When I started my first job out of college and found myself working 60 hours a week, stressed out of my mind and wondering, dear god, how can I ever do this if I have kids (?!), one of my mentors called me out for being overly dramatic. (Who, me?)

She brushed aside my expectation that children would make life more complicated. In fact, she said that she often encouraged her managers, especially the high-strung ones, to jump in and have kids whenever they started talking about it.

Very forward thinking and family friendly, no? Her reasoning, however, was less than altruistic.

 “Once people have kids,” she said, “they just don’t care as much about work.” OK, I can go with that. “And that makes them better at their job.” Huh?

If you’re like I was—sans kids and darkly eyeing the coworkers who leave the office promptly at 5 p.m. every day, you’re thinking right about now, “Gee, that sounds like the biggest load of motherhood-is-great, join-the-darkside bullshit I’ve ever heard.” Stick with me though.

She went on to explain that rather than being scattered and stressed, the parents she saw in the workplace were more likely to be focused and efficient. They were more realistic about their expectations and abilities than their child-free counterparts, which helped them to maintain a competitive edge even though they required more flexibility in their schedules.

Some of you tech-savvy moms and managers out there are probably among the lucky ones who’ve experienced this side-effect. You know firsthand what much of the prevailing research on work-life management supports—that joining the parenting ranks doesn’t have to spell career suicide and can even improve your productivity (provided your employer adopts the progressive policies to support you). I have to admit that over the last several years of my own career I’ve observed the latter in several of my peers and been amazed by it each time.

So does that mean we should all go and pop out a couple of kids just to jump the career ladder? Of course not. Most working moms still face a ton of discrimination on the job (which I’ll talk about another time). But it does give a girl hope that if on the off chance she does decide to have some rugrats down the road, she doesn’t have to lose her edge.

For more information on work-life management, check out the resources at Moms Rising.