Motherhood is absent from most conversations about equality in Latin music. These executives and creatives want you to know what it takes.
“I always saw pregnant women going to work and thought, ‘Oh how cute. It must be so easy.’ But now that I lived it, it’s exhausting,” says Laferte — who, unbeknownst to most people, was bedridden for a chunk of her tour, getting up only to perform. “Your back hurts, your feet get swollen – I went up a whole shoe size. It’s physically and emotionally complicated.
Balancing career and motherhood doesn’t end with pregnancy, of course, but continues to crescendo until children become adults. And while one can’t say that the balance is more difficult for mothers in the music industry, the particularities of the music biz — its round-the-clock cycle, unpredictable hours and image-facing jobs, even for executives — bring particular challenges that are largely kept silent.
It became one of several incidents where I felt motherhood challenges ran afoul of unspoken newsroom culture or unspoken company policy; I wasn’t initially offered maternity parking close to the office entrance, for example, because I hadn’t spent six months on the job. But the definition of the “real world” changed with COVID. Suddenly, everyone was working from home. Suddenly, every worker on the planet was doing Zoom calls with their children in the background. Suddenly, parenthood wasn’t invisible.
Fernández says Sony Latin is embracing a working model that is “hybrid with flexibility,” where time is shared between home and office and where efforts are made to accommodate individual needs and schedules. In Laferte’s case, her partner is her production manager, and as such, her permanent companion with the baby, both at home and on the road; he’s on diaper and bath duty, and Laferte nurses.If there is no partner or family around, having a support system, whether a nanny, housekeeper, neighbor — anything — is key. Absent my family, I routinely went to press conferences with a baby in the stroller and had no qualms about asking someone in attendance to hold her if needed . Neighbors were godsends.