5/20/2009 6:00:00 AM | |
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As Memorial Day approaches, the media bombard us with ideas and supplies for "Memorial Day picnics," "Memorial Day getaways," ads for bargain barbecues, tender steaks and hot dogs, and we see happy families somewhere, playing, cooking, joking, laughing. | |
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Letter: Never forget the vets
Saturday, May 9, 2009
TIME MAGAZINE: MOMS
Case for Staying Home
Why more young MOMS are opting out of the rat race
By CLAUDIA WALLIS: Times Magazine
It's 6:35 in the morning, and Cheryl Nevins, 34, dressed for work in a silky
black maternity blouse and skirt, is busily tending to Ryan, 2 1/2, and
Brendan, 11 months, at their home in the leafy Edgebrook neighborhood of
Chicago. Both boys are sobbing because Reilly, the beefy family dog, knocked
Ryan over. In a blur of calm, purposeful activity, Nevins, who is 8 months
pregnant, shoves the dog out into the backyard, changes Ryan's diaper on the
family-room rug, heats farina in the microwave and feeds Brendan cereal and
sliced bananas while crooning Open, Shut Them to encourage the baby to chew.
Her husband Joe, 35, normally out the door by 5:30 a.m. for his job as a
finance manager for Kraft Foods, makes a rare appearance in the morning
muddle. "I do want to go outside with you," he tells Ryan, who is clinging
to his leg, "but Daddy has to work every day except Saturdays and Sundays.
That stinks."
At 7:40, Vera Orozco, the nanny, arrives to begin her 10 1/2-hour shift at
the Nevinses'. Cheryl, a labor lawyer for the Chicago board of education,
hands over the baby and checks her e-mail from the kitchen table. "I almost
feel apprehensive if I leave for work without logging on," she confesses.
Between messages, she helps Ryan pull blue Play-Doh from a container, then
briefs Orozco on the morning's events: "They woke up early. Ryan had his
poop this morning, this guy has not." Throughout the day, Orozco will note
every meal and activity on a tattered legal pad on the kitchen counter so
Nevins can stay up to speed.
Suddenly it's 8:07, and the calm mom shifts from cruise control into
hyperdrive. She must be out the door by 8:10 to make the 8:19 train. Once on
the platform, she punches numbers into her cell phone, checks her voice mail
and then leaves a message for a co-worker. On the train, she makes more
calls and proofreads documents. "Right now, work is crazy," says Nevins, who
has been responsible for negotiating and administering seven agreements
between the board and labor unions.
Nevins is "truly passionate" about her job, but after seven years, she's
about to leave it. When the baby arrives, she will take off at least a year,
maybe two, maybe five. "It's hard. I'm giving up a great job that pays well,
and I have a lot of respect and authority," she says. The decision to stay
home was a tough one, but most of her working-mom friends have made the same
choice. She concludes, "I know it's the right thing."
Ten, 15 years ago, it all seemed so doable. Bring home the bacon, fry it up
in a pan, split the second shift with some sensitive New Age man. But slowly
the snappy, upbeat work-life rhythm has changed for women in high-powered
posts like Nevins. The U.S. workweek still averages around 34 hours, thanks
in part to a sluggish manufacturing sector. But for those in financial
services, it's 55 hours; for top executives in big corporations, it's 60 to
70, says Catalyst, a research and consulting group that focuses on women in
business. For dual-career couples with kids under 18, the combined work
hours have grown from 81 a week in 1977 to 91 in 2002, according to the
Families and Work Institute. E-mail, pagers and cell phones promised to
allow execs to work from home. Who knew that would mean that home was no
longer a sanctuary? Today BlackBerrys sprout on the sidelines of Little
League games. Cell phones vibrate at the school play. And it's back to the
e-mail after Goodnight Moon. "We are now the workaholism capital of the
world, surpassing the Japanese," laments sociologist Arlie Hochschild,
author of The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work.
Meanwhile, the pace has quickened on the home front, where a mother's job
has expanded to include managing a packed schedule of child-enhancement
activities. In their new book The Mommy Myth, Susan Douglas, a professor of
communication studies at the University of Michigan, and Meredith Michaels,
who teaches philosophy at Smith College, label the phenomenon the New
Momism. Nowadays, they write, our culture insists that "to be a remotely
decent mother, a woman has to devote her entire physical, psychological,
emotional, and intellectual being, 24/7, to her children." It's a standard
of success that's "impossible to meet," they argue. But that sure doesn't
stop women from trying.
For most mothers-and fathers, for that matter-there is little choice but to
persevere on both fronts to pay the bills. Indeed, 72% of mothers with
children under 18 are in the work force-a figure that is up sharply from 47%
in 1975 but has held steady since 1997. And thanks in part to a dodgy
economy, there's growth in another category, working women whose husbands
are unemployed, which has risen to 6.4% of all married couples.
But in the professional and managerial classes, where higher incomes permit
more choices, a reluctant revolt is under way. Today's women execs are less
willing to play the juggler's game, especially in its current high-speed
mode, and more willing to sacrifice paychecks and prestige for time with
their family. Like Cheryl Nevins, most of these women are choosing not so
much to drop out as to stop out, often with every intention of returning.
Their mantra: You can have it all, just not all at the same time. Their
behavior, contrary to some popular reports, is not a June Cleaver-ish
embrace of old-fashioned motherhood but a new, nonlinear approach to
building a career and an insistence on restoring some kind of sanity. "What
this group is staying home from is the 80-hour-a-week job," says Hochschild.
"They are committed to work, but many watched their mothers and fathers be
ground up by very long hours, and they would like to give their own children
more than they got. They want a work-family balance."
Because these women represent a small and privileged sector, the dimensions
of the exodus are hard to measure. What some experts are zeroing in on is
the first-ever drop-off in workplace participation by married mothers with a
child less than 1 year old. That figure fell from 59% in 1997 to 53% in
2000. The drop may sound modest, but, says Howard Hayghe, an economist at
the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "that's huge," and the figure was roughly
the same in 2002. Significantly, the drop was mostly among women who were
white, over 30 and well educated.
Census data reveal an uptick in stay-at-home moms who hold graduate or
professional degrees-the very women who seemed destined to blast through the
glass ceiling. Now 22% of them are home with their kids. A study by Catalyst
found that 1 in 3 women with M.B.A.s are not working full-time (it's 1 in 20
for their male peers). Economist and author Sylvia Ann Hewlett, who teaches
at Columbia University, says she sees a brain drain throughout the top 10%
of the female labor force (those earning more than $55,000). "What we have
discovered in looking at this group over the last five years," she says, "is
that many women who have any kind of choice are opting out."
Other experts say the drop-out rate isn't climbing but is merely more
visible now that so many women are in high positions. In 1971 just 9% of
medical degrees, 7% of law degrees and 4% of M.B.A.s were awarded to women;
30 years later, the respective figures were 43%, 47% and 41%.
The Generation Factor
For an older group of female professionals who came of age listening to
Helen Reddy roar, the exodus of younger women can seem disturbingly
regressive. Fay Clayton, 58, a partner in a small Chicago law firm, watched
in dismay as her 15-person firm lost three younger women who left after
having kids, though one has since returned part time. "I fear there is a
generational split and possibly a step backwards for younger women," she
says.
Others take a more optimistic view. "Younger women have greater expectations
about the work-life balance," says Joanne Brundage, 51, founder and
executive director of Mothers & More, a mothers' support organization with
7,500 members and 180 chapters in the U.S. While boomer moms have been
reluctant to talk about their children at work for fear that "people won't
think you're a professional," she observes, younger women "feel more
entitled to ask for changes and advocate for themselves." That sense of
confidence is reflected in the evolution of her organization's name. When
Brundage founded it in Elmhurst, Ill., 17 years ago, it was sheepishly
called FEMALE, for Formerly Employed Mothers at Loose Ends.
Brundage may be ignoring that young moms can afford to think flexibly about
life and work while pioneering boomers first had to prove they could excel
in high-powered jobs. But she's right about the generational difference. A
2001 survey by Catalyst of 1,263 men and women born from 1964 to 1975 found
that Gen Xers "didn't want to have to make the kind of trade-offs the
previous generation made. They're rejecting the stresses and sacrifices,"
says Catalyst's Paulette Gerkovich. "Both women and men rated personal and
family goals higher than career goals."
A newer and larger survey, conducted late last year by the Boston-area
marketing group Reach Advisors, provides more evidence of a shift in
attitudes. Gen X (which it defined as those born from 1965 to 1979) moms and
dads said they spent more time on child rearing and household tasks than did
boomer parents (born from 1945 to 1964). Yet Gen Xers were much more likely
than boomers to complain that they wanted more time. "At first we thought,
Is this just a generation of whiners?" says Reach Advisors president James
Chung. "But they really wish they had more time with their kids." In the
highest household-income bracket ($120,000 and up), Reach Advisors found
that 51% of Gen X moms were home full time, compared with 33% of boomer
moms. But the younger stay-at-home moms were much more likely to say they
intended to return to work: 46% of Gen Xers expressed that goal, compared
with 34% of boomers.
Chung and others speculate that the attitude differences can be explained in
part by forces that shaped each generation. While boomer women sought career
opportunities that were unavailable to their mostly stay-at-home moms, Gen
Xers were the latchkey kids and the children of divorce. Also, their careers
have bumped along in a roller-coaster, boom-bust economy that may have
shaken their faith in finding reliable satisfaction at work.
Pam Pala, 35, of Salt Lake City, Utah, is in some ways typical. She spent
years building a career in the heavily male construction industry, rising to
the position of construction project engineer with a big firm. But after her
daughter was born 11 months ago, she decided to stay home to give her child
the attention Pala had missed as a kid. "I grew up in a divorced family. My
mom couldn't take care of us because she had to work," she says. "We went to
baby-sitters or stayed home alone and were scared and hid under the bathroom
counter whenever the doorbell rang." Pala wants to return to work when her
daughter is in school, and she desperately hopes she won't be penalized for
her years at home. "I have a feeling that I'll have to start lower on the
totem pole than where I left," she says. "It seems unfair."
Maternal Desire and Doubts
Despite such misgivings, most women who step out of their careers find
expected delights on the home front, not to mention the enormous relief of
no longer worrying about shortchanging their kids. Annik Miller, 32, of
Minneapolis, Minn., decided not to return to her job as a business-systems
consultant at Wells Fargo Bank after she checked out day-care options for
her son Alex, now 11 months. "I had one woman look at me honestly and say
she could promise that my son would get undivided attention eight times each
day-four bottles and four diaper changes," says Miller. "I appreciated her
honesty, but I knew I couldn't leave him."
Others appreciate a slower pace and being there when a child asks a tough
question. In McLean, Va., Oakie Russell's son Dylan, 8, recently inquired,
out of the blue, "Mom, who is God's father?" Says Russell, 45, who gave up a
dream job at PBS: "So, you're standing at the sink with your hands in the
dishwater and you're thinking, 'Gee, that's really complicated. But I'm
awfully glad I'm the one you're asking.'"
Psychologist Daphne de Marneffe speaks to these private joys in a new book,
Maternal Desire (Little Brown). De Marneffe argues that feminists and
American society at large have ignored the basic urge that most mothers feel
to spend meaningful time with their children. She decries the rushed
fragments of quality time doled out by working moms trying to do it all. She
writes, "Anyone who has tried to 'fit everything in' can attest to how
excruciating the five-minute wait at the supermarket checkout line becomes,
let alone a child's slow-motion attempt to tie her own shoes when you're
running late getting her to school." The book, which puts an idyllic gloss
on staying home, could launch a thousand resignations.
What de Marneffe largely omits is the sense of pride and meaning that women
often gain from their work. Women who step out of their careers can find the
loss of identity even tougher than the loss of income. "I don't regret
leaving, but a huge part of me is gone," says Bronwyn Towle, 41, who
surrendered a demanding job as a Washington lobbyist to be with her two
sons. Now when she joins her husband Raymond, who works at the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce, at work- related dinners, she feels sidelined. "Everyone will
be talking about what they're doing," says Towle, "and you say, 'I'm a
stay-at-home mom.' It's conference-buzz kill."
Last year, after her youngest child went to kindergarten, Towle eased back
into the world of work. She found a part-time job in a forward-thinking
architectural firm but hopes to return to her field eventually. "I wish
there was more part-time or job-sharing work," she says. It's a wish
expressed by countless formerly working moms.
Building On-Ramps
Hunter College sociologist Pamela Stone has spent the past few years
interviewing 50 stay-at-home mothers in seven U.S. cities for a book on
professional women who have dropped out. "Work is much more of a culprit in
this than the more rosy view that it's all about discovering how great your
kids are," says Stone. "Not that these mothers don't want to spend time with
their kids. But many of the women I talked to have tried to work part time
or put forth job-sharing plans, and they're shot down. Despite all the
family-friendly rhetoric, the workplace for professionals is extremely,
extremely inflexible."
That's what Ruth Marlin, 40, of New York City found even at the
family-friendly International Planned Parenthood Federation. After giving
birth to her second child, 15 months ago, she was allowed to ease back in
part time. But Marlin, an attorney and a senior development officer, was
turned down when she asked to make the part-time arrangement permanent.
"With the job market contracted so much, the opportunities just aren't there
anymore," says Marlin, who hates to see her $100,000 law education go to
waste. "Back in the dotcom days, people just wanted employees to stay. There
was more flexibility. Who knows? Maybe the market will change."
There are signs that in some corners it is changing. In industries that
depend on human assets, serious work is being done to create more part-time
and flexible positions. At PricewaterhouseCoopers, 10% of the firm's female
partners are on a part-time schedule, according to the accounting firm's
chief diversity officer, Toni Riccardi. And, she insists, it's not career
suicide: "A three-day week might slow your progress, but it won't prohibit
you" from climbing the career ladder. The company has also begun to address
the e-mail ball and chain. In December PWC shut down for 11 days over the
holidays for the first time ever. "We realize people do need to rejuvenate,"
says Riccardi. "They don't, if their eye is on the BlackBerry and their hand
is on a keyboard."
PWC is hardly alone. Last month economist Hewlett convened a task force of
leaders from 14 companies and four law firms, including Goldman Sachs and
Pfizer, to discuss what she calls the hidden brain drain of women and
minority professionals. "We are talking about how to create off-ramps and
on-ramps, slow lanes and acceleration ramps" so that workers can more easily
leave, slow down or re-enter the work force, she explains.
"This is a war for talent," says Carolyn Buck Luce, a partner at the
accounting firm Ernst & Young, who co-chairs the task force. Over the past
20 years, half of new hires at Ernst & Young have been women, she notes, and
the firm is eager not only to keep them but to draw back those who have left
to tend their children. This spring Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu will launch a
Personal Pursuits program, allowing above-average performers to take up to
five years of unpaid leave for personal reasons. Though most benefits will
be suspended, the firm will continue to cover professional licensing fees
for those on leave and will pay to send them for weeklong annual training
sessions to keep their skills in shape. Such efforts have spawned their own
goofy jargon. Professionals who return to their ex-employers are known as
boomerangs, and the effort to reel them back in is called alumni relations.
One reason businesses are getting serious about the brain drain is
demographics. With boomers nearing retirement, a shortfall of perhaps 10
million workers appears likely by 2010. "The labor shortage has a lot to do
with it," says Melinda Wolfe, managing director and head of Goldman Sachs'
global leadership and diversity.
Will these programs work? Will part-time jobs really be part time, as
opposed to full-time jobs paid on a partial basis? Will serious
professionals who shift into a slow lane be able to pick up velocity when
their kids are grown? More important, will corporate culture evolve to a
point where employees feel genuinely encouraged to use these options? Anyone
who remembers all the talk about flex time in the 1980s will be tempted to
dismiss the latest ideas for making the workplace family-friendly. But this
time, perhaps, the numbers may be on the side of working moms-along with
many working dads who are looking for options.
On-ramps, slow lanes, flexible options and respect for all such pathways
can't come soon enough for mothers eager to set examples and offer choices
for the next generation. Terri Laughlin, 38, a stay-at-home mom and former
psychology professor at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, was alarmed a
few weeks ago when her daughters Erin, 8, and Molly, 6, announced their
intentions to marry men "with enough money so we can stay at home." Says
Laughlin: "I want to make sure they realize that although it's wonderful
staying at home, that's only one of many options. What I hope to show them
is that at some point I can re-create myself and go back to work."
- With reporting by Esther Chapman/Omaha, Wendy Cole and Kristin
Kloberdanz/Chicago, Sarah Sturmon Dale/Minneapolis, Julie Rawe/New York,
Betsy Rubiner/Des Moines, Sonja Steptoe/Los Angeles and Deirdre van
Dyk/Arlington
Why more young MOMS are opting out of the rat race
By CLAUDIA WALLIS: Times Magazine
It's 6:35 in the morning, and Cheryl Nevins, 34, dressed for work in a silky
black maternity blouse and skirt, is busily tending to Ryan, 2 1/2, and
Brendan, 11 months, at their home in the leafy Edgebrook neighborhood of
Chicago. Both boys are sobbing because Reilly, the beefy family dog, knocked
Ryan over. In a blur of calm, purposeful activity, Nevins, who is 8 months
pregnant, shoves the dog out into the backyard, changes Ryan's diaper on the
family-room rug, heats farina in the microwave and feeds Brendan cereal and
sliced bananas while crooning Open, Shut Them to encourage the baby to chew.
Her husband Joe, 35, normally out the door by 5:30 a.m. for his job as a
finance manager for Kraft Foods, makes a rare appearance in the morning
muddle. "I do want to go outside with you," he tells Ryan, who is clinging
to his leg, "but Daddy has to work every day except Saturdays and Sundays.
That stinks."
At 7:40, Vera Orozco, the nanny, arrives to begin her 10 1/2-hour shift at
the Nevinses'. Cheryl, a labor lawyer for the Chicago board of education,
hands over the baby and checks her e-mail from the kitchen table. "I almost
feel apprehensive if I leave for work without logging on," she confesses.
Between messages, she helps Ryan pull blue Play-Doh from a container, then
briefs Orozco on the morning's events: "They woke up early. Ryan had his
poop this morning, this guy has not." Throughout the day, Orozco will note
every meal and activity on a tattered legal pad on the kitchen counter so
Nevins can stay up to speed.
Suddenly it's 8:07, and the calm mom shifts from cruise control into
hyperdrive. She must be out the door by 8:10 to make the 8:19 train. Once on
the platform, she punches numbers into her cell phone, checks her voice mail
and then leaves a message for a co-worker. On the train, she makes more
calls and proofreads documents. "Right now, work is crazy," says Nevins, who
has been responsible for negotiating and administering seven agreements
between the board and labor unions.
Nevins is "truly passionate" about her job, but after seven years, she's
about to leave it. When the baby arrives, she will take off at least a year,
maybe two, maybe five. "It's hard. I'm giving up a great job that pays well,
and I have a lot of respect and authority," she says. The decision to stay
home was a tough one, but most of her working-mom friends have made the same
choice. She concludes, "I know it's the right thing."
Ten, 15 years ago, it all seemed so doable. Bring home the bacon, fry it up
in a pan, split the second shift with some sensitive New Age man. But slowly
the snappy, upbeat work-life rhythm has changed for women in high-powered
posts like Nevins. The U.S. workweek still averages around 34 hours, thanks
in part to a sluggish manufacturing sector. But for those in financial
services, it's 55 hours; for top executives in big corporations, it's 60 to
70, says Catalyst, a research and consulting group that focuses on women in
business. For dual-career couples with kids under 18, the combined work
hours have grown from 81 a week in 1977 to 91 in 2002, according to the
Families and Work Institute. E-mail, pagers and cell phones promised to
allow execs to work from home. Who knew that would mean that home was no
longer a sanctuary? Today BlackBerrys sprout on the sidelines of Little
League games. Cell phones vibrate at the school play. And it's back to the
e-mail after Goodnight Moon. "We are now the workaholism capital of the
world, surpassing the Japanese," laments sociologist Arlie Hochschild,
author of The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work.
Meanwhile, the pace has quickened on the home front, where a mother's job
has expanded to include managing a packed schedule of child-enhancement
activities. In their new book The Mommy Myth, Susan Douglas, a professor of
communication studies at the University of Michigan, and Meredith Michaels,
who teaches philosophy at Smith College, label the phenomenon the New
Momism. Nowadays, they write, our culture insists that "to be a remotely
decent mother, a woman has to devote her entire physical, psychological,
emotional, and intellectual being, 24/7, to her children." It's a standard
of success that's "impossible to meet," they argue. But that sure doesn't
stop women from trying.
For most mothers-and fathers, for that matter-there is little choice but to
persevere on both fronts to pay the bills. Indeed, 72% of mothers with
children under 18 are in the work force-a figure that is up sharply from 47%
in 1975 but has held steady since 1997. And thanks in part to a dodgy
economy, there's growth in another category, working women whose husbands
are unemployed, which has risen to 6.4% of all married couples.
But in the professional and managerial classes, where higher incomes permit
more choices, a reluctant revolt is under way. Today's women execs are less
willing to play the juggler's game, especially in its current high-speed
mode, and more willing to sacrifice paychecks and prestige for time with
their family. Like Cheryl Nevins, most of these women are choosing not so
much to drop out as to stop out, often with every intention of returning.
Their mantra: You can have it all, just not all at the same time. Their
behavior, contrary to some popular reports, is not a June Cleaver-ish
embrace of old-fashioned motherhood but a new, nonlinear approach to
building a career and an insistence on restoring some kind of sanity. "What
this group is staying home from is the 80-hour-a-week job," says Hochschild.
"They are committed to work, but many watched their mothers and fathers be
ground up by very long hours, and they would like to give their own children
more than they got. They want a work-family balance."
Because these women represent a small and privileged sector, the dimensions
of the exodus are hard to measure. What some experts are zeroing in on is
the first-ever drop-off in workplace participation by married mothers with a
child less than 1 year old. That figure fell from 59% in 1997 to 53% in
2000. The drop may sound modest, but, says Howard Hayghe, an economist at
the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "that's huge," and the figure was roughly
the same in 2002. Significantly, the drop was mostly among women who were
white, over 30 and well educated.
Census data reveal an uptick in stay-at-home moms who hold graduate or
professional degrees-the very women who seemed destined to blast through the
glass ceiling. Now 22% of them are home with their kids. A study by Catalyst
found that 1 in 3 women with M.B.A.s are not working full-time (it's 1 in 20
for their male peers). Economist and author Sylvia Ann Hewlett, who teaches
at Columbia University, says she sees a brain drain throughout the top 10%
of the female labor force (those earning more than $55,000). "What we have
discovered in looking at this group over the last five years," she says, "is
that many women who have any kind of choice are opting out."
Other experts say the drop-out rate isn't climbing but is merely more
visible now that so many women are in high positions. In 1971 just 9% of
medical degrees, 7% of law degrees and 4% of M.B.A.s were awarded to women;
30 years later, the respective figures were 43%, 47% and 41%.
The Generation Factor
For an older group of female professionals who came of age listening to
Helen Reddy roar, the exodus of younger women can seem disturbingly
regressive. Fay Clayton, 58, a partner in a small Chicago law firm, watched
in dismay as her 15-person firm lost three younger women who left after
having kids, though one has since returned part time. "I fear there is a
generational split and possibly a step backwards for younger women," she
says.
Others take a more optimistic view. "Younger women have greater expectations
about the work-life balance," says Joanne Brundage, 51, founder and
executive director of Mothers & More, a mothers' support organization with
7,500 members and 180 chapters in the U.S. While boomer moms have been
reluctant to talk about their children at work for fear that "people won't
think you're a professional," she observes, younger women "feel more
entitled to ask for changes and advocate for themselves." That sense of
confidence is reflected in the evolution of her organization's name. When
Brundage founded it in Elmhurst, Ill., 17 years ago, it was sheepishly
called FEMALE, for Formerly Employed Mothers at Loose Ends.
Brundage may be ignoring that young moms can afford to think flexibly about
life and work while pioneering boomers first had to prove they could excel
in high-powered jobs. But she's right about the generational difference. A
2001 survey by Catalyst of 1,263 men and women born from 1964 to 1975 found
that Gen Xers "didn't want to have to make the kind of trade-offs the
previous generation made. They're rejecting the stresses and sacrifices,"
says Catalyst's Paulette Gerkovich. "Both women and men rated personal and
family goals higher than career goals."
A newer and larger survey, conducted late last year by the Boston-area
marketing group Reach Advisors, provides more evidence of a shift in
attitudes. Gen X (which it defined as those born from 1965 to 1979) moms and
dads said they spent more time on child rearing and household tasks than did
boomer parents (born from 1945 to 1964). Yet Gen Xers were much more likely
than boomers to complain that they wanted more time. "At first we thought,
Is this just a generation of whiners?" says Reach Advisors president James
Chung. "But they really wish they had more time with their kids." In the
highest household-income bracket ($120,000 and up), Reach Advisors found
that 51% of Gen X moms were home full time, compared with 33% of boomer
moms. But the younger stay-at-home moms were much more likely to say they
intended to return to work: 46% of Gen Xers expressed that goal, compared
with 34% of boomers.
Chung and others speculate that the attitude differences can be explained in
part by forces that shaped each generation. While boomer women sought career
opportunities that were unavailable to their mostly stay-at-home moms, Gen
Xers were the latchkey kids and the children of divorce. Also, their careers
have bumped along in a roller-coaster, boom-bust economy that may have
shaken their faith in finding reliable satisfaction at work.
Pam Pala, 35, of Salt Lake City, Utah, is in some ways typical. She spent
years building a career in the heavily male construction industry, rising to
the position of construction project engineer with a big firm. But after her
daughter was born 11 months ago, she decided to stay home to give her child
the attention Pala had missed as a kid. "I grew up in a divorced family. My
mom couldn't take care of us because she had to work," she says. "We went to
baby-sitters or stayed home alone and were scared and hid under the bathroom
counter whenever the doorbell rang." Pala wants to return to work when her
daughter is in school, and she desperately hopes she won't be penalized for
her years at home. "I have a feeling that I'll have to start lower on the
totem pole than where I left," she says. "It seems unfair."
Maternal Desire and Doubts
Despite such misgivings, most women who step out of their careers find
expected delights on the home front, not to mention the enormous relief of
no longer worrying about shortchanging their kids. Annik Miller, 32, of
Minneapolis, Minn., decided not to return to her job as a business-systems
consultant at Wells Fargo Bank after she checked out day-care options for
her son Alex, now 11 months. "I had one woman look at me honestly and say
she could promise that my son would get undivided attention eight times each
day-four bottles and four diaper changes," says Miller. "I appreciated her
honesty, but I knew I couldn't leave him."
Others appreciate a slower pace and being there when a child asks a tough
question. In McLean, Va., Oakie Russell's son Dylan, 8, recently inquired,
out of the blue, "Mom, who is God's father?" Says Russell, 45, who gave up a
dream job at PBS: "So, you're standing at the sink with your hands in the
dishwater and you're thinking, 'Gee, that's really complicated. But I'm
awfully glad I'm the one you're asking.'"
Psychologist Daphne de Marneffe speaks to these private joys in a new book,
Maternal Desire (Little Brown). De Marneffe argues that feminists and
American society at large have ignored the basic urge that most mothers feel
to spend meaningful time with their children. She decries the rushed
fragments of quality time doled out by working moms trying to do it all. She
writes, "Anyone who has tried to 'fit everything in' can attest to how
excruciating the five-minute wait at the supermarket checkout line becomes,
let alone a child's slow-motion attempt to tie her own shoes when you're
running late getting her to school." The book, which puts an idyllic gloss
on staying home, could launch a thousand resignations.
What de Marneffe largely omits is the sense of pride and meaning that women
often gain from their work. Women who step out of their careers can find the
loss of identity even tougher than the loss of income. "I don't regret
leaving, but a huge part of me is gone," says Bronwyn Towle, 41, who
surrendered a demanding job as a Washington lobbyist to be with her two
sons. Now when she joins her husband Raymond, who works at the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce, at work- related dinners, she feels sidelined. "Everyone will
be talking about what they're doing," says Towle, "and you say, 'I'm a
stay-at-home mom.' It's conference-buzz kill."
Last year, after her youngest child went to kindergarten, Towle eased back
into the world of work. She found a part-time job in a forward-thinking
architectural firm but hopes to return to her field eventually. "I wish
there was more part-time or job-sharing work," she says. It's a wish
expressed by countless formerly working moms.
Building On-Ramps
Hunter College sociologist Pamela Stone has spent the past few years
interviewing 50 stay-at-home mothers in seven U.S. cities for a book on
professional women who have dropped out. "Work is much more of a culprit in
this than the more rosy view that it's all about discovering how great your
kids are," says Stone. "Not that these mothers don't want to spend time with
their kids. But many of the women I talked to have tried to work part time
or put forth job-sharing plans, and they're shot down. Despite all the
family-friendly rhetoric, the workplace for professionals is extremely,
extremely inflexible."
That's what Ruth Marlin, 40, of New York City found even at the
family-friendly International Planned Parenthood Federation. After giving
birth to her second child, 15 months ago, she was allowed to ease back in
part time. But Marlin, an attorney and a senior development officer, was
turned down when she asked to make the part-time arrangement permanent.
"With the job market contracted so much, the opportunities just aren't there
anymore," says Marlin, who hates to see her $100,000 law education go to
waste. "Back in the dotcom days, people just wanted employees to stay. There
was more flexibility. Who knows? Maybe the market will change."
There are signs that in some corners it is changing. In industries that
depend on human assets, serious work is being done to create more part-time
and flexible positions. At PricewaterhouseCoopers, 10% of the firm's female
partners are on a part-time schedule, according to the accounting firm's
chief diversity officer, Toni Riccardi. And, she insists, it's not career
suicide: "A three-day week might slow your progress, but it won't prohibit
you" from climbing the career ladder. The company has also begun to address
the e-mail ball and chain. In December PWC shut down for 11 days over the
holidays for the first time ever. "We realize people do need to rejuvenate,"
says Riccardi. "They don't, if their eye is on the BlackBerry and their hand
is on a keyboard."
PWC is hardly alone. Last month economist Hewlett convened a task force of
leaders from 14 companies and four law firms, including Goldman Sachs and
Pfizer, to discuss what she calls the hidden brain drain of women and
minority professionals. "We are talking about how to create off-ramps and
on-ramps, slow lanes and acceleration ramps" so that workers can more easily
leave, slow down or re-enter the work force, she explains.
"This is a war for talent," says Carolyn Buck Luce, a partner at the
accounting firm Ernst & Young, who co-chairs the task force. Over the past
20 years, half of new hires at Ernst & Young have been women, she notes, and
the firm is eager not only to keep them but to draw back those who have left
to tend their children. This spring Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu will launch a
Personal Pursuits program, allowing above-average performers to take up to
five years of unpaid leave for personal reasons. Though most benefits will
be suspended, the firm will continue to cover professional licensing fees
for those on leave and will pay to send them for weeklong annual training
sessions to keep their skills in shape. Such efforts have spawned their own
goofy jargon. Professionals who return to their ex-employers are known as
boomerangs, and the effort to reel them back in is called alumni relations.
One reason businesses are getting serious about the brain drain is
demographics. With boomers nearing retirement, a shortfall of perhaps 10
million workers appears likely by 2010. "The labor shortage has a lot to do
with it," says Melinda Wolfe, managing director and head of Goldman Sachs'
global leadership and diversity.
Will these programs work? Will part-time jobs really be part time, as
opposed to full-time jobs paid on a partial basis? Will serious
professionals who shift into a slow lane be able to pick up velocity when
their kids are grown? More important, will corporate culture evolve to a
point where employees feel genuinely encouraged to use these options? Anyone
who remembers all the talk about flex time in the 1980s will be tempted to
dismiss the latest ideas for making the workplace family-friendly. But this
time, perhaps, the numbers may be on the side of working moms-along with
many working dads who are looking for options.
On-ramps, slow lanes, flexible options and respect for all such pathways
can't come soon enough for mothers eager to set examples and offer choices
for the next generation. Terri Laughlin, 38, a stay-at-home mom and former
psychology professor at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, was alarmed a
few weeks ago when her daughters Erin, 8, and Molly, 6, announced their
intentions to marry men "with enough money so we can stay at home." Says
Laughlin: "I want to make sure they realize that although it's wonderful
staying at home, that's only one of many options. What I hope to show them
is that at some point I can re-create myself and go back to work."
- With reporting by Esther Chapman/Omaha, Wendy Cole and Kristin
Kloberdanz/Chicago, Sarah Sturmon Dale/Minneapolis, Julie Rawe/New York,
Betsy Rubiner/Des Moines, Sonja Steptoe/Los Angeles and Deirdre van
Dyk/Arlington
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