Michelle Obama's disservice

You're dammed if you do. You're dammed if you don't. Especially if you're Michelle Obama.

If Michelle Obama had said that she was going to get a high-powered job in Washington, she'd be getting a bunch of slack from the at-home mom consortium about how she was neglecting her children through a difficult transition from Chicago to the White House. But because she said that she was going to be the "mother in chief," she is getting slack because she is sending the message "that high-level paid work and motherhood don't mix, or that women need to be the ones to step down to care for family," according to Maggie Jackson's November 30 column in the Boston Globe.

Puleese.

Can't people just do what they want to do? If she wants to be home to help her young girls through the transition, then she should be able to make that choice in peace. If she wants to eventually go back to work, then she should also be able to make decision in peace. Jackson wrote that, "Obama's controversial message deserves some dissecting, for it's one that our daughters and sons are hearing, too." Yes, I know that she's a public figure and every choice she makes as a woman or parent or wife will be dissected and analyzed until the original goal and her original intention is no longer recognizable. But, I suspect -- and maybe I'm going out on a limb here -- that she is just trying to make the right choice for herself and her marriage and her kids. Period. I doubt there is any hidden message or agenda. I doubt she is speaking for all women or all parents or all wives or all mothers. Jackson wrote: "To hear her try to distance herself now from that role (as a highly successful working mother) does a disservice to our children - and to our country."

Does it really have to mean that much to so many people? Can't it just be about a woman and her family? Does her choice really have to be the reflection of where women are in the world or the workforce or whether they are trapped under a glass ceiling or whether they are oppressed by their husbands or whether they are ambitious enough or if they are sending the right message to our sons and daughters?

And is she really doing a disservice? I'm sure her kids don't see it as a disservice. I'm sure her husband does not see it as a disservice. I'm sure he's grateful that she is willing to sacrifice her own career for a little while to be with their kids. He is going to be pretty darn busy in his new job and I'm sure he's grateful that his children will have some normalcy in their newly-chaotic and very public lives. Does her choice have to be a bad thing? Is is wrong for our sons and daughters see an educated women want to be with her kids for a period of time? If so, then many of the women I know are also sending the wrong message to their own sons and daughters and to their communities. I'm surrounded by highly educated women with all kinds of degrees who are at home with their kids. I'm also surrounded by women who work hard and have their kids in daycare.

It seems to me that this article is just trying to ignite the war (once again) between working parents and non-working parents. Her husband was just elected to be President of the God-Damned United States of America for Christ's sake. It seems to me that Jackson is just trying pick open a scab to get the bleeding to start again. Why are we trying to say that one choice is better than another choice? This old war between working parents and non-working parents is nothing but a reason to argue. One is not better than the other. I think we should focus on more important things, like the fact that our county is going to be a better place simply because Barack and Michelle Obama are in the White House, regardless of whether Michelle is in a playroom with her girls or in a conference room with her colleagues.

Sour grapes, perhaps?

I think I'm going about this book-writing thing all wrong. I should have just latched onto a comment made by the First-Lady-to-be and decided to write a book. Why do soul-searching and a gut-wrenching examination of my personal experience with a critically-ill son who has spent months in the hospital when all I really needed was a catch phrase to latch onto. I needed the domain-name gods to align and be in the right place at the right time.

What am I referring to? Why Michelle Obama's self-proclamation of "Mom in Chief." I love that she used that expression. I'll chalk that coincidence up to great minds thinking alike. But if only I had been smart enough to also register www.mominchief.com in addition to www.motherinchief.com back in January 2005 when this site took life. Well, now there is another Mom in Chief, in addition to Michelle Obama and me. There is blogger with that domain name and a book deal to match. Her book is set to come out in February 2009. Her blog miraculous sprung to life the day after Michelle first used those words in August 2008. I'm sure this other MIC is a perfectly fine writer with a perfectly nice book, and fantastic connections (apparently) in the publishing industry. Do I sound bitter?

I suppose I wouldn't be filled with disdain for her if I was having a smoother transition from writer to author. I just don't understand how you go from concept to published book in six months flat. If I did, my book would have hit the market 18 months ago. In the meantime, I'm still working, still researching agents, still feeling optimistic, although ever-so-slightly annoyed. I am still confident, however, that my project will eventually reach the people who need it. At least I wasn't planning on calling my book Mother in Chief. At least my book isn't about balancing a career with parenthood. Then I'd probably be really, really annoyed.

I think I'm a little jaded

An increasing number of men are taking time off from their careers to care for their kids. When these dads decide it is time to reenter the workforce, they will face many of the same challenges that millions of women have been struggling with for decades--how to you overcome that several-year resume gap?

I can't help but wonder if overcoming resume gaps will become easier for men and women as more men need to accomplish the same thing that has been a longstanding, prickly challenge for women. Or will it eventually become easier for men to get back in? Sort of a knock, knock, wink, wink re-entry? An old-boys network kind of re-entry? As I wonder about this, I start thinking about the same sort of questions that I think about when I am perplexed as to why Viagra is covered by many insurance plans when birth control pills are often not covered. Or why men continue to make more money than women for the same job. Inequities are everywhere. As a result, I guess I would not be all the surprised if men one day had an easier time overcoming those years away from desks, meetings, and conference calls.

While this phenomenon of more men staying home is in its infancy as fathers trail-blaze their way to playgroup and Mommy and Me classes, we won't know for years if my theory is right. For now, some men who are ready to go back to work are taking advantage of programs that were designed to help women "on ramp" back to work, according to Maggie Jackson's article in Sunday's Boston Globe, called "On-ramping' not just for women anymore."

While women are the primary participants in these kinds of refresher courses, more men are joining in. Dartmouth, for example, debuted a "Back in Business" program in 2006. Of the 72 participants in the program's first two years, 16 percent were men, according to the article. Lehman Brothers has also seen a jump in the number of men interested in its "Encore on-ramping program," the article said.

Perhaps I should spend less time wondering if, how, or why and focus instead on the fact that there are more programs helping people--mothers and fathers--successfully move back into the work-world.

Family-work balance is a presidential issue

Helping families find the ever-elusive family-work balance is becoming a key issue for presidential candidates. Senator John Edwards is the latest candidate to announce his proposals to help working parents as part of his "Young Families Rising Agenda." The key issues announced today include: offering universal preschool and expanding affordable child care; offering paid leave to all workers by 2014; expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act to cover 13 million additional workers; requiring that businesses offer all full-time workers seven paid sick days a year.

"Two-thirds of mothers now work--most of them full time--but our workplace practices and public policies don't reflect this change," Edwards said in a press release. "It's time we offered universal preschool and expanded affordable child care. We must also extend the Family and Medical Leave Act so that working parents don’t have to choose between taking care of a sick child and losing their jobs. And we need to make sure every American has access to quality health care and a good-paying job. As president, I will fight to make sure young families can succeed and build a better life for their children."

Edward's policies seem similar to Senator Barack Obama's "Work Family Balance Agenda," which was announced last month. And both policies seem similar to Hillary Clinton's Work-Family Agenda, which was announced in October.

I'm sure there are differences between how each of these politician's policies would actually impact American families. I haven't sorted all that out yet. What I do know is that it is good to hear presidential candidates acknowledge that current programs are grossly inadequate, and that they--the top-running Democratic politicians--are trying to fix a broken system.

Holding it all together

I've seen motherhood illustrated as an octopus--think February 2005, Newsweek cover when Judith Warner was about to release her book Perfect Madness--and that just isn't quite right. With an octopus, you have eight working parts all functioning independently. And presumably, if one of those limbs was severed, the other seven would still be operational. If I had to illustrate the idea of motherhood, it would be a spider web. Because if one thread is compromised, the whole thing collapses. Sure the spider would immediately start mending the damage, but it would take time.

That is a more realistic view of motherhood. Mothers are stretched in so many directions, so when mom hasn't figured out how to stabilize all the parts--child rearing, spousal relations, domestic duties, getting much-needed breaks, pursuing her own creative outlets, managing house projects, etc., etc.--the whole web suffers.

So if I don't find childcare soon, this whole thing is going to collapse. I'm a totally frustrated writer--I have so much to write and no time. Yes, you could argue that instead of writing this, I could be writing that. But at least it isn't the other way around with so much time, but nothing to write. So what is holding me back, you ask? Finding a reliable and normal person to watch Baby in Chief. Finding someone who meets my seemingly-simple criteria seems about as likely as finding a contact lens in a cornfield. With the bad luck I've had, I'm going to start taking it personally. Here are the sordid details:

1. Successfully hired Childcare Person #1 (but then I changed my mind because she wanted to bring her two kids with her).
2. Successfully hired Childcare Person #2 (and then she flaked and I never heard from her again).
3. Was ready to hire Childcare Person #3 (and then she backed out because she accepted a full-time job elsewhere).
4. Wanted to meet Childcare Person #4 (but then she hung up on me once she realized she was a 45-minute drive from my house. Who just hangs up on someone? What kind of person does that? How about a normal person's response: "Oh, wow. I didn't realize you lived so far away from me. I don't think it will work. Thanks anyway.")

Perhaps a better solution is sharing someone else's nanny. I responded to an ad and even went over to meet the mom, the boy, and the nanny (aka: interview for the privilege of sharing a nanny with them). And now I wait, and wait, and wait while they interview other prospective families. I even upped my offer to include more hours. Please, please, please pick me!! When did finding childcare become as competitive as buying a house in the Bay Area?

Women leaving technology jobs

Women are leaving the IT field, according to a Computing magazine article. The number of women IT workers dropped to 16 percent, down from 19 to 21 percent in 2000. The article did not say whether this was just women in the UK or if this was all women within the information technology field. We need to assume that they are talking about women in the UK only because it states that women represent 46 percent of the overall UK workforce.

"Some 61 per cent of database assistants and 42 per cent of assemblers of electrical products are female, compared with only 20 per cent of ICT managers, and 12 per cent of IT strategy or planning professionals," according to the article. "A woman needs to be demonstrably better than her male colleagues to succeed in the industry," said Catherine Doran of chief information officer at Network Rail, in the article.

The article, published late last year, did not provide many details of its "investigation." Therefore, we don't know how many people were surveyed. The article also did not mention how many of the women had children or how long these women had worked in IT before deciding to leave the field. A lack of flexible job options and longer hours were cited as the main culprits deterring women from the more senior jobs with greater responsibilities.

Simmons study author responds to MIC

Earlier this week, I criticized a recent study conducted by the Simmons School of Management about whether or not women are "opting out" of the workforce. The study reported that most women are not opting out. Rather, women are negotiating "flexible work arrangements" so that they can stay employed. I argued that their study--which included mostly white, high-income women--could possibly be perpetrating its own myth about working women.

Simmons Professor and Lead Study Author Mary Shapiro responded to my criticism and addressed some of my concerns. Here is her response:

Hello Suzanne,
Thank you for reading our research and posting some very interesting questions about it. I’d like to address some of your concerns.

As a blogger, you may have been also “shaking your head in bewilderment” starting back in 2003 when mainstream media started reporting how women were “opting out” of the workforce. I was, too. And talk about a “small slice of reality!” Time Magazine, Fast Company and others ran stories based on anecdotal stories from a few women. One story which claimed that maternal instinct was on the rise, and that accounted for the number of women leaving the workplace, was written after the editor talked to a few of her girl friends.

My colleagues and I at Simmons were incensed: how could a reputable magazine extrapolate from a sample of 6-8 girlfriends what the total working female population was doing? Clearly those women were highly educated, most likely white, and definitely privileged. What was more: they could afford to not work.

We set out to explore a larger “slice of reality,” the reality of the working professional woman. You are absolutely correct that this still is a narrow subset of the US working female population---it doesn’t capture union jobs, hourly workers, women in minimum wage jobs. But that is exactly why we included all the demographics about our sample, both in the text of our study and in our endnotes. We wanted to be very clear that we weren’t speaking about all women (and in fact, we even state that we didn’t capture enough women of color to be able to speak about their work experiences, but plan to in future studies). You are correct: it is too easy for the press to grab one statistic about one group of women and use it to explain all women.

We do feel we were able to understand what working professional women (of a higher income, as we stated) were doing. Their income and demographics did allow us to push back against what the mainstream media had been saying for the past 3 years and what the rest of us know for the wider reality: women work to pay the bills. Over 85% of our women had to work (in that they contributed at least 50% to the household income, and over 35% of them contributed 100%). But what surprised us was that this group of women, contrary to the media, said they weren’t opting out when they used flexible work arrangements (FWAs), such as flexhours or telecommuting. Instead, they were using FWAs to make work “work” for them, to juggle crazy lives and to primarily stay full time employed, and were using FWAs without hurting their incomes.

Can this be extrapolated to a larger population of women? Maybe. As you said, this “particular group of women is getting more flexibility from their employers”….but we didn’t say employers in general were becoming more accommodating, or that negotiating for FWAs is easy, or that leading a life juggling work (no matter how flexible) and family/outside worklife is easy. Ask any woman who has negotiated to leave work by 3PM to be home when the kids get off the bus, only to get back online and do email once the kids go to bed, that life is not easy. But it’s the best she can do, given that she has kids to care for and bills to pay. In that regard, it may be a story that resonates with many women who don’t earn $116,000 a year.

Finally, one message that we hope does resonate with women of all incomes and job types: you aren’t wrong or deficient in asking for FWAs. You are proactively managing your career to make it work for you. The reason employers look at you with raised eyebrows, or think that you aren’t committed to work, or think “there goes maternal instinct,” is that they are judging your career choice against an outdated career model---a model that is no longer supported by stay at home moms, and lifelong stable employment; an outdated career model that equates “face time” with commitment and measures billable hours instead of productivity.

Regards,
Mary Shapiro,
Simmons School of Management
Study Author

I want to thank Ms. Shapiro for taking the time to respond to me. It is necessary that we continue the dialog about all working women--working parents. I hope that the more we talk about these issues, 1) more parents will try to negotiate some flexibility into their jobs to create an equilibrium between work and home, and 2) more employers will foster a work environment that values employees based on the job performed, not on gender or parental status.

Distorting the truth

I still shake my head in bewilderment when I think about a story I wrote several years ago about a company that saw its stock rise 40 percent in one day based on a misleading press release. The company's spokeswoman told me, "We compared apples to oranges just to prove a point." Their point cost people a hefty load of money.

I know press releases are not often reflective of reality. That said, I'm really annoyed with a press release issued on January 16, by the Simmons School of Management (SOM). It was called, "Most Women Aren't 'Opting Out' of the Work Force, Simmons Study Finds: Women are Leading the Way to a New Career Model, Authors Say."

The SOM press release said the study examined how many women were leaving the workforce during different points in their careers, why they made certain career choices, and how they tried to manage a work-life balance. The take-away: positive. Just don't think that their sample was representative of women, or even regular college-educated women. The findings were based on "400 middle- and senior-level professional women from around the nation with an average of 20 years' work experience from across the business and non-profit spectrum, who attended the 2006 Simmons School of Management Leadership Conference in Boston."

Talk about a small slice of reality. But that was not all. The full study footnotes admit that their sample set was very skewed towards the positive findings that they reported:

The sample was described as "highly qualified women" who had a college degree with honors or a graduate degree. The SOM sample could be defined as "professional women who have chosen to remain employed full-time." Given that the U.S. Department of Labor states that 75% of employed women in 2005 worked full-time, the SOM sample over-represented these women. Given that 33% of women aged 25-64 held college degrees in 2004...[the] sample over-represented these women.

Women are not opting out of the workforce in droves, said lead study author Professor Mary Shapiro of the Simmons School of Management, in the press release. "It's a myth--based on a handful of anecdotes in the popular press about white, high-income women," Shapiro said. But based on their own skewed sample, are the SOM findings spreading a myth of their own? It too is based on a handful of anecdotes from white ("Given the expected demographics of the population from which we were drawing our sample, we recognized that we would have a small percentage of women of color to study") and high income (average salary: $116,000) women.

So which is a bigger myth? The opting out? Or the study findings?

The SOM survey cited improvements over a 2005 Hewlett and Luce study. For example, SOM said "less than half the number in our survey left the workforce temporarily." Since I don't have the H&L study to look at, it's hard to know if things improved that drastically in one year. If the sample sets were similar, this would be a big improvement. But if the H&L sample included a larger demographic, would there still be a positive trend?

I would like nothing more than to find out that women are getting more flexibility from their employers. But it is difficult to know what is real when press releases are perpetrating more myths. To be fair, if over time, this particular study finds that this particular subset of women is getting more flexibility from their employers, that is great. At that point, we can hope that those benefits trickle down to all women.

How did we get here?

In this hectic world, it so often seems that we value what is not important (big car, fancy house) and devalue the most important things (time with our family and friends). And as we spend Christmas with our families in snow-covered Buffalo, this time underscores what is most important to me. Even though I often struggle with floundering, non-existent career, I’m so grateful that I get to raise my son.

That seems like such a strange thing to say. It makes it seem like it's a privilege instead of a right as a parent. But more often that not, parents do not get to raise their kids. In 2004, 70 percent of women with children under 18 years of age were in the work force, compared to 27 percent in 1955. And of those currently working, "only 16 percent say they would choose to work full time if they felt they had the choice," according to the January 2006, Sojourners Magazine cover story called, "Taking Back Our Kids: Child rearing, never an easy endeavor, has become in many ways a countercultural activity." (free registration required)

How did we get here? How did something so valuable as raising our families end up in the backseat? Or how did we get to a place where parents don't feel they have a choice in the matter?

Much of it comes down to our government not caring enough about its future. It has done little to preserve manufacturing jobs in this country. It has done little to curb the "womb to tomb" adverting overload, which overwhelms influential kids with advertising, increasing the wants that families have. And it would rather spend money on war than on benefits that would revamp the way the American families live, such as a separation of job and health care and longer, better-funded maternity leaves. At the same time, real wages have declined by 10 percent from 1973 to 1993, according to the magazine, leaving families with less money.

So what does this have to do with moms working? Families are making less, there are fewer jobs, and advertising has increased people's expectations about what they should have. And many families find that the only way to do this is to have two incomes.

The more I think about the policies of our government--especially the Republican party who claims to be so "pro family"--I'm disgusted and disappointed that the priorities actually sacrifice families and instead focus on short-term gains, personal vendettas, and profits for the wealthy and corporate America.

Flexibility boosts productivity, cuts costs, but stigma remains

A pilot program at some of the country's largest corporations is injecting a dose of flexibility into work schedules, making employees happier, boosting productivity, and cutting costs for the companies. But sadly, parents still fear the stigma associated with taking advantage of flexible work hours.

Maggie Jackson published a column in the Sunday Boston Globe called, "Team-based flexible work programs are pushing into the mainstream." As part of the pilot program, employees at 10 corporate giants were given the option of starting earlier in the day or working later in the evening. They also had the option of working 80 hours over nine business days, instead of 10, giving participants an extra day off every two weeks. If this program--or others like it--becomes more widespread, it could be a small boon for parents who want to be home when their kids get home from school, or just want extra days off.

The 10 companies participating in the BOLD program include Chubb, Frito-Lay, Gannett, Johnson & Johnson, Macy's Northwest, Pitney Bowes, Puget Sound Energy, Prudential Financial, Weyerhaeuser, and Nextel Communications. But executive at these corporate giants aren't participating out of the kindness of their hearts. The bottom line? The bottom line.

And a separate study released Tuesday, by Corporate Voices for Working Families, found that not only do flexible work options make employees happier (equaling lower job turnover), but they also boost profits. Some of the examples, reported by the Christian Science Monitor, included:

• Deloitte: Saved $41.5 million in employee turnover costs in 2003, based on the number of professionals who said they would have left if they didn't have flexible work hours.
• AstraZeneca: Employee attitudes were 28 percent higher for employees who said they had the flexibility they needed than for those who said they did not.
• PNC Financial: Staggered schedules allowed customers to be served for an extra hour and a half each day. Absenteeism and turnover declined.

But sadly, fewer than half of all companies in the United States offer flextime plans and two-thirds of working mothers say there's a stigma attached to using flexible work options, Working Mother Media CEO Carol Evans told the Monitor. "Changing a whole corporate culture is like turning a giant ship in the ocean," she said.

The good thing about that--if the analogy is accurate--is that you can turn a giant ship. It just takes time and patience.

Women and the stories that sell

In my October 17 issue of The Nation, there was a column called, "Desperate Housewives of the Ivy League," responding to the New York Times page-one piece about Yale women who plan to put their careers on hold if/when they eventually have kids.

I know that people love to hear a happy ending--like the Yale women who will never struggle with their career or parenting choices because they have their lives all mapped out. (Although there is much debate over the methodology used for the Times' piece). But most of the time those happy endings aren't the norm. The Nation's Katha Pollitt wrote:

Cutting back to spend time with one's child shouldn't be equated with lack of commitment to one's profession. You would not know, either, that choices about how to combine work and motherhood are fluid and provisional and not made in a vacuum. The lack of good childcare and paid parental leave, horrendous work hours, inflexible career ladders, the still-conventional domestic expectations of far too many men and the industrial-size helpings of maternal guilt ladled out by the media are all part of it...Wouldn't you like to read a front-page story about that?

And my favorite line of the Nation piece is this: "What's painful about the way the Times frames work-family issues is partly its obsessive focus on the most privileged as bellwethers of American womanhood--you'd never know that most mothers who work need the money."

The Nation hit it spot on. But sadly, the media gets it wrong again and again:

Women don't ditch their careers because they are a lack of choice. They are simply bored. When asked glossy questions about themselves, women are "satisfied." Women do make more money than men--in "women's careers." Women lead in top jobs, if you don't count executive positions . Women don't make as much money as their male counterparts because they don't feel entitled. So really it's their own faults. The only way to career utopia is planning when you're young.

All of these stories do a huge disservice to the public. Why don't we hear more stories about the reality of motherhood and workforce? Why don't we hear stories about women whose jobs don't pay enough money to cover the cost of childcare? What about all the women who don't breastfeed their kids because their jobs don't have a comfy "mother's room" or flexible enough breaks to allow for pumping? Or that buying a $250 pump would be a financial hardship for many families.

The media is a powerful force. Now if only it would yield it's power for promoting more of the hard truths. It's only when we read about that stuff on page one will there be real change. We need to hear all the news, not just the happy endings.

Harvard President aligns with Teen Talk Barbie

I was browsing through the latest issue of Skeptic magazine, and I came across another great article about the irresponsible and insulting 80-hour-work-week comment made by Harvard President Lawrence Summers in January.

It got me thinking again about Summers' comment, the outrage, and the apology. It reminded me of the Mattel debacle of the early 1990s, when the toy maker pulled Teen Talk Barbie from store shelves because it proclaimed that "math is hard." Only this time, instead of a doll convincing young girls that math isn't for them, we have the president of a top university telling the world that girls just aren't hardwired for science.

There are differences between boys and girls. In the playgroup that I go to with Toddler in Chief, it's already clear that there are differences--even though they are just two-and-a-half. TIC and his male buddy push around cars and trucks, while the three girls of the group fawn over the group's token newborn.

I have no official gender, biological, or sociological research under my belt. This is just plain observation from a very small subset of toddler-society. And I have no idea if liking cars and trucks equals liking and excelling in science. I also have no idea if liking newborns and dolls equals an aversion to science.

The Skeptic article, entitled "Gender Differences & the 80-Hour Work Week," took issue with jobs in the sciences and long hours. Women aren't absent from science career because they demand long hours, wrote Susan Carol Losh, because women are putting in the heavy hours in other fields and excelling. Losh wrote that Summers' arguments:

...were trotted out when I was a kid to explain the scarcity of women doctors and layers. And yet thousands upon thousands of women now appear willing to put in those 80-hour work weeks in medical residencies and internships, and to make partners in law firms. How come we have that motivation for medicine and law but not physics?"

So if women are able to hunker down and work long hours, if need be in some fields, it's just plain sexist to say that women aren't in some sciences because their brains weren't programmed that way. Maybe more women aren't in the sciences because they were led to believe that they couldn't make it. Maybe they were pushed towards more "female-friendly" career paths.

Let's hope our kids will have more encouragement to believe in themselves and their abilities--regardless of what Harvard's president says.

Are we any different from women a generation ago?

An email from my mother-in-law got me thinking again about how my life might be different (or not so different) from women and mothers who were trying to raise their families decades and generations before me.

She emailed me in response to last Wednesday's post that criticized the NY Times for not filling out their story about college women who want to be at-home moms. My issue was that the story neglected to include the fact that moving from career to motherhood and back to career isn't all that easy. I also felt that it should have included elements that address how corporate America must evolve to retain women who have kids.

She wrote:

...As far as these Yale women are concerned, it sounds more like they grew up in the 60s...."When I grow up I will have 6 children and a handsome, perfect husband." The only difference being that these women were expected to go to college...but one wonders if progress has ever been made in women's expectations and the outcomes aye?...

Is the only difference between me and women a generation ago is that we were expected to get a bachelor's degree? I know at times I have feared that other people might judge me because I've become one of those women who worked just long enough to get married and have a baby.

I never intended to become that woman; it's what happened, but it's not what I set out to do. So now my job is to make sure that's not how my story ends.

College women set on at-home motherhood

The NY Times ran an article yesterday called, "Many Women at Elite colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood."

It's basically a story about college women at Yale University who have already decided that when the time comes to have kids, they won't wonder about whether or not they should continue a career or take time off to be with their kids. "My mother's always told me can't be the best career woman and the best mother at the same time," Cynthia Liu told the Times. "You always have to choose one over the other." The majority of those college women surveyed said they'd choose family.

I wrote the following as a comment to Elizabeth's post at Half Changed World:

Two of the things that bothered me most about the article: 1) it did NOT talk about how moving in and out of the workforce isn't easy. It isn't easy to find a job that will let you drop to part-time after you have a baby. It isn't easy to take three, four, or six years off to have kids and then jump back in. These young women just assume it will be easy for them. These incredibly educated women plan to leave corporate America for a bunch of years while they raise their babies. This is what my group of mom-friends has already done, but we are just floundering, wondering if we'll ever get back in there in any meaningful way. But it does tell me is that this trend is not going away. And 2) It did not talk about how corporate America is going to *HAVE* to change and adapt to these women. Otherwise, I fear we are moving backwards. I fear that businesses will become even more hesitant (even though it's illegal), to hire women in the first place, especially women of child-bearing age.

I think it's great that these women know that they want to have kids early in life. When I was in my late teens or early twenties, the idea of having kids was about as appealing as dabbing rubbing alcohol on an open wound. So the fact that they know they want kids and that they want to be with those kids, they are at least a step ahead of me.

But fulfilling their expectations won't be easy unless our society learns to value motherhood. It reminds me of a piece that Miriam at Playground Revolution wrote earlier this week called, "On my mind." It's about how we're always talking about stuff, but nothing is really changing. And that really hit home for me. I commented:

...What are we doing? I'm always talking and writing, writing and talking about these issues that affect women/mothers in the work place, but really I know nothing about making any kind of change....

So to buck the trend of me just writing and talking about stuff, I'm giving myself a homework assignment. Assignment #1: I'm going to identify two people who are working on women in the workplace issues and see what I can do.

These Yale women might want to work and take time off to be with their kids and then head back to work along a smooth road, but unless some serious changes happen, it will probably be a lot bumpier than they envision. I know it has been for me.

Talk radio insults again

It only took six minutes to make me hate sports radio.

We took the train home from the San Francisco Giants game last night. But after that, we had a six-minute drive from the train station to our house. During our brief car ride, we tuned into KNBR 680 for a little post-game filler to remind us of the good stuff we'd just seen at SBC Park (The Giants won 5-4 against the LA Dodgers; and Barry Bonds hit his first home run of the season--career home run #704).

We heard two callers--who happened to be women--talk with host Bruce Macgowan about the game.

Not only did Macgowan comment on the fact that women were calling in, he made the lame comment "don't tell my wife"--not once, not twice, but three times in those few short minutes. His point was that women couldn't possibly be interested in baseball enough to call a talk radio show to discuss legitimate sports stuff. They *must* be calling because they are hot for him. Give me a break.

He was trying to be funny and tongue in cheek, but it came off as lame, male-chauvinistic garbage.

It made me think that NPR got it right during a Talk of the Nation program that responded to the ethnic slur made by KNBR Larry Krueger on August 3. It's not "sports radio." It's "white guy radio."

Set parents up for success instead of failure

We all know that we should be spending as much time interacting with out kids as possible and that television is the anti-Christ. But let's face reality: sometimes we need our kid to sit still and be quiet for 15 minutes so that we can make an important telephone call or empty the dryer without having all the clean clothes tossed on the floor. And the TV is just the trick.

There are always studies and warnings telling us how bad television is for little kids, like the one that Maggie Jackson wrote about last week for the Boston Globe. Her article entitled, "Don't let TV be the baby-sitter" was about a warning released by the American Academy of Pediatrics that said children age 2 and younger should avoid all screen media.

I watch Sesame Street when I was a kid and I turned out okay. I even secretly watched "The Price is Right" when I stayed home sick from school. And I turned out okay. And I doubt that my mom stays up late at night fretting that my SAT score might have been 10 points higher if she had spent every waking moment interacting with me instead of letting me experience life on my own from time to time. Even if those life experiences weren't always on the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommended to-do list.

We also know that kids shouldn't eat sugar and fat or drink soda. And I cringed when I saw a woman giving her infant Coca-Cola out of the 16-ounce bottle at the airport last week. But I'll bet her kid will turn out okay too. My father-in-law drank nothing but Coca-Cola when he was a kid because he was living in the Philippines and the water wasn't safe. And he turned out okay too. Maybe that mom always gives her kid a sip of Coke and maybe it was because her kid was thirsty and that's all she had handy when we were sitting on the airplane for an hour before take-off. I'm not condoning kids drinking soda (because I think that soda is poison for everyone). I'm just saying, that sometimes we do things, just because it gets us through the day.

So instead of telling us that exposure to kids television (or any television) "disrupts young children's focus, possibly setting them up for later attention issues," or that it "may hurt their developing attention spans, their ability to play, and interactions with parents," why don't we get some realistic guidelines that parents might actually be able to follow.

Sure no television with full parental interaction might be better for little kids, but perhaps half an hour of Blue's Clues or The Wiggles won't hurt them. Perhaps recommend the kind of programs that are least harmful for kids and a maximum recommended dose of television per day. Let's set parents up for success instead of failure.

These kinds of warnings remind me of the no-condoms-to-be-distrubuted-in-school rules. Let's just acknowledge that parents are going to let their kids watch some TV, just as everyone should acknowledge that high school kids are going to have sex. Instead of pretending that they don't--in both cases--let's provide solutions that will enable the best outcome.

Still feasting on an endless pig

Larry Summers did women a favor by being such a blatant pig.

His verbal blunder made the media start examining women and the workplace and discrimination and change, or the lack there of. Sadly, most media focused on the biology crap, which was a giant load of crap, for sure. But fortunately, even if it is months later, the other issues that Summers' touched on are getting attention.

Along with biological differences, Summers also smacked two other walls blocking women from advancing in a variety of jobs: discrimination and "the reluctance or inability of women who have children to work 80-hour weeks," as reported by the Boston Globe.

That 80-hour BS still agitates me. And I'm still perplexed as to why there are so many people who think that reasonable work hours and success can't and shouldn't co-exist, or that achieving a more hospitable workplace is a feminist issue.

Matt Miller, who is filling in for Maureen Dowd over at the New York Times, most recently volleyed Summers' gristly comments into the spotlight. Even though Miller didn't mention Summers by name, it's hard to read about excessive work hours and not be reminded of his infamous comments.

"Today talented people live in fear of sounding anything less than 24/7. Tell your boss you have to deal with a drinking problem and you'll be fine; say you want more time with your family and you're on the endangered species list," wrote Miller in a column for the New York Times last week called, "Listen to My Wife."

Why are people so against change? Why are people so against society adapting to allow people to work without foregoing everything in their lives? It's sort of like some sick fraternity hazing. Perhaps the mentality is: "I worked 80 hours a week to get where I am today, so why shouldn't everyone else? If they don't, they don't deserve success."

Here are some of the best parts from Miller's piece:

It's hardly news that the issue vexing talented people is the struggle to balance their professional lives with time for fulfilling lives outside of work. The shock is that after decades of wrestling with these tradeoffs, the obvious answer is the one everyone has been too skeptical or afraid to explore: changing the way top jobs are structured.

In a world where most people are struggling, the search for "balance" in high-powered jobs has to be counted a luxury. Still, there is something telling (if not downright dysfunctional) when a society's most talented people feel they have to sacrifice the meaningful relationships every human craves as the price of exercising their talent.

Nowhere is there a greater gulf between the frustration people feel over a dilemma central to their lives and their equally powerful sense that there's nothing to be done. As a result, talented people throw up their hands. Women are "opting out" after deciding that professional success isn't worth the price. Ambitious folks of both sexes "do what they have to," sure there is no other way. That's just life.

My unreasonable wife rejects this choice. If the most interesting and powerful jobs are too consuming, Jody says, then why don't we re-engineer these jobs - and the firms and the culture that sustain them - to make possible the blend of love and work that everyone knows is the true gauge of "success"?...

...Here's the deal: this isn't a "women's" problem; it's a human problem. Yet for 30 years women have tried to crack this largely on their own, and one thing is clear: if the fight isn't joined by men (like me) who want a life, too, any solutions become "women's" solutions. A broader drive to redesign work will take a union-style consciousness that makes it safe for men who secretly want balance to say so....

...Some call this "whining." Others like working 24/7. Still others assert that you can never change the nature of work near the top. But our corporate experience persuades us that change is inevitable. In a globalizing world, many senior jobs are already impossibly big. If they need to be restructured anyway (we're working on how), why not do so in ways that give folks the option to have a life?...

Exactly.

Penelope Trunk responds to MIC

I sent an email to Penelope Trunk--the writer who offered three easy steps for parenting-career utopia--to let her know that I was disappointed with her suggestions because they offer little-to-no real advice for real life. She was kind enough to write me back. This is her response:

Hi, Suzanne. Thank you for your email. I liked reading your response. I wish all the people I talked to about this topic thought about it as much as you do.

I actually find there is not much disagreement between us. I think it's more of a lifestyle choice: Some people find a partner early some people don't. If you do find a partner early, you can plan early and then you have a better chance of success at shared parenting. Some people choose to dedicate their lives to changing corporate policies and some people say forget it, I need to concentrate on my own life. I think all those decisions are fine, but some lend themselves to setting up shared parenting more than others.

In terms of trends, a relatively new one is for young people to find a partner and a career early-on that accommodate shared parenting. (This was especially interesting to me because I found a partner late, had kids late, and my own version of shared parenting is that we both are at home all day, but my husband had to give up his career completely to do that. Not ideal.)

I found that I actually learned a lot from talking to twenty-two-year-olds about their career aspirations and how they relate to parenting aspirations. Sure, they were idealistic, but there's a lot to be said for idealism -- it raises the bar for everyone, I think.

I hope you keep writing about this topic. More discussion is helpful to everyone. And if you do write more, please let me know- I'd like to read it.

- Penelope

Again, I think it's great for young people to be planning, but I still think that life can so often get in the way of great plans. There were several frothy comments worth reading on Trunk's article as well. Here are a couple of snippets:

Geeky Mom wrote: "I tried to be smart and realist in my late 20s when we were planning babies, but our careers hadn't gotten off the ground yet--and mine hadn't even started yet. We had no idea. There's no way to know..."

Chip wrote: "These people must be very young if they actually think they can plan their life out in such detail in advance...On the other hand, I do think it's important for partners to be on the same page about this kind of thing..."

Angry Pregnant Lawyer wrote: "If the advice the writer is doling out is for folks in their early and mid-20s, that's completely unrealistic. Career aspirations change. In my early to mid-20s, I was in a completely different field than I am now. And at that age, I certainly had no intention of becoming a lawyer...

Girl power will bury Lawrence Summers

Thankfully Harvard President Lawrence Summers hasn't had a negative impact on high school girls' desire to success in math in science.

On Monday, the California Academy of Sciences was the backdrop for a daylong seminar for 113 scientifically-inclined Bay Area high school girls, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. Lawrence ignited an explosive debate after he said in January that women may not be biologically hardwired to handle math and science as well as men. He later apologized for his comments.

The high school students participated in a variety of scientific experiments. They withdrew "saliva from their cheeks, for example, then using pipettes and centrifuges to extract its whitish threads of DNA, the carrier of the body's heredity code." They also listened to a accomplished female scientists talk and joke about how they succeeded as scientists and researchers.

The students' interests at the seminar spanned the science spectrum, from curing AIDS to researching photosynthesis and studying marine biology. And the girls were enthusiastic and confident in their chances for succeeding.

While men tend to dominate fields like physics, and Summers had to back pedal on his comments, there is progress to be made. And thankfully today's girls aren't easily discouraged. We can only hope their enthusiasm will power them through their studies and project them into these male-dominated fields.

Survey says? Validate me!

Perhaps too many people learned about surveys by watching Richard Dawson on Family Feud. Contestants on the hugely popular 80s quiz show didn't just answer trivia questions. Rather they tried to match their answers to the most popular answers in an audience survey. If the question was, "Name an animal you might see at the zoo," lemurs, capybaras, and mandrills are correct answers. But they probably aren't the most correct.

Lesson: giving the popular answers is good.

Although I imagine participating in a poll about parenting for the Washington Post tends to lead people to the safe, popular answers too. It also, sadly, leads to the safe, popular, shiny, happy questions.

On Mothers' Day, the Post ran an article about motherhood and parenting, called Children, Career and Choices that included some data from a recent poll of mothers. I was excited to read that overall, women were happy with their choices, although sometimes frustrated and guilty. I even agree with those sentiments. I'm mostly happy and feel fortunate that I'm home raising my kid. But I do have frustrations because I don't have the perfect part-time career budding in the background, though I am trying.

But once I got past that glossy overview (More than nine in 10 said they were satisfied with the arrangements they had made to care for their children. Seven in 10 described themselves as "very satisfied."), I felt like I was in TV Land. Here are two of the highlights (or low lights):

Fifty-two percent of those who stay at home think a mother should be allowed to work for pay if it makes her happier. (Allowed??!!)

Three in four feel that, given their financial situation, the work-home balance they have constructed is the best they could do both for their children and for themselves. (Given their financial situation? Sounds like they don't have many other choices. How could things be better?)

Where were meaty, gutsy questions: Does your employer offers enough flexible time? Would you like to see more on-site childcare? Do you have access to high-quality, affordable child care options? Before leaving your job to become an at-home parent, did your employer offer a part-time option? Or flexible hours? Or a job-share? Would you have stayed in the workforce if you had been given those options?

There was some job information:

About 4 in 10 have changed jobs, and a similar proportion have turned down a promotion or new responsibilities; Five in 10 have cut back their hours; Three in 10 have worked from home on a regular basis.

I have seen women give up their careers for lesser work-from-home substitutes because there were no family-friendly options. In that case, a job change is not good news. And is turning down a promotion good for women? Do we really need to hold ourselves back in order to right by our families? If you want to see good stuff in these numbers, you will. But it's all about the context of these changes. I'm not trying to be a downer, but I've known too many women who have been in these situations, and rarely are these changes positive.

Ask women a bunch of canned questions about their "choices" and their "balance," and get a bunch of useless data. Motherhood has been so targeted lately with "mommy wars" and "hyper-parenting" that women probably just want to feel good about themselves. Give the popular answers. Give the answers the survey conductor wants to hear.

Fifty-one percent think it's better for the child if one parent stays home.

I wonder how many of the people surveyed are working vs. at-home parents? And if you're not one of the ones staying home and deep down you think it's better if one parent is at home, would you say that out loud? Admit to a stranger you wish things were different? And vice-versa, how many at-home parents put on happy faces to the outside world, but are really struggling with their identity and wish they could work? Shock! Horror! That would mean that they aren't willing to sacrafice for their children! And public opinion already thinks mothers are doing a bad job:

Although 68 percent of Americans in a recent Post-ABC News national survey agreed that motherhood is more demanding today than it was a generation ago, 48 percent think mothers are doing a worse job, compared with 12 percent who feel they were doing better.

But who wants to hear that mothers aren't happy? So without the opportunity to answer real questions, women are going to say they are happy and content (I did a few paragraphs ago, even though that's not totally true). Let's just say we're satisfied because if we say it out loud, we just might believe it. Then if we read it in the newspaper, it must be true.

Maybe the Post should have done a preliminary survey to find out what mothers really wanted to know about other women. They most definitely would NOT have said, "I'd like to know if other women are somewhat satisfied, satisfied, or very satisfied.

But then it wouldn't have been a warm, fuzzy Mothers' Day story. Survey says: You let us down again.