearly every conversation we had. One dad told us that fractional work was great when roles fell into his lap through his network, but the moment he had to start actively hunting, it felt like feast or famine, and that defeated the whole purpose of saving time at work. Another said she would never go signal on LinkedIn that she was looking for clients, that it's simply not who she is. A third noticed that so many of her successful friends stall at exactly that point: they have the skillset, but not the appetite for the business development that sustains a pipeline.

Project-based or fractional work that requires you to continuously generate your own clients is a genuinely different thing from an ongoing embedded relationship where you show up and do the work. So how does that feel?

Emotional ambiguity: can you know, I mean, deeply know that, you are still an ambitious, driven professional, without a title or a team to back it up?

This one tends to surface later, after the transition has already happened, which is why it's worth naming now. One woman put it plainly: “External validation stopped mattering as much once I was in [part-time work], but getting to that place took longer than I expected.” The title, the team, the org chart: those things do a lot of identity work. Neha Ruch talks about this a lot in The Power Pause. This idea that without a full-time role, how on earth do you start to answer the “What do you do?” question, which is the prevailing “get to know you” question in our culture. The question isn't whether you're still ambitious, but it’s whether you’re comfortable untethering yourself from identity markers that have probably been really stabilizing in the past. What's worth saying, though, is that a lot of people who weren't sure they could answer yes to that question found, once they were actually out of the rat race, that it got easier faster than they expected. The question looms larger before the jump than after it.

It's easy to assume fewer options exist than actually do. It's equally easy to assume more, especially before you've started exploring alternative configurations. A few categories worth thinking through:

Your function.

Some functional areas more easily lend themselves to part-time than others. A Strategic Finance leader that works on 3-month planning cycles is more naturally part-time-compatible than a Product Manager in charge of incorporating customer feedback into a stack-ranked roadmap that the Engineering team depends on for their day-to-day work. One woman put it plainly: if you're a Growth Marketer buying ads, where you spend ad dollars today has a direct impact on that week's sales. That role does not necessarily need to be full-time, but it does require some attention, everyday. A long-term operating plan, by contrast, can take three months to build without disrupting anyone's day-to-day, and can very much happen in spurts. The planning-versus-execution distinction matters more than most people realize when they're thinking about which roles are workable at fifteen hours a week.

Your current employer.

Several women we spoke to pitched part-time arrangements to their employers, all with varying degrees of success. For me, before resigning, I thought about this option a lot in my full-time role at Alchemy. What held me back, for better or worse, was my ego. I knew that going part-time and staying at Alchemy meant I would no longer be able to manage my team and I just wasn’t ready to accept the implications of that. I don’t regret it but I’m not proud that was what stopped me from exploring that option. Think about whether you could transition to a part-time or advisory / project-based role within your current employer. How would the team need to work differently around you? How would you pitch it to your boss? What would that mean in terms of you potentially losing benefits?

It's also worth asking a slightly different question: is your current employer a bridge? Sometimes staying full-time a little longer, even when it's not the ideal configuration, builds the reputation, relationships, or resume line that makes the next thing more possible. That's a legitimate reason to stay, and a different calculation than whether the day-to-day is working.

Your timeline.

The market for non-traditional work is less efficient than the market for full-time roles, and it moves in a fundamentally different way. Most of these roles aren't posted anywhere. They surface through relationships, through being known in the right circles, through someone thinking of you at the right moment. That means the search doesn't have a starting gun and a finish line the way a traditional job search does. It has a long, sometimes quiet middle. Are you giving yourself enough runway for that, or are you building toward a date that will force a compromise you didn't actually want?

Answering the questions above honestly will help you land in the right configuration.

Ongoing work, with one employer at a time, where the relationship has continuity, consistency and depth. It’s not project-to-project, and it’s not typically a sprint. You can settle into the role, for a defined period.

This fits when you want to feel professionally rooted somewhere while still having meaningful time for caregiving, school pickups, appointments, and any other stuff that full-time work tends to cramp. The appeal is the rhythm, and you accept that you'll periodically need to find your next engagement, whether through your network, through Groundwork, or both.

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🟢 Might be right if: Your caregiving schedule is sufficiently predictable to commit to some consistent hours, and caregiving requires time and energizes you at home.

🔴 Less likely to fit if: Your family needs to maximize income and stability, or the idea of periodically finding your next engagement sounds like too much commercial ambiguity.

All in, for a defined window. Typically three to six months, with a clear beginning and end, e.g., a parental leave backfill position.

This fits when you're in a moment of transition, or when timing is less of a choice and more of a circumstance: a layoff that landed at the wrong moment, a death in the family, a return to work that needs to happen before the right long-term role has materialized. A lot of people find the caregiving math can work for a sprint when they know exactly when it ends. That clarity is part of the appeal.

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🟢 Might be right if: Your caregiving situation can absorb you working full-time for a defined period, and you're in a moment of transition that benefits from a clean beginning and end.

🔴 Less likely to fit if: Caregiving is heavy enough that a full-time commitment, even a short one, would break the system at home.

A discrete piece of work with a defined scope and a clear deliverable. Unlike Interim, the engagement is built around a specific outcome, but not necessarily explicitly time bound. This means when the project ends, the engagement ends.

A lot of this type of work happens opportunistically: your dream employer puts out a bat signal on LinkedIn for help on a 3-week sprint and you figure it out because it's a cool enough opportunity. It’s worth knowing going in that this configuration requires the most active pipeline management of the non-traditional options: when one project wraps, if you want to keep going, you need another one.

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🟢 Might be right if: Your caregiving schedule is variable or unpredictable, or you're still figuring out what you want next and you’ll benefit from exposure via a specific project.

🔴 Less likely to fit if: Inconsistent income is genuinely untenable, or you don't have the network or appetite to keep generating your own pipeline.

A traditional employment structure, with all that comes with it: a consistent role, a team, benefits, and the expectation that work is the primary thing during working hours.

This will be all of us at different seasons. What matters as much as the structure itself is the company: the culture, the flexibility, whether the autonomy they describe in the job posting is real. Not all full-time is created equal, and finding a company that actually understands how you work best is probably as important as the role itself.

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🟢 Might be right if: Your caregiving load is manageable, the financial math makes fewer hours of compensation unappealing, and your goals require the continuity that non-traditional structures won't provide.

🔴 Less likely to fit if: Your caregiving requires more time than full-time work affords, you don’t want to sacrifice a specific title or role, or the ambiguity of non-traditional work is something you could actually live with.

Not working outside the home.

One woman described choosing this deliberately, not as a retreat from ambition but as a recognition that this particular window is short, and being fully there for it is what she was ambitious for now.

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🟢 Might be right if: Caregiving is heavy, unpredictable, or you're in a season that feels too important and too short to divide your attention. It also may make sense if you know you want to eventually pivot roles or industries, or for other reasons, a gap in your resume isn’t worrisome.

🔴 Less likely to fit if: Work is genuinely where you breathe, or the financial situation requires income and the pause isn't actually optional.

The goal isn't to find the right answer forever. It's to find the right answer for right now, and to be honest enough with yourself to actually know what that is. It reminds me of how everything in parenting is in phases. The weird 4am screaming that’s been happening for the past week won’t last forever. This is the same. These phases don’t last forever and a lot of this is about getting comfortable with a different relationship to time.

The parents who seem most settled in their configurations built them from a clear-eyed read of their own lives, today.

This is also, not coincidentally, why Groundwork exists. The biggest barrier we kept hearing wasn't clarity, it was access: once people knew they were looking for part-time, interim or project-based roles, actually finding them was hard enough that those three options didn’t really feel like options at all. By working directly with companies to surface and build non-traditional roles, we’re making them options, so you can have the full breadth of choices, for whatever your current season may be.