Abstract

Abstract:

As more women pursue professional careers, the need to balance career advancement, family planning, and overall wellness has become increasingly complex. While women’s participation in the workforce has grown, public health frameworks have not sufficiently evolved to support their multidimensional wellness needs—especially during reproductive decision-making. This qualitative study explores how working women perceive and manage wellness when contemplating or actively planning for children, identifying systemic gaps that hinder holistic well-being.

Semi-structured interviews and focus groups were conducted with 25 career-oriented women who expressed a desire for future motherhood. Participants were recruited through snowball sampling. Data were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using thematic coding to identify patterns related to perceived wellness, workplace dynamics, and family planning.

Three primary themes emerged: (1) balancing wellness across life domains often leads to trade-offs, particularly between emotional and social well-being; (2) women face both internal barriers (such as perfectionism and guilt) and external barriers (such as inflexible workplace norms and lack of support); and (3) the workplace functions as a powerful gatekeeper to wellness—either enhancing or restricting women’s perceived readiness for parenthood. Emotional wellness was most frequently prioritized, yet social wellness (e.g., community support, connectedness) was consistently undervalued or unmet. Women with flexible work schedules or entrepreneurial roles reported stronger wellness confidence due to greater control over time and energy allocation.

Importantly, all participants expressed a desire to enhance their wellness across at least one of the eight dimensions—emotional, physical, social, intellectual, occupational, environmental, spiritual, and financial—before starting a family. These findings reveal a crucial gap in how reproductive readiness is supported in professional environments, and how wellness itself is framed within public health discourse.

This study highlights multiple educational and systemic gaps: a lack of holistic understanding of working women’s wellness; limited recognition of the workplace as a clinical and social determinant of reproductive health; and insufficient counseling support tailored to career-oriented women. Furthermore, wellness is often underestimated as a reproductive justice issue, contributing to inadequate policy frameworks that fail to address gender-specific needs. Burnout is also commonly framed in the context of frontline healthcare roles, with insufficient attention to its effects among non-clinical or white-collar professional women.

By foregrounding women’s lived experiences, this study informs the development of gender-responsive, holistic public health strategies. Workplace wellness programs, employee health counseling, and maternal health policy initiatives must evolve to consider the intersection of career, wellness, and reproductive autonomy. This research contributes to a broader understanding of wellness as foundational to equitable maternal and public health outcomes. Public health professionals, employers, and policymakers are encouraged to use these insights to promote workplace environments that support—not hinder—women’s wellness and reproductive choices.