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Claire has worked as a PR at a major consulting firm, based in London, for six years. The 34-year-old enjoys her job and earns a comfortable salary, but in the past six months, she’s started to feel apprehensive about the future of her career. The reason: artificial intelligence. “I don’t think the quality of the work that I’m producing could be matched by a machine just yet,” says Claire, whose last name is being withheld to protect her job security. “But at the same time, I’m amazed at how quickly ChatGPT has become so sophisticated. Give it a few more years, and I can absolutely imagine a world in which a bot does my job just as well as I can. I hate to think what that might mean for my employability.”

When Jen Dalton got pregnant in 2018, she made a spreadsheet. Taking into account maternity leave, family-spacing health recommendations and even potential family holidays, she planned out when to have each of the four kids she thought she wanted. "I look at it once in a while and I giggle at how naïve I was," says Dalton, 31. That’s because, just two months after her daughter's birth, she and her husband decided they were 'one and done'. Part of it was their struggle with sleep deprivation and mental health; Dalton dealt with a traumatic birth, postnatal depression (PND) and postpartum anxiety (PPA). But even when life became easier, the decision felt right.

for most of the first year after her daughter was born in early 2022, Katie worked from home, managing customer service calls all day, without any kind of childcare. Each time her child began to cry, the 33-year-old mother from New Jersey, US, had to leave the room. If she didn’t, the customer on the other end of the phone line might hear the baby in the background, and question her professionalism.

My calls were usually less than five minutes. It was something I just had to suffer through, and hope the people on the other line couldn’t hear her crying. It was heart-wrenching. It wasn’t as bad when she was an infant. But soon she was walking, getting into stuff, needing attention. I'm talking and trying to concentrate and she's grabbing my headset or trying to grab my computer, or pulling at my shirt trying to get me to hold her. You're completely distracted. Even if you're trying really hard to ignore her, in your heart, you can’t.”