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BusinessWeek: September 18, 2000 |
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Working Life: Work & Family
The New Debate over Working Moms As more choose to stay home, office life is again under fire
Talk like this might make Weiland sound like a 1950s revivalist, but just a few years ago, the 30-year-old wanted nothing to do with June Cleaver. In fact, until recently, Weiland was the kind of woman you could imagine feminist crusader Betty Friedan wanting to have drinks with. Weiland worked her way through college by waitressing and then waited 7 years after she married to have a baby so she could travel and develop her career in sales. Three months ago, she and her husband, Thomas, had a little girl. When she was working, NanC often felt she had to fight falling into the role of housekeeper and cook at home. The battles with her husband seemed constant. So once Ava was born, the couple decided to forgo NanC's income so she could stay at home. They'd get by on one car and almost no meals out. Thomas, a product manager at Amazon.com Inc., now takes the bus to work and eats his lunch out of a very un-New Economy pail that NanC packs for him. She wants her daughter to know she got an education and made it in her career. "But now, there's no more battle," she says. "I clean the house, I cook, I take care of the money, and I take care of the baby. And when my husband comes home, he comes back to a peaceful home," she says. "It has made me believe that this is the way it's supposed to be." There are plenty of stay-at-home moms who think exactly as Weiland does, just as there are many working mothers who think people such as Weiland are trapped in some bizarre, Stepford Wives time warp. "I have friends who start drinking at two in the afternoon, take antidepressants, can't stand the sight of their own kids, and don't even speak to their husbands anymore," says one working mom of her stay-at-home sisters. But it's not as if either group has found a formula for that still-elusive peace of mind. Working moms battle feelings of guilt over leaving their children and powerlessness over the stress in frenetic careers, while stay-at-home moms fight feelings of isolation, boredom, and purposelessness, with studies showing depression rates among women highest for those at home with preschool children. Some 25 years after women started pouring into the labor force, you would think the work-and-family dilemma would have eased, or that the judgments women have about each other's choices would have at least lost some of their sting. But in some ways, the tensions today are fiercer than ever, exacerbated by the New Economy's demands on dual-earner couples for 60-hour workweeks on the one hand and the increased option for some to stay at home on the other. Often, the divide appears in that awkward pause that creeps up at cocktail parties when a stay-at-home mom is asked the perennial compartmentalizer: "What do you do?" Working mothers say they feel it when they get shut out of school volunteer work as if it were punishment for having careers. Even play groups are sometimes divided along party lines. "What is so unbelievable to me is that 9 times out of 10, the jibes, the tensions you feel--they all come from other women," says 33-year-old Erika Brown, chief marketing officer for Internet Venture Works Inc. in Waltham, Mass., and mother of a 15-month-old. "It's a galvanizing topic that puts women in one camp or another." It's this can't-win-no-matter-what dynamic that is distracting women from drilling down to the real problem: the way the workplace in Corporate America is designed. According to Joan Williams, co-director of American University's Gender, Work & Family Project and author of the recently released book Unbending Gender, most jobs are centered around the notion of an ideal worker who labors at least 40 hours a week--and often 60--without ever taking a break or downshifting for child-rearing. "If you define the ideal worker around men's bodies and men's traditional life patterns, that's not choice," says Williams. "That's discrimination." With the deck stacked like this, Williams says, it's no wonder women wind up feeling like failures in both arenas. To fit into the ideal-worker mold, women often feel they have to sacrifice being good mothers. Yet leaving the workforce altogether often marginalizes them economically--some 40% of divorced mothers end up in poverty. RIGGED. For women at the top, the problems aren't monetary but psychological. Michele R. Bolton, an executive coach at ExecutivEdge in Silicon Valley, recently completed a three-year study of some of high tech's most powerful and successful moms, some of whom are still working and others who have decided to stay at home. The research became a part of her recently released book, The Third Shift. What Bolton discovered was that both groups of women were plagued with doubts about their choices and tormented by their own second-guessing. "When you are uncertain about your own decision, it is a natural human tendency to discount or marginalize someone else's decision," says Bolton. "If you are feeling pretty good about what you do, you don't tend to worry about what someone else is doing." But feeling pretty good about what they do, mothers say, is almost impossible. For six years, Danielle Davis, a 32-year-old mother of two and senior public-relations counselor at Richardson, Myers & Donofrio Inc., fantasized about being home with her kids. If she quit her job, she thought, she'd obliterate her constant regrets about being out of the house all day and then blowing in at six to get dinner started. So she worked it out with her husband, an Immigration & Naturalization Service agent, to stay at home with her sons, then aged one and six. But the move hardly solved all of her problems. She couldn't volunteer at her six-year-old's school, as she had planned, because on one income, child care for her infant son would have cost too much. Accustomed to being a 50-50 partner with her husband, she now felt as if she had nothing to contribute--not even to conversations. She soon found herself feeling bored, sad, and disappointed, missing the action at the office. "I felt bad I didn't want to be home with my kids," she says. Nine months later, she was back at work. Even so, Davis sometimes feels "a negative vibe" from the other moms, 90% of whom stay at home in her suburban Baltimore neighborhood. It surfaces at sports practices, when Davis has to drop off her son late because she works, or when she gets turned down for volunteer work at school because she can't make the 10 a.m. meetings. "It creates a big divide," Davis says. "It's a mind game, and you just get it subliminally." Although Davis says her time at home makes her feel more confident than ever about her decision to work, many mothers who haven't had the chance to switch back and forth say they continue to feel caught. So, too, do many men who are taking on more family responsibilities but getting no slack at work. Williams argues that the only way this pressure will let up is by redesigning work--creating part-time jobs that offer proportional pay, benefits, and opportunities for advancement. As it stands now, part-time work rarely offers half the pay of full-time positions and often doesn't include benefits. Human-resource heads argue that their companies are addressing work-family conflicts with an arsenal of programs, including part-time or flexible work arrangements and telecommuting. But unless you work for one of the big consulting firms, such as Ernst & Young or Deloitte & Touche, or a handful of other enlightened companies that have made a big push to promote part-timers, you can forget about advancement. Surveys show that most work-family programs have appallingly low rates of success in keeping women at work. In fact, many workers report that they feel they need "air cover"--in the form of a high-ranking male supervisor--before they can take advantage of the policies. Using the programs, they say, is often tantamount to holding up a sign asking not to be promoted. UNFAIR CHOICE. This is one of the reasons women choose to drop out, resulting in a work world that presents itself as egalitarian but in which 95% of upper management in Corporate America is still composed of men. No wonder, then, that women intent on reaching the top, more often than other women, forgo having children altogether. A recent study by women's research organization Catalyst found that of the successful women with MBAs who have risen to within three levels of the CEO position in their corporations, only 67% are married, compared with 84% of men with the same work success. And when it comes to children, the gap widens even further. Nearly three-quarters of the men have kids, while only 49% of the women do. Catalyst didn't ask these women why they didn't marry or have kids, but American University's Williams says it's still too often the case that women have to choose between success at work and success at home. "That's the shame," she says, "because it's the ideals that are really at odds with each other--not us." Realizing that, Williams and other experts say, will help women redirect their slings at the real target: employers. In the tightest labor market in decades, women can finally afford to start demanding jobs that make more sense. Return to top | |
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 TABLE What Price Success? Do women with high-powered jobs have less of a chance of having a family?
Yes, says a recent Catalyst study of MBAs---men and women at an average age of
40--who have risen to top jobs in their corporations.
MEN WOMEN
SINGLE 14% 27%
HAVE CHILDREN 74 49
SPOUSE AT HOME OR
WORKING PART TIME 48 10
DATA: CATALYST
Return to top Nannies on Speed Dial There is a growing army of domestic help out there, and more and more families are picking up the phone For Dorian Mintzer, mother of a 3-year-old, having a housekeeper, a babysitter, and a grocery delivery service was no longer enough. Never able to find time to organize her office, let alone wade through old magazines and photos, the 54-year-old psychologist hired Chaos Consulting, a two-year-old Boston firm, to sort through her mess. For $40 an hour, Abby Goldenfarb, the company's self-described obsessive-compulsive owner, creates files and scrapbooks and figures out which papers to toss. Since January, Mintzer has paid her personal organizer more than $5,000, and she says she's worth every cent. "There's only so much you can juggle," Mintzer says. "This helps me feel less overwhelmed." Forget Superwoman. Now, many working women with children have become Superdelegators, paying people to perform all kinds of tasks they can't or don't want to fit into their frantic lives. Entrepreneurs are eager to respond to the time crunch, creating businesses unimaginable just a few years ago. These companies comprise a rapidly growing Mommy industry, filled with workers ready to do almost anything to help harried parents--even as some experts worry that parents might be delegating too much. ACCOUNTS PAYABLE. Child care is only the beginning. There are breast-feeding consultants, baby-proofing agencies, emergency babysitting services, companies specializing in paying nanny taxes, and others that install hidden cameras to spy on babysitters' behavior. People can hire bill payers, birthday party planners, kiddie taxi services, personal assistants, personal chefs, and, of course, household managers to oversee all the personnel. Sound self-indulgent? Not at all, says Monica Frei Jenkins, president of Town & Country Resources in Palo Alto, Calif., which places all sorts of household help. "If we don't invest in taking the stress away, we do our children a disservice," she says, noting that too much household stress increases the potential for divorce. "Women are beginning to realize they have choices. They don't have to do everything themselves and be ragged." Indeed, requests for help are skyrocketing. At Town & Country, where some of the company's nannies make as much as $60,000 annually, there were 1,200 household employees placed last year, up 35% from the year before. Demand for personal assistants and household managers was especially high, Jenkins said, with families finding that a personal assistant running errands for just five hours a week substantially reduces stress. Also popular: night baby nurses. Some new mothers back at work hire nurses for several months, says Jenkins, so they can sleep through the night, concentrate at work, and "be sane." Many of these businesses flourish because already-strained family support systems are getting even weaker. Even grandparents who live nearby often can't help out these days, since they are still working themselves. "We are frequently the gift from Grandma," said Barbara Marcus, president of Brookline (Mass.)-based Parents in a Pinch Inc., which provides emergency child-care services like supplying backup babysitters when the nanny calls in sick. The company, which placed caregivers in more than 7,000 jobs last year--up 25% from three years ago--can send screened, trained babysitters to parents' homes on as little as 10 minutes' notice. But the help comes at a hefty price. Parents not only pay $9 an hour to the sitter but also a $60 referral fee to the agency for every day the sitter works. For some parents, time is a lot scarcer than money. So they don't flinch at paying high fees for last-minute child care or for people to do a wide variety of menial chores. That's why Suzanne Langenwalter, a "handy ma'am" in New York City, can charge up to $50 an hour for her services. Langenwalter, who runs Jill of All Trades, does bookkeeping, babyproofs homes, organizes closets, plasters walls, and has even packed up the contents of entire houses in only a few days. Clients ask her to pack, vs. the movers, she says, because they trust her to sort through their belongings and throw the junk out. "People don't have time to look at all their stuff," she said. "I know what's important." People who work for major corporations often can get such help through their jobs. Many progressive companies now offer wide-ranging concierge services, staffed with people who will do almost anything that's legal. Circles, a Boston-based service that works with 50 companies, often plans vacations for clients' employees and finds them tickets to sold-out shows. Circles staffers have even tracked down a salad dressing from a Los Angeles restaurant that supposedly helps pregnant women go into labor. Companies are also making it easier for employees to run their own errands. At 3Com Corp. in Santa Clara, Calif., for instance, workers can get their dry cleaning picked up directly from their cubicles. They also can walk to their parking lot to go to a dentist, whose office is set up in a van. NO SUBSTITUTE. Employees certainly need this help, but they also need to know when they must focus on their families, says Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute in New York City and author of Ask the Children. "Kids do best when it's clear they are a priority in their parents' lives," Galinsky says, adding that how people parent matters more than whether they work or not. Companies that provide backup child care for sick kids may ease stress for working parents, Galinsky notes, but they're not letting employees stay home with children who are ill. And those that provide sitters for parents who must work the weekend are certainly freeing employees from worrying about their children's well-being, but they're not allowing them to spend the day with their families. Sometimes mommy services can backfire. Lynn Corsiglia, a human resources executive in California, remembers the disappointment in her daughter's eyes when the girl discovered that someone had been hired to help organize her birthday party. "I realized that I blew the boundary," she says. "To her, organizing the party was part of the event." Corsiglia apologized, and then sat down with her daughter as she started to cry. Party planners can dredge up fears in parents, too. Liz Nagengast, co-owner of New York City-based In Tandem Productions, which plans elaborate children's parties that cost from $400 to $17,000, says she has never seen any kids upset at her events. But parents often worry about how they'll be judged by other families. "A lot of parents call and say they don't want something to look ostentatious," she said. Sometimes, parents are so stressed that caregivers must spend time trying to get them to relax and focus on their children. Diane Lipton Dennis, president and CEO of Lipton Corporate Child Care Centers Inc., which offers emergency child care, says she tries to encourage parents--without insulting them--to take a minute to hear about their children's day. "People don't have time to stop and listen and just be," she said. Sometimes, they don't even bother to drop their children off at her emergency center, which they have never seen, she said, recalling a child who arrived in a limousine. She winces at the taxi services that routinely ferry children to the pediatrician or shuttle children as young as eight months to the day care center. Some even pay someone else to take kids to their shrinks--a ride experts like Corsiglia believe should be handled by the family. Indeed, Corsiglia figures parents should interrupt work for anything involving their child's health, safety, and emotional well-being. Without that kind of bottom line, stressed-out parents can fall into a consumer trap, forgetting that there are some things money just shouldn't buy. Return to top TABLE Mommy Inc. A slew of new services is helping New Economy parents cope with balancing the needs of their 24-7 careers with those of their kids. But has buying parenthood gone too far? Now offered in your neighborhood... KIDDIE LIMO SERVICES BABYPROOFING AGENCIES NANNY SURVEILLANCE OUTFITS BIRTHDAY PARTY PLANNERS NANNY TAX PREPARERS FAMILY CHAOS CONSULTANTS Return to top Work at Home? First, Get Real Often, visions of time and freedom are quickly dashed Every day, moms and dads quit their jobs in the hope of becoming part of that popular image of the work-at-home parent, the one where they are smiling at the computer while their adorable little baby crawls underfoot. I wish I could tell you that this picture squares with reality. But it doesn't. In fact, it's pure fantasy. Last November, after 12 years as a full-time Washington correspondent for BUSINESS WEEK, I resigned to become a freelance writer, setting up shop in my basement. I wanted to spend more time with my daughter, Kristina, who was then 5. But like many who had made this move before me, I had unrealistic expectations about how much I could accomplish with only a carpet commute. Of the 37.8 million households with dependent children, there are 11.6 million that have at least one parent who works from home, says International Data Corp., based in Framingham, Mass., which provides market data on information technology. For parents out there who are thinking of trading in their power suits for sweatsuits, managing expectations is critical. Figure out at the start how you can spend more time with your child. Will you need a reduced workload? Are you also looking for a better quality of life, with a spectrum of other activities, such as more time at the gym? Or do you simply plan to transfer a full-time workload to a home office? To help you plan, here are 10 tips for the prospective at-home working parent: NO WORK, NO PAY. If you telecommute with a regular salary, you may have time to play with your child, get a haircut, and putter in your garden. But if you plan to be a free agent, remember: Money coming in depends directly on doing the work. Yes, you can put in a load of wash while your PC is booting up. But every hour you spend running errands means lost income. BEWARE THE 24-7 WEEK. The great advantage of working at home is that you can work at 3 a.m. if necessary. That's the disadvantage, too--work is always there. It's hard to turn down jobs that will bring in money, and it's hard to pit your child's needs against those of your clients. But if you don't set limits, there's no point being home. "When my daughter was 12, she wrote a message on my [computer] screen because she knew that's where I looked: `Can you please pick me up?' That's when I knew it was bad," recalls Lisa Roberts, who runs www.en-parent.com. ESTABLISH A ROUTINE. Thought you were leaving behind scheduled meetings and set hours? The choices that come with being home can be overwhelming, so set regular hours. That could mean working from 9 a.m. to noon, taking the rest of the day off to go to the gym and care for kids, then working again from 9 p.m. to midnight. Or work from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and take Fridays off for chores and downtime. Your life can turn chaotic unless you stick to a schedule that's as predictable as the office was. ALLOW FOR EMERGENCIES. Routines are great, but they can easily fall apart. Plan for the unplanned--such as a child's illness. I had daydreamed that if my child fell ill, I would read aloud by her bedside and feed her chicken soup. But when Kristina was sick on the same day a work assignment was due, she had to spend several hours upstairs by herself, miserable. If you pace your work, you can keep mini-disasters to a minimum. BE REALISTIC ABOUT MONEY. Whatever your lowball earnings projections are, deduct 20% just to be safe. Unless you're telecommuting for an employer, you're probably forgoing health insurance, retirement-plan contributions, paid vacations, and expense accounts. Calculate conservatively the time you can put in. I thought I could easily work 25 hours a week--9 a.m. to 3 p.m., with an hour off a day for errands. I underestimated the time it took for chores, doctors' visits, and other responsibilities. JUST SAY NO. So you want to be president of the PTA? Becoming an integral part of your child's school may seem alluring from the distance of your downtown office. But volunteering can eat into your paid hours. Valerie Finberg, a Boulder (Colo.) mother of two--who, until recently, worked at home full time as a management consultant--ran a book program for her child's class. "I was a miserable failure at it," she says. "It required constant attention." So volunteer for an occasional field trip, but be careful not to overcommit. DON'T FIRE THE NANNY. If you have a baby or toddler, you may be able to get some work done during nap time, but not much. The best bet is to hire a part-time sitter if you have young children and want to get in extra hours without working at 3 a.m. I set my office hours while my daughter is in school, giving her my full attention at other times. But that doesn't always work. I recently had to schedule a phone interview while my daughter was home with a play date. The six-year-olds promised not to interrupt unless there was an emergency. The emergency? They wanted candy NOW. GET EVEN MORE REINFORCEMENTS. When I left my full-time job, I let the nanny go without realizing how much housework I would have to take on. Besides caring for Kristina, she had folded my daughter's laundry, cleaned her room, and straightened the family room. I spent the first hour of every workday on those chores. But I could earn more--and reduce my stress--by adding a second day for a cleaning person. As Roberts writes in How to Raise a Family and a Career Under One Roof: "Take the time you would have spent, say, cleaning the house or mowing the lawn, and earn money at something you are really good at." GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK. You would think that Jeralynn Burke, 42, would know something about stress reduction. Burke, of Des Plaines, Ill., runs E-scent-ials, a Web site that sells aromatherapy products. A year ago, she suffered from palpitations, shortness of breath, and chest pains. Between caring for two preschoolers, running her house, and setting up her home business, she hadn't taken a day off from work for eight months. "Now, I'm taking some time off each day," she says, "even if it's 15 minutes sitting on the porch with a cup of tea." GET OUT AND ABOUT. For me, the first few weeks of working at home were euphoric. Without the distractions of the office, my productivity soared. But then I started talking to myself for prolonged periods. I was suffering from isolation--a common affliction of the at-home worker. So, despite the pressures, see a friend for lunch. Meet a client face-to-face even if it would be quicker to do business by phone. Most important: Don't forget why you wanted to become a work-at-home parent. The chance to test new skills, build a business, and assert more control over your life are all important goals. But strengthening bonds with your children tops the list. As long as you're prepared, you can find that right balance. Return to top TABLE Advice from the Front ONLINE Web sites that offer guidance to work-at-home parents, plus links to other sites WWW.EN-PARENT.COM for "the entrepreneurial parent" WWW.WAHM.COM for "work-at-home moms" WWW.IVILLAGE.COM/WORK for "stay-at-home parents" WWW.SLOWLANE.COM for "stay-at-home dads" BOOKS HOW TO RAISE A FAMILY AND A CAREER UNDER ONE ROOF by Lisa Roberts THE WORK AT HOME BALANCING ACT: The Professional Resource Guide for Managing Yourself, Your Work, and Your Family at Home by Sandy Anderson WORKING AT HOME WHILE THE KIDS ARE THERE, TOO by Loriann Hoff Oberlin MOMPRENEURS: A MOTHER'S PRACTICAL STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO WORK-AT-HOME SUCCESS by Ellen Parlapiano and Patricia Cobe Return to top |
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