M+WORK: Why Every Woman Balancing Work and Motherhood Needs to Read This book

Leaving the Ladder Down by Dolly Jones

Whether you’re newly pregnant and contemplating maternity leave, deep in the juggle of KIT days and nursery drop-offs, or years into balancing career and motherhood, Leaving the Ladder Down by Dolly Jones is essential reading.

When Dolly became a mother for the first time, the idea of returning to her all-consuming job as an Editor at Vogue suddenly felt daunting. This was despite knowing many women who had done just that. She struggled to find stories that galvanised or reassured her, let alone ones that made her feel anything was still possible.

This book is the result of the answers she went looking for, and in turn, a guide for the rest of us.

If you’ve ever wondered whether women in other industries have it easier, this book confirms what many of us suspect: it’s hard everywhere, in different, yet often strikingly similar, ways. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of women across a vast spectrum of professions — from army officers to fashion designers, taxi drivers to barristers, bankers to doctors — Dolly paints a vivid and honest picture of what it really looks like to be a working mother today.

You’ll find yourself nodding in recognition at the stories of navigating childcare, negotiating flexible working, and the trials that come with every choice. There are also moments of disbelief, like the woman who returned from maternity leave only to be told, “Don’t you ever do that again.”

But there is humour here too. From the Colonel who claimed it was easier to take 800 soldiers to Afghanistan than to get 80 kids on a school trip to a local park to the absurdity of class WhatsApp groups and the familiar chaos of working from home with small children underfoot.

In sharing these missteps, pivots and breakthroughs, Dolly creates a sense of community that feels both real and necessary, not the polished, performative kind, but the generous “I’ve been there too” kind that women genuinely need.

Organised into digestible chapters, this is the kind of book you can dip in and out of, or consume in one sitting (as I did!). Because if there’s one thing we love, it’s hearing how other women actually do it. Sometimes for reassurance, sometimes in awe, and often just to remember we’re not alone.

The book cleverly covers not only the logistical and legal sides of working motherhood, but also the deeper emotional currents: the identity shifts, the guilt, the confidence wobbles, and the question of how to retain a sense of self when everything feels entirely new. It’s this practical backbone that makes the book truly invaluable. Some chapters may resonate more than others depending on your stage of motherhood, but one thread runs through them all: the power of solidarity.

If you read one book this summer, make it this one and then pass it on to every woman you know.

Leaving the Ladder Down: How to Combine Career and Motherhood, from the Women Who’ve Done it by Dolly Jones is available to purchase here