I'm losing count of how many times I've used this image but doesn't it say it all?

For today’s blog post, I hope you’ll click on over to my piece on HuffPost DC about work-life “balance” – a word I loathe, despise and wish would just be deleted from our vocabulary (in this context). I also can’t stand mommy guilt, for what it’s worth.

Anyhow – please read and share and comment and tell me what you think!

Is this how a top working mom city ranking is supposed to look?

First, Forbes Woman is right to factor things like cost of child care, employment, salaries and then time – specifically time spent commuting – into their criterion for what makes a top working town for mothers. I am actually really proud to learn that working women in Washington rank one  nationwide for income levels – this is a great thing for everyone, including our kids, and hopefully many of these women are affecting public policy and influencing positive change. But when you are averaging a higher salary than any other city nationwide, that comes with a price tag. A hefty one – one that is more than just a lot of time spent commuting (where we ranked 49th, a contributing factor to the fall to 9th place).  A high salary translates into a demanding job which translates into a lot of working hours – which does not equal to work-family “balance” and time spent with children. All of this, in turns, makes me highly suspicious of how this is a great town for working moms? Cause we work a lot?

These types of rankings are so attractive for media coverage and bloggers like myself. We love to see where our city ranks, we love to pat ourselves on the back. But there is not emotional ranking to these surveys – it’s all just facts and figures – and it’s the emotional component to working for moms that comes with the heaviest price for all of us.

So, I applaud Forbes for digging a little deeper this year and really looking beyond the surface at things like commuting time, cost of childcare, crime and ranking of physicians (DC ranked 8 for that). But what I’d like to see is a closer look from DC employers at why we fell from #2 to #9 and the repercussions of  time away from family, demanding working hours and commuting time: what is the price we pay for these things in terms of our stress levels and our health?

And instead of applauding DC’s placement in the top ten, let’s spend more time looking at employers like the State University of New York at Buffalo who gives employees (including fathers) 28 weeks of time off for the birth of a child, including adoption. That’s a true attempt at work-life balance, something I’d prefer not to call a “benefit” and warrants a top ranking.

What do you think of these types of rankings? Forbes is asking what metrics they can change or should add to gauge what is really “best” for working moms?  I’d vote they add a job flexibility ranking – isn’t that what so many are seeking?

I’m making the case that I think all of us are digital moms, whether we go to an office full-time or we don’t, we are bound to technology. It bleeds into our day, we work in spaces that seem unorthodox and counter-productive to work – like our cars waiting to pick kids up from school. Women who have quit their full-time job to “stay home” are doing so much work, some paid, some unpaid. Yet the label “SAHM” implies she is a dud, she doesn’t “do anything” and she probably wears mommy jeans.

Do they look like any moms you know? I didn't think so.

First, let’s talk about why women stop working full-time. I can speak for myself here. I wasn’t given any flexibility, I spent much of my time wondering why I was leaving my  kids all day for that  job, I wasn’t saving the world or curing infectious diseases, and I couldn’t reconcile how it was worth it. I was willing to risk “stepping out” and the financial security net that came with my  job, to try something else. Prior to making this decision, however, I fell into a camp that said I couldn’t afford it. Ultimately what I realized was that was an excuse, not necessarily the entire truth. For several years, I wasn’t willing to give up a lifestyle, I was afraid of how I would fill my time, I was worried about  my identity if I didn’t have the job. And until I was ready, I wasn’t sure I WANTED to be home. But it’s much easier to hide behind a financial reason than to tick off the list of what worries you. I wish more people would state the real reasons instead of using “I can’t really afford it” because many of us can afford it if we’re willing to make those tough decisions and I find it’s more helpful and constructive when I’m exploring my options when I’m honest with myself and my friends about my reasons.

So, now that the decision to stay home has been made, I’ve come to realize that the reasons why women stop working are never quite as simple as she wants to be home with her kids. I suspect the same is true for dads who stay home. The reasons are oversimplified in the media and in our quick labeling. But really, I think it’s a complicated and fascinating and important mix of factors: expense of childcare especially when you have more than one kid, career ennui (sweet scrabble word, right?), workplace that isn’t accommodating to the time demands that come with raising young children or seeking a different path in life. I think it would benefit all of us if we spent more time exploring the reasons WHY instead of just the sweeping generalization that career-focused and educated women are “opting out.” The WHY is the story and understanding the WHY might actually help impact some change in the workplace.

Which brings me to point number two – the digital mom – a woman who is likely seeking a different path in life. I was not surprised at all when I stumbled upon this Parenting article on today’s “SAHM”  digital mom. Turns out many of these women are a growing mass in our country, a small army of 10.1 million women-owned businesses. Our preschool parking lot is crowded with these entrepreneurs. They are starting their own catering companies, their own party planning businesses, their own PR freelancing shops, their own at-home daycares, their own blogs that generate some income. These women are working and many of them are doing it without hiring babysitters and nannies. These woman are also volunteering for school boards and working in classrooms helping teachers and planning school functions. All of this might be a far cry from steady paychecks, healthcare benefits and 401k contributions, but these women inspire me. They are starting new careers, they are forging new paths and the message they are sending their children is not one of opting out and forgoing their education and experience to make brownies. They are teaching their children that there are many ways to earn money, to gain experience and to work. Just like the leap of faith we take in getting married or having kids, opting out of a secure career and paycheck, is nothing if not a leap of faith.

And I believe it’s technology, smart phones, the internet, social media and the blogosphere that is helping these women forge new paths in life.

Forging the new path isn’t necessarily easy or obvious when you stop working, however. Personally I have slowly stumbled upon my new path. I certainly didn’t leave my job with a plan. Earlier this week Samantha Ettus from Forbes sent me a link to her recent post on this subject and I think she hit on one fundamental challenge facing many women: keeping in touch with your contacts when you do quit work. The reality is when you have very young children, it’s difficult to find time to do anything but care for them. But suddenly the  months blend together into years and the baby is off to preschool and kindergarten and we have more…TIME.  The very thing that was so  scarce for so many years is suddenly accessible. So keeping our relationships going through those foggy baby years really is critical to the “NOW WHAT” dilemma so many women face when the kids are suddenly in school and there’s time to be part of that 10.1 million women who are small-business owners and entrepreneurs. For me, it’s been as simple as keeping up with people on Facebook, occasional emails, holiday cards, coffee or happy hour mixed in – the trick has been just not going dark.

In the end, I think no matter what decision we make – whether it’s to remain working full-time, to cut back on our hours, or to walk away and figure out the “now what” later – I will at least keep telling myself that nothing is final, my  needs and my kids needs continue to change with time, and if you believe in your decision and the consequences of your decision, then you will enjoy parenthood and your days so much more. The grass is really only ever greener when you’re not confident in what you’re doing.

“There’s no such thing as work-life balance,” Mr. Welch told the Society for Human Resource Management’s Conference a few years ago. “There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.”

“Once you get off the escalator, you don’t get back on,” said my investor relations professor in graduate school, to a room filled with 20-something women who were eager to achieve career success and planned on eventually having children. We all looked nervously at each other after hearing what this woman, a wildly successfully IR PR professional for a Fortune 500 company, a Northwestern University graduate school professor and mother, had to say to us so very bluntly. Could she be right, we all worried?

Each of these statements are harsh, unforgiving, blunt and brutal. But are they wrong? Among the world of Type A, educated, successful, intelligent women, in this eternal quest for “balance” and “juggling” – are we creating expectations that just aren’t realistic?

Please tell me that this isn't what I look like handling my life

Balance implies equal parts, right? Juggling, well aside from the fact that creepy circus clowns are the only people who actually juggle, isn’t the idea of juggling meant to be fun? You’ve mastered a sport, you are having fun, you are showing off your talents. Do any of these things sound remotely like what it is like to have a career and a family?

Not in my experience.

Welch might hail from an 80s-era business philosophy of good-old boys and face-time in the office, things that we are slowly chipping away at with time and technology but is his statement actually antiquated and incorrect? I don’t think so. We individually decided to have children knowing that it would change our lives forever and dramatically. And from my almost 6 years in, the biggest consequence is not the lack of sleep, the unwanted lines appearing on my face, the amount of time I’ve spent cleaning hynies or even having to say that word, or wasted hours watching the same “Backyardigans” episode on repeat. The biggest consequence is the fundamental change in my career.

But I don’t view it as a permanent one or that I’ve been victimized in the work place. I actually disagree with my grad school professor that once you get off the escalator you can’t get back on. But it would be naive for me to think I’d get back on in the same spot and continue on the same path. The thing is, if I wanted that, I wouldn’t have stepped off.

Ultimately, we can “mommy track” ourselves and have more time to see our kids after school, take them to playdates, get them to the doctors when they are sick, volunteer in class and all these other things that happen during the business day. What I don’t understand is why this is viewed as a bad thing instead of the reality of choosing to create more time for our kids, to the detriment of our career.

Or, we can remain on the upward trajectory of high-achieving business success, the kind that shatters glass ceilings. And in making that choice, we know that someone else will spend more time raising our children than we are. But that is our decision. I guess what I’m saying is I don’t disagree with Welch and I don’t disagree with Judge Preska. Ask someone without children how they feel about working parents getting promoted above them if the working parent spends fewer hours in the office, travels less, and comes in late more?  Those people don’t care about our reasons because we decided to have the family.

Doesn't she look confident and in charge?

The good news is I think that we don’t need to be making final and ultimate decisions right now. I think the work place has evolved into an arena where you can stay in the game, take on less, but in time, ramp back up. I think that instead of spending our time on this eternal quest for the shangri-la of motherhood, the ultimate in work-life balance, we need to do what we talked about a few weeks ago -see the whole picture – see that there are ebbs and flows to life and own our decisions, be proud of them, and be at peace with the consequences of them. So may of us have periods of work intensity but perhaps it can follow with a period that is more family focused, we can get promoted but then maybe we want to remain at that level for longer than our pre-children selves imagined we would. We can try to stay home, realize we don’t like it, and return to work with more vigor and dedication than we had before but with a peace of mind that we are proud of this decision because we’ve tried the other way. We step off the escalator and let our future selves worry about how and when we get back on, knowing the financial implications this brings to our household.

I firmly believe that what makes you “supermom” is owning your decision, recognizing the consequences and accepting the reality that you can’t give it all to both. “Balance” is for the birds, as my mom would say. Own it, be realistic about the consequences, realize life constantly changes and be proud of it.

OK, so Pew Research announced some results back in 2008 that really disturbed me.  Here’s the cliff-notes version: When asked to self-score themselves as parents, on a scale of 1-10, a mere 28 percent of full-time working moms gave themselves a score of 9 or 10. 41 percent of part-time working moms gave themselves a 9 or 10 and 43 percent of at-home moms gave themselves a 9 or 10.

Why all the self-flagellation people? What good does that do anyone? Sure, I don’t know the full questions asked but let’s just presuppose the question was “Are you an awesome mom?” Why did almost 60% of part-time or at-home moms and almost 80% of full-time working moms declare themselves as NOT awesome?

What good is that doing anyone?

This is what I think an issue is – not the “mommy wars” (remember we are all totally bad talking about you if you go around trashing working or at-home moms). Why are mothers so damn hard on themselves? And let’s stop using cultural influences as crutches here – Oh, it’s my Catholic guilt, oh, it’s my Jewish mother guilt.

Please…as my dad would say…don’t buy a ticket on that bus.

In a moment of brutal honesty, I will tell you that I have plenty of nights where I lay there and seriously worry – was I too distracted today, should I have done that puzzle with her again, did I leave the TV on for too long, did I bark at them too many times – and on and on and on. This isn’t good. We could drive ourselves insane reflecting on and doubting every decision we make all day long while the sweet cherubs have visions of Popsicles and pizza and Halloween costumes dancing through their heads all night long.  And then roll yourself over when you are laying there fretting about the small stuff – what is your husband doing?

You think he's up all night worrying?

I thought so. Not a care in the world for old snore face.

So again – why the self-flagellation people? Why this quest for perfection? Why this insistence that we focus on all the areas that we fall short in the day instead of what we did that was super fun and awesome? How about all the stories you read for the 150th time, the lunches you lovingly packed, the 8th load of laundry you folded, the sweet frozen Trader Joes dinner you heated up? Why isn’t that all good enough?

I think that the quest for parenting perfection is laden with abuse, doubt and ultimately makes us worse parents, not better, because these kids can smell fear and insecurity and they know how to use it. It also enables you to be afraid of your kids because you are so worried about doing something wrong. Everyone responds better to confidence, kids, bosses and husbands included. Right? Am I Oprah or what?

I also think when we are riddled with doubt, we aren’t doing a good job of setting boundaries for ourselves.  So many women lack the confidence to say “No” when someone asks them to do something and the more we agree to other things, the more it chips away at the time we have for what’s making us insecure – which is most likely to be our work or our children. I’m a big believer in setting boundaries and not attaching guilt or doubt to them. Do I really need to volunteer on another committee at school? Do I actually need to attend that work event this week or won’t it go on just fine without me so I can get home and see my kids? Draw the lines and proudly stand by them, I say.

And so, in my quest to ban all mommy guilt and mommy wars from our dialogue, I challenge you to give yourselves 9s and 10s the next time Pew comes a calling. Instead of getting all tangled up in our short-comings, let’s realize we all have them, and instead be proud of the kids and how great they are turning out.  Tune in tomorrow for more totally fabulous work-life discussions and a little less Oprah.  In the mean time, what do you think? Would you have given yourself a score of 9 or 10? Are we too hard on ourselves?

1. Mommy Guilt is stupid and I hereby ban it. I ban you from this blog if you don’t agree to it.

Can we declare this idea dead now, people?

More on this all week but again, I ban you from my blog if you don’t agree to it. And we’ll all totally talk about you (not even behind your back) if you don’t agree to it.

3. There are so many reasons I am certain the “mommy wars” are dead but one is because I think we are all, instead, Digital Moms. It isn’t so much about working moms vs. at-home moms as it is how technology  is changing our relationship with  motherhood and with how and where we work.  Also, technology is dramatically impacting how we parent (both with giving our kids access to it – and making sure we aren’t on our stupid phones too much when we are meant to be spending time with our children.) There is no road map for the impact of technology on modern parenting – there are no long-term studies on how kids learn from using the iPad instead of pen and paper. There is no decade long research on quality time with kids when we are constantly interrupted by our phones. And it is technology that is transforming the space where old-fashioned stay-at-home moms are becoming obsolete. Technology has invaded our home life in such a way that for so many, an office is obsolete, and we work from home. In our yoga pants. And pick up our kids from school. We are digital. Our lives our digital. So even having this debate about the mommy wars is antiquated because who are these people who work exclusively 9-5 in an office (instead of in the office, in the car, during soccer practice, later at night when the kids are asleep) and who are these moms who stay home and “do nothing”? Technology bleeds between the lines of these once clearly-defined spaces rendering such labels as “working mom” and “stay-at-home”  mom meaningless, in my opinion.

Now that we’ve gotten our housekeeping items straightened out – here’s what we’ll talk about this week and I’d love to hear more from you because it was your comments and emails to me that have inspired me to keep digging into this topic of work-life choices and the obsolete “mommy wars.”

1. It’s not the mommy wars, it’s looking in the mirror and unfairly beating ourselves up.  So many guilt-ridden comments from moms questioning their choices between work and home life prompted me to dig a little deeper. These self-criticisms strike so deep and undercut the confidence of so many moms and unnecessarily, I think. I think we are far too hard on ourselves. So, I did some research and located a Pew research study. The results show that working moms rate themselves far lower as parents (only 28% ranked themselves 9 or 10 as parents on a scale of 10) than do part-time moms or at-home moms (over 40% rated themselves 9 or 10). These results are really upsetting. I want to talk about how we need to spend less time on this quest for balance and perfection and more time owning our choices and being proud of our decisions – it’s called life and imperfection – why are we so afraid to accept that?

2. The mommy track and sacrifices between work and family. The August decision by Judge Loretta Preska to dismiss the Bloomberg case involving discrimination against pregnant and working moms is the most current blow to the quest for work-life flexibility.  The female judge’s harsh words indicating that working moms should not be treated differently than anyone else certainly set a ripple affect through the blogosphere and chills down many working mom’s spines. Here’s what she said if you didn’t read it last month: “The law does not mandate work-life balance,” nor does it “require companies to ignore and stop valuing ultimate dedication, however unhealthy that may be for family life.”  Harsh but is it brutally honest? What I’d like to explore is not the woe-is-me victim angle of the struggles and demands of parenthood. But instead – are we realistic in what we want – do we honestly ask ourselves if we want to climb the ladder or are we willing to compromise our success at work for more time at home – or vice versa – sacrifice time with our kids to instead move-up professionally? Does anyone really believe they can “have it all” with work and family?  Do we realistically approach the reality that having children impacts a career or alternately, having a powerful career impacts our time spent raising our kids? Do we, as new moms, set ourselves up for disappointment?

3. Why women choose to quit their jobs, how no one really is a simple “at-home mom” anymore and the fear of “Now what?” when the youngest starts elementary school. I found some research that proves my suspicion that the June Cleaver at-home mom of yester-year really is extinct. Today’s digital at-home mom is one of 10.1 million women-owned businesses. She’s freelancing, she’s volunteering on boards and at schools.  The at-home mom is no-more. Turns out she’s really busy and probably earning money during nap time. I’d call that work.

4. And if we have time before the week is up….the myth of “free” time, the increasing role of dads in keeping the house and family schedule going (apparently, to the detriment of  their precious testosterone levels) and do we have realistic expectations of our limited free time when we have kids or are we complainers? Husbands included in this one.

This ought to keep us pretty busy all week.  As much as I love to hog all the time and attention, I really hope you’ll chime in.

Over the past two weeks, I struggled with which direction to take my reaction to her article because there is so much to say. In the end, I’ve decided that the more productive thing is for me to point out what, from my perspective in my experience as a full-time working mom, she missed. I also want to point out where, from my perspective, as an at-home mom (who also works but what sort of “label” is there for a mom who can wear whatever she wants, is home with her kids, but crams work in when they nap and at night?) – where she really confused me in her argument and analysis of new data.

Can you relate?

Issue #1: Working Moms & Time Spent with Children

First, in case you haven’t read the piece, the allure of the title is meant to enlighten you on new research that basically invalidates this notion of the “second shift” for working moms because new research shows that fathers are doing much more around the house and fathers feel much more pressure to get home and engage in their kids lives. Personally, I really can’t stand it when researchers give us precise time breakouts – in this instance we learn that working women are doing 1hr. 10 min. a day of “child care” and men are now doing an average of 53 min., almost 3x the amount they did in 1965. My first question is this: Since when do we refer to being with our children as “child care”? And secondly – really – who does this apply too? If someone had told me when I was working full-time that I spent 1 hr and 10 min a day with my kid, I would have smacked them in the face because I clocked every minute I spent with my kids and every minute mattered to me – it mattered so much that I raced around like a fool to every other part of my daily life – just to be sure I got as many minutes as possible with my young daughter. And also, my kid woke at 5:30am, so I well surpassed that hour before I even left for work. So can we stop with the minute-by-minute break down people?

Secondly, the author skims over the fact that time diaries don’t account for the stress women feel when managing a family and keeping the schedule a float and to me – that’s where much of the story is when you are talking about full-time working moms and time. Just keeping the family schedule takes an extraordinary amount of time and organization, whether you go to an office all day or stay home, and the stress of managing it and keeping things running smoothly is something that in my experience, usually the moms handle.  And as much as we bitch, most of us handle it because we are control freaks and the idea of letting it go to our husbands makes us recoil. Whether we admit it or not. Also, when I was working full-time, I might have complained about how time-consuming it was but also, it kept me very involved in the day-to-day, something I needed to quell my own issues with being gone.

Back to the “chore wars” concept, I think that this piece was not meant to pit women against men, however, and really no good comes out of that. This notion of accounting for time spent and tracking inequities only perpetuates anger and resentment among couples with young children because it’s completely unrealistic to think that the responsibilities that come with raising young children can be divided equally. It also doesn’t account for the fact that often times, especially when sick, little kids just want their moms. So it’s mom who is going to leave work, call pediatrician, fill prescriptions and launder the vomited sheets. And make no mistake, mom is exhausted but mom loves to be needed. Even if she’s bitching at her husband along the way. That’s parenthood – so the media’s constant interest in perpetuating the concept of fair division of labor is unnecessary and unproductive. It ain’t ever gonna be equal or fair, people, not when we’re talking about young kids. It’s just damn hard work.

Issue #2: Working Moms & Free-Time

To me – the real story when she was focusing strictly on working  moms and time – is on free-time. She skims right over what was, for me, the biggest struggle and most exhausting part of working full-time and having young kids. She notes that research shows the quality of free-time for working moms has worsened: “women have less opportunity to relax in a way that recharges their batteries.” Umm…could there be a bigger understatement? Here’s where I think there is an important distinction when you talk about the lives of women working in an office all day long and women who stay home with their kids, whether they work-at-home or whether their full-time job is tending to the kids (which, let’s not forget, is an ENORMOUS full-time job). When you work full-time, unless you have the luxury of having a nanny who not only keeps your house clean when you are gone and does your kid’s laundry, but also runs all your errands, buys your groceries and preps your meals (which most people don’t have), then this leaves you the weekend to get lots of work done to keep the house going. But the weekend is also when you get that quality uninterrupted time to spend with your kids that you crave from being gone all week – which means if you’re anything like I was – you usually spend afternoon nap time racing around like a maniac getting everything done – which means you have little-to-no time that is just for you. And everyone needs some quality time just for themselves. So again, it was disappointing to me that in this area – which is so critical and so exhausting for working moms – this topic was just sort of glossed over so we could instead evaluate how many minutes we spend with our children compared to at-home  moms.

Speaking of those pesky at-home moms, I actually do belive that at-home moms have a greater chance to find free time on the weekends than working moms because they NEED time AWAY from their children -and it’s good to let the husbands have some alone quality time with the kids – so the at-home moms can – and do – head out on weekends by themselves to decompress and recharge their batteries.

Issue #3: The Inevitable Pitting of Working Moms Against At-Home Moms

So again, this piece on chore wars and the division of labor between spouses ended up adding fuel to the mommy wars with this ridiculous time diary research stating that “The group that has benefited the most from women entering the work force is, ironically, stay-at-home mothers, whose husbands are doing more child care…Among married couples with children under 6, Bianchi’s analysis shows non-employed mothers spend only 10 more hours a week on child care than moms with full-time jobs.”

Ok. What?

First of all, again, why does she keep referring to raising our own kids as child care?? Isn’t that called parenting? And secondly, I conducted a totally scientific research study by revisiting my past self as a full-time working mom and spent some time with her vs. my current self who is home full-time and I can tell you this: I spend WAY more time with my kids than 10 hours a week more than my past self did. Where do they get this crap and can we get some context? Specifically because she is talking about families with children under the age of 6, as is the case in my house, so these kids aren’t in kindergarten all day. So unless she found a group of women who stay home full-time and send their children away to daycare most of the day while they toil around and eat bon bons at home, then how is it possible to state at-home moms basically spend a little more than an hour more a day with their kids than full-time working moms? (Could I get that for like a week, though?) This actually really pissed me off because it feeds into this antiquated cultural notion that at-home moms don’t do anything and are “bored.”

My other issue is she skims over the fact that working moms pass off housework duties, thereby lessening their burden at home, but doesn’t account for how at-home moms are exhausted just from maintaining that aspect of a household. When I worked full-time, I always came home to a clean house. If your kids are in daycare all day, they aren’t home tearing up the house. If they are home with a nanny, her job is to make sure the house is clean when you walk in the door. When you are home all day with your kids, you’ve cleaned up 5x by 10am. That’s work in my book. Anyhow, I digress. My point – this “chore wars” piece was more about working moms vs. at-home moms than it was about the wonderful news that  most of us already knew – which is that men are more engaged and involved at home now than they used to be.  

Issue #4: The “Slacker Dad Myth”

So this disgruntled house-work dad is a thing of the past now, eh?

In the end, what Konigsberg’s piece did which was productive, from my perspective, is shed light on new research showing that working fathers feel more pressure to balance family with their careers and yet the workplace makes fewer accommodations for fathers than for mothers. I wish that she had spent some more time focusing on how many employers offer paid paternity leave and how many fathers actually use that paternity leave. One friend noted that though her husband’s firm offered something astronomical like 6 weeks of paid paternity leave, it was “career suicide” to actually use it.

The Wired Momma Conclusion

So – that was my long-winded way of reaching these three conclusions after reading the “chore wars”:

1. Working moms deserve more time to themselves and I’m not sure how they’re going to get it unless their employers offer them more flexibility and the moms use some of that extra flexible time to decompress instead of with their young kids.

2. In my right mind, I can’t see how in the world at-home moms spend only 10 hours  more a week with their kids and why do we even keep talking about it? What purpose does it serve beyond feeding the notion that at-home moms are bored and mindless keepers of children?

3. Dads are doing more – but women are setting themselves up for a world of disappointment when they are pregnant if they actually think there will be a fair and equal division of labor – just buck it up – have an involved husband and realize parenting young kids is more work than you can believe until you are doing it.

Did you read the article? What do you think?

She must take leave without pay because she used up all her sick leave to take maternity leave for her second delivery.

Now – again – remember that I haven’t followed this story carefully – I do not know if there is more to this story (like about this specific police officer) and for quite some time, I’ve respected and thought very highly of DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier – so something feels like it doesn’t add up to me - but then again, I am not an investigative journalist – so I leave the rest of the story to someone else.

Here’s what I know. We are a nation where hypocrisy ABOUNDS. We shove mommy guilt down the throats of new moms in the form of “breast is best” and all the reasons why the infants will suffer without their mother’s milk and yet we offer no federally mandated paid maternity leave to HELP new mothers exclusively breastfeed and provide for their families and then when nursing mothers return to work – we don’t offer them some place sanitary to nurse, somewhere private, and in many cases, even the time off needed to pump at work. And where does anyone talk about the huge hassle of lugging that pump to work, how much it weighs, how horrible it is to transport the  milk on say, the metro, or idling on beltway traffic, etc etc.  So again, we should exclusively  nurse our children, but how that is logistically possible when we have responsibilities at work, paychecks we need and bosses to answer to who couldn’t care less about leaking boobs and clogged ducts, isn’t anyone’s problem but the nursing mom’s problem?

So as this story plays out in the backyard of the Obama White House, I call to your attention my interview with an employment law expert from the EEOC, where she discusses the Affordable Care Act that Obama passed last year. The very law requiring employers (of a certain number of employees) to offer women a sanitary place to pump at work – that is NOT the bathroom. Noteworthy – this law applies mainly to hourly workers – but Obama did compel the government to do better, to be more resourceful, so are we doing that?

Government, which includes the DC Metropolitan Police Department by my last count, can a woman not return from maternity leave, still pump as needed, and do her job? As in get paid to do her job? Are we really so draconian that women are being penalized for the very thing they are being told they should do for the health and welfare of their newborn children? Really people?  This is the best we can do, the day after we celebrate our independence?

Update: A nurse-in has been organized for this Saturday July 9 from 10-12pm:

Metropolitan Police Headquarters
300 Indiana Avenue, NW
Washington, DC

The group will be gathering to show support for the breastfeeding police officers of the Metropolitan Police Department and to raise awareness of the Department’s lack of accommodation for them. Here’s the FB page link: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=245764152117193#!/event.php?eid=245764152117193

At first my heart swelled with pride for my hometown (well, kind of my hometown. Does 15 years count?)

Then I patted myself on the back a few times for being smart enough to raise my kids here. I did a few victory laps, I relished the notion that my children will be cultural savant’s because of the plethora of museums at our disposal and the excellent public education system.

But then I thought about living here. You know – actually living here – and the reality of it – and there is so much that is wonderful about DC. But I think we’re remiss in not discussing one really important topic as we all swell with pride over raising our kids in this most “family friendly” town in the country.

Umm…family friendly? Really? If you’re sitting in an office right now, are you surrounded by family-friendly policies that encourage you to have a work-life balance, enable you to skip out at 2pm without a care in the world, to take your suddenly ill child the docs and then roll in late tomorrow because little Johnny has a year-end  play?

I didn’t think so.

So yes, I do think that DC is an amazing city and one with so many advantages for raising children over others – starting not just with our free museums and fabulous zoo but with our strong housing market and decent job market as compared to other cities. But where I think DC lacks desperately is in leading the way with family friendly work policies, ones that support both parents in needing flexibility. Policies that recognize that horrible beltway traffic coincides with projectile vomiting child coincides with work meeting at 4pm and something’s got to give and you can choose your kid’s needs over your place of employment and not be judged for doing so. And it being the capital city, I think the onus is on our government (including Senate and House offices) and the companies headquartered here (including all the trade associations) to really carve the path towards supporting family friendly policies – not just including them in the employee handbook – but actually actively supporting them, encouraging employees to partake in flexible work schedules – and realizing that working from home can – and does – actually mean you work at home and, in my experience, accomplish  more than you can at work with all the other disruptions.

And note – I don’t consider things like “back up childcare” and childcare reimbursement pre-tax policies as the kind of family-friendly policies I’m looking for – because those policies help me remain at work – they don’t help me see my kids.

So yes, Parenting Magazine, DC is a fabulous town for so many reasons (though I also question their kid friendly restaurant reasoning – either that or I am spending way too much time at local Mexican restaurants or Pizza joints) – and I am proud that we topped the list. But before we get ahead of ourselves, I ask you what you think ?

What’s your reaction to DC being named most family-friendly? Have you seen an improvement in work-life balance policies at your office? Are others participating in family-friendly programs or is it the kiss of death to be the only person who actively uses these policies?

Interviewing and Pregnant

I have a friend who revealed she was pregnant to a potential employer after she was offered the job. The employer then rescinded the offer. What is your advice to women who learn they are pregnant while interviewing?

Anne Noel:  “My advice is to think very carefully before volunteering that information.  The Pregnancy Discrimination Act is a federal law that prohibits employers (defined as an employer with at least 15 employees) from discriminating against pregnant women.  That means that it is against the law to refuse to hire a woman because she is pregnant.   We know that pregnancy discrimination persists, however, and it even may be increasing.  In fiscal year 1997 the EEOC received fewer than 4,000 charges alleging pregnancy discrimination but in each of the last three fiscal years we have received in excess of 6,000 charges per year.  From the perspective of the employer, hiring someone who will go out on maternity leave in 6 months is less than an ideal scenario.   Because women are not obligated to disclose their pregnancies, and because some employers still discriminate against pregnant women, my advice is that pregnant women keep their happy news to themselves until they begin work.   Once a woman starts working, she may convince her employer that she’s an excellent employee, pregnancy or no pregnancy, and it may be harder at that point for an employer to discriminate against her by firing her.”

Bottom line – you are under no obligation to volunteer this information, so focus on protecting yourself first.

Maternity Leave

I am incensed just thinking about where we stand compared to other nations on federally mandated paid maternity leave. In case you don’t know, the United States is the only industrialized country in the world, except Australia, that doesn’t mandate paid maternity leave. Many other countries also offer fathers paid paternity leave, which is I think part of our mistake here in the U.S. Domestically, this issue is viewed as a women’s issue instead of a family issue, a societal issue.

 What should women know about maternity leave and their job security?

Anne Noel:  “People are often surprised when I say that I had to cobble together sick time, vacation time and unpaid leave to take “maternity leave” after the births of my daughters.   The Pregnancy Discrimination Act does not require that employers give women maternity leave.  Instead, it requires only that employers treat pregnant women the same as everyone else.  What that means is that if an employer gives employees sick leave or a set amount of unpaid leave for medical illnesses or injuries, it must also allow pregnant women to take that leave.   So, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act does not require that pregnant women receive paid maternity leave, and no other federal law does, either.  The news about unpaid leave is a little bit better.  In 1993, President Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) . The  FMLA guarantees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a child, including a newly adopted child or newly placed foster child. Workers are eligible if they work for the government or in the private sector, so long as they work for an employer with 50 or more employees. Additionally, employees must have worked a minimum of 12 months for the same employer and must work more than part-time, or about 31 weeks of the year.  Because of the prevalence of small businesses in our country, only 60% of private sector employees are covered by FMLA.” 

Monica:  There is movement in the individual states to improve the law on maternity leave, and California is leading the way.  Under the state disability fund, new parents are insured 6 weeks of paid time off.

MomsRising provides invaluable information on this topic, here is a quick overview of facts from their web site  that we all should know:

• Having a baby is a leading cause of “poverty spells” in the U.S. — when income dips below what’s needed for basic living expenses.
• In the U.S., 49% of mothers cobble together paid leave following childbirth by using sick days, vacation days, disability leave, and maternity leave.
• 51% of new mothers lack any paid leave — so some take unpaid leave, some quit, some even lose their jobs.
• The U.S is one of only 4 countries that doesn’t offer paid leave to new mothers — the others are Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and Lesotho.
• Paid family leave has been shown to reduce infant mortality by as much as 20% (and the U.S. ranks a low 37th of all countries in infant mortality).

Nursing Mothers

I am constantly amazed by how much time is spent focusing on the importance of breast milk to the newborn child and yet so little time is focused on the difficulties working women face in nursing exclusively given our lack of federally mandated paid maternity leave and limited access to safe and clean places to pump in the workplace.  Hypocrisy abounds.

I understand that in the Affordable Care Act passed last year, the President included some protection for nursing moms in the workplace. What can you tell us about this new law and what hurdles nursing moms face in the workplace?

Anne Noel:  “Yes, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”), was signed into law on March 23, 2010.    It requires employers to provide ‘reasonable break time for an employee to express breast milk for her nursing child for 1 year after the child’s birth each time such employee has need to express the milk.’  Employers are also required to provide a place other than a bathroom to express milk.  This law primarily protects hourly workers and is subject to exceptions.  Employers with fewer than 50 employees are not subject to the break time requirement if doing so would impose an “undue hardship” on the employer. This law should make it easier for many, but not all, women to express breast milk in the work place.

But working women face other hurdles in the work place when it comes to expressing breast milk.  In one case that the EEOC successfully litigated and then settled, a female doctor filed a charge of discrimination alleging that the owner of the family medical practice where she worked had sexually harassed her.   She alleged that the harassment intensified when she returned from her six-week maternity lleave and focused on her need to express breast milk for her son.  Although she would pump in her own office at lunchtime, her male boss made lewd and sexually-suggestive remarks to her, asking if he could “help” her pump, if he could see her breasts before she finished pumping and if her sex drive increased when she was pumping, and even saying that he would like to “lick up” a drop of breast milk that had fallen on her desk.  Mostly because of the harassment, she soon found a new job.”

Overall Advice

Anne Noel’s closing advice: “If you think you have been discriminated against, consult an attorney who can advise you as to your rights under federal and state law.  It is usually a good idea to try and work things out with your employer, if you can.  But if you cannot, try to take notes about what happened and think about other people who could corroborate your claim.  Remember that litigation can take years, but sometimes it is the only way to remedy discrimination and bring about change.  And also remember that you must file a charge of discrimination with the EEOC or your state agency if you want to go to court to assert federal claims of employment discrimination and that you have to file a charge within 180 days or 300 days, depending on where you live.”

Monica: Thank you to Anne Noel for providing us with such invaluable information. And thank you to MomsRising for always keeping us current on important facts. Next week we will get some expert advice on avoiding horrid summer frizzy hair.