OK kittens. If you are a true KT friend and fan, you know that I make my own rules. I might have said a while back that I am banning all talk of stupid studies about moms and work and imposing judgment on all of us. I believe I even threatened to ban you from my blog if you sent me a link.

C’est vrai. I did. And I meant it at the time. But I am the queen of the land, the kitty of the blog, so I can lift self-imposed bans on a whim. I can even rewrite the rules. It’s fun being the supreme dictator of your own blog. And so today, I am going to rant about an op-ed in today’s NYT that a dear KT friend and beloved fan, emailed to me.

The title of this ridiculous piece is “Off to Work She Should Go”:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/opinion/25hirshman.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

And Ms. Hirshman, in her infinite wisdom, attempts to wax poetic on all the reasons that women are “opting out” of the workforce when they have children, all the potential harms this brings to society and business, and how this trend is particularly true for those with husbands in the top 20% of earning power.

I’m really left wondering, why did the NYT even run this piece and what is new and original about anything she is saying? Far as I can tell, it’s the same old story, different day.

And what is my beef with it today?

One beef I have with this piece is this – the reasons that women “opt-out” of the workforce cannot be lumped together in one general category. Sure, I studied marketing. I put on my brave statistics hat and went off to graduate school and learned how to analyze data and create categories and name groups of people to target them with products. But see, running the data and understanding the emotions and REASONS why women make the decisions they do – are two different things.

There is no emotion in data.

There is more emotion than anything else in having a newborn and deciding to leave that baby in someone else’s care all day long while you go off to work.

Furthermore, what really gets me in this ridiculous op-ed piece is Hirshman’s assertion that the wealthiest women forgo returning to work because it’s the easiest decision. How is deciding NOT to return to work, the easiest decision?

Not only does that claim undermine just how difficult and exhausting it is to stay home with your children full-time, it also suggests that these women are just flippantly turning their backs on the careers that they have spent a decade building up, not to mention all the years spent earning undergraduate and graduate degrees to help develop these careers.

Last time I spent an entire weekday alone with my child, instead of jetting off to work, the last thing I found myself thinking at the end of the day was “well, now that was an EASY and RELAXING day.”

And so, my advice to all these brilliant professors and statisticians and talking heads who have yet to provide any helpful advice to new mom’s out there, is this: spend a little more time TALKING to the very people you are writing about. Running the data isn’t giving you the full story. And furthermore, everyone’s story is different.

Sometime I’d like to read a piece on the emotion of having a child, the difficulty in not raising that baby fulltime because you have to go to work, or the complex set of reasons certain women decide to step out of the workforce.   We aren’t marketing categories, we aren’t making incredibly complicated and difficult decisions because they are easy, nor are we worried about carrying the weight of being business role-models for future generations on our shoulders when we have our own child at home that needs her mommy.

Happy Monday, spring kittens. Hopefully wherever you are it’s as sunny and warm as where I am sitting. Too bad I’m sitting behind my desk at work.

Which is today’s topic today, darlings. Work.

I know we’ve addressed this issue many-a-time here on KT but it’s just something that I still haven’t been able to get past. Every day, every week, I think about my work schedule. I think about whether I really want to work. I think about if, given the financial ability, I could quit and stay home full-time – would I really want to do it?

I mean, I can talk a big game when I know it’s not a reality, but if it were really a reality, would I really want to be home full-time?

So then I think about how much I would like to work part-time. How much I want to be home two days a week. I think about how much, by Friday, I miss my baby. How I feel dis-connected from her because it’s been so many days in a row where I’ve only seen her but for an hour or two a day.

And then I worry that she feels dis-connected from me and that she feels more attached to our nanny. By Friday morning, I’m super sensitive to how she responds when our nanny arrives and if she seems more excited and animated to see her, than she was before she arrived and she was just alone with me.

And I drive off to work and think about when or if I’ll ever be able to quit, or work part-time.

I am consumed. I think it’s normal. But who knows. Of my friends with kids, most work part-time or at least from home two days a week. And I am green with envy.

Last week, one dear friend pointed out the other side of that reality – she works part time, but in turn, her husband works long hours all week and the weekend – which is what gives her the financial freedom to take that pay cut. She wondered what I would prefer, seeing my husband or my baby.

I thought about it all weekend.

Naturally I want both. Who doesn’t.

So really – I’m left thinking that the grass is always greener.

With more financial freedom to be flexible in your hours, it could mean you don’t see your husband. Or, with working part-time, it could mean you are mommy track’d and not really given the best projects.

Now, you might not care, but you might.

I honestly don’t know what my answer is to her question – whether I’d take much less time with my husband for more time with my baby. My initial reaction is – for a time – yes, because my husband doesn’t need me in the ways my baby does. But my baby does need us to have a happy marriage in a happy home. And I don’t know what kind of constraints it would put on our relationship if I didn’t see him very much. I honestly have no idea.

So through all of this – I have no conclusions. I leave work a bit early every day. I come in a bit late, all of this to maximize what little time I have with my daughter during the week. Every time I feel so sad and feel disconnected from her, I remind myself that nothing is permanent anymore, and some day, I will probably not work full-time.

And I just sorta keep going. Everything really is more complicated when you have a baby. I’m not sure when this reality will stop surprising me.