When I was a child, I thought that the only women who stayed at home with their children were those women without much education…you know, the ones who supposedly couldn’t do much more than be mommies. (Yes, I know how awful that sounds, but I was little!)

These days, I understand that mothers sometimes walk away from the corporate world — from very successful careers in every field, in fact — to stay at home with their children. It’s quite a leap from chief financial officer to chief diaper changer. And I’m not the only one who realizes that there are thousands of highly skilled, well-educated stay-at-home moms out there.

The decision among some highly educated women to stay home with children is sparking a countertrend: The rise of the mommy “SWAT team.” The acronym, for “smart women with available time,” is one mother’s label for all-mom teams assembled quickly through networking and staffing firms to handle crash projects. Employers get lots of voltage, cheap, while the women get a skills update and a taste of the professional challenges they miss. […]

Skilled workers taking temp projects isn’t new, of course. What’s different about these teams is that they’re available on short notice because the women are usually at home; they tend to work cheap because their main motive is to keep their skills fresh; and they’re often extraordinarily well-qualified, having left the work force voluntarily when their careers were on the ascent.

I love everything about this idea. Mothers bring so much to the table besides motherhood itself, and it’s good to know that employers recognize the incredible talent and intelligence in the eyes of the Maya-wrapped women around them.

Posted by Sunshine.

US News and World Report had a recent article about the “new mommy track”, looking at trends in flextime and other options that make it easier for moms (and dads) to find a work/life balance:

On the company front, 31 percent of organizations allow employees to work from home or off site on a regular basis, and 73 percent allow extended career breaks for family responsibilities, according to a survey by the Families and Work Institute. Best Buy allows some of its corporate employees to set their own hours and work entirely from home. Last year, PricewaterhouseCoopers, a public accounting firm, launched Full Circle, a program for parents that enables them to temporarily stop working for the company but stay in touch through networking and training events. Keeping connected makes it easier for moms to return to work when they’re ready. “The thing we know for sure is that women need choices. Our careers are not as linear as men’s,” says Jennifer Allyn, managing director in the office of diversity.

The company did not start the program out of a spirit of generosity: In 2001, it faced a 24 percent turnover rate. Allyn estimates the cost of losing a client services’ employee, which most are, to be around $80,000. So if Full Circle enables one person to return to the firm, she says, the program has paid for itself. Allyn says the turnover rate has already fallen to 15 percent.

The Pew Research Center conducted a survey that found that a growing number of working mothers say that part-time employment is their ideal work situation, which jives with what our own MomSquawk community said in a recent poll on the issue.

What to do if you don’t work for a company that has a built-in parenting-friendly program? Some women are able to negotiate their own flextime schedules. And enough have dropped out and started their own businesses that the media has seen fit to coin a term to describe these women: “mompreneurs”.

Lori Johnson, 34, is one of those moms. After working more than 80 hours a week as a sales account executive in the semiconductor industry, she quit after having her daughter, Avery, just over two years ago. Not willing to return to such a hectic lifestyle, she decided starting her own business out of her home in Concord, Mass., was a “happy medium.” She now designs and sells car seat covers. The idea for Hot Toddies Baby Gear came to her after she became frustrated when people mistook her daughter for a boy because she could find only blue seat covers.

Look for this to be a continuing trend. A 2006 Lifetime Television poll found that 47% of their respondents in the 18 to 29 age group aspire to manage their own companies.

Posted by MommaSteph.

Working Dad has a piece up on a recent Pew poll that shows that only 1/5 of working moms say that full-time employment is their ideal. Of those with young children, 16% find full-time work ideal, down from 31% a decade ago.

We had a couple of polls on the boards last spring on this topic, one for working moms, one for at-home moms, and the results jive with the Pew poll, with 16% of working moms voicing a preference for full time work, while over half would like to work part time, and 23% would prefer to stay at home full time.

Of the at-home moms, slightly more would prefer to work part time over being completely at-home.

Some other interesting findings from the Pew poll:

• 72% of dads say full-time work is their ideal.
• Only 26% of dads rated their parenting performance a 9 or 10 out of 10, 11 percentage points lower than all moms polled.
• Only 10% of working moms gave themselves the highest marks as parents, compared with 28% of at-home moms.

For polling info on societal attitudes towards working moms, check out the rest of the Working Dad piece.

Posted by MommaSteph.

Their name might ring a bell - they are the Duggar family.  And mom, Michelle, is due to give birth to their 17th child in the upcoming months.  Michelle is 40 years old and gave birth to their first child 19 years ago at age 21. Most of the 17 children were single births, with only 2 sets of twins. Yeah, do the maths - she has been pregnant most of her adult life. (Kudos to her for having the strength to do that!) And she apparently has no plans to stop.

Large families seem to be a thing from past generations.  But there are still many large families around!  Families, like people, come in all sizes.  I always wanted to be in a large family as a�kid.��While I�was growing up with just one brother, my best friend was from a family of 8 kids, and I used to LOVE going to their house for Sunday lunch!  And while she complained about sharing a bedroom with 3 sisters, I was thrilled to squeeze next to her�in her little pullout trundle bed for a sleepover.

I always try to look at something from many angles.  As a mom who at times finds it difficult to balance the needs of three kids, I wondered if these kids were getting enough special “mommy time”.  But they have a bigger brother/sister to “buddy” with, so what they lack in individual parental attention is certainly made up with family love.  And as a mom who often struggles to find some “me” time, I applaud Michelle for being able to make their family unit work so well!  (And gosh if I don’t feel selfish right now!)

The Duggars seem like wonderful loving parents - and I am sure their family is blessed.  I guess all I can say is that this is their individual choice, and if they can accomplish this independently without “living off the system”, great for them.

But one thing keeps bugging me.  They have given a lot of media interviews and have even had reality shows taped of their family life.  Is it worth it to display your family in a reality TV show and open them up to the often cruel criticism of strangers to be able to finance yourself to have even more kids? Again, it is their choice.  While I would expect someone (with fewer brain cells) like Ozzie Osbourne or Gene Simmons to do this, it surprises me that the Duggars have.

Well, I will close my post with this.  If I could ask Michelle Duggar one question… I would ask her how in the world does she find the time, privacy and energy to make the next kid?

Posted by Meganlux.

Apparently, the equivalent salary of a stay at home mom has been estimated at an impressive $138,095.00!�

The folks at salary.com made this calculation based on a SAHM having portions of the following 10 jobs: housekeeper, cook, day care center teacher, laundry machine operator, van driver, facilities manager, janitor, computer operator, chief executive officer and psychologist. (I particularly like the “computer operator” part - wouldn’t it be too cool to be paid to Squawk?)� Their calculation was also�considered a mom working an average of 92 hours per�week�(with 52 hours of “overtime pay”).

I applaud the woman who have the courage and dedication to work arguably one of the most important 24/7 jobs there is.� It is also good to get those husbands to realise the efforts of their wives - and this is a timely reminder just before Mother’s Day!

On the other hand, I do question the accuracy of the monetary compensation suggested.  I would feel kinda guilty accepting a chef’s salary when, even though I love cooking, often I end up quickly heating something from the freezer for my kids dinners. And, child educators and psychologists have specific education and experience to be successful in their careers, so I am not sure that any person�should be�considered as having the skill set to do those roles.

Bottom line to me is that it can be a tough decision for a mom to make - do you work or stay at home. It’s an individual decision, and if the choice is to stay at home more power to you!� And I hope that if you are a SAHM you get the recognition and support from your family and loved ones that you deserve!

By the way, if you are interested in calculating your own individual SAHM salary, visit their site where they have created a personalised “Mom Salary Wizard“.

Posted by Meganlux

I’m finally working my way through The American Prospect’s special report that looks at why we can’t seem to create a family-friendly workplace here in the U.S.  Tamara Draut’s essay gives a shout out to “Generation X” parents, asking them to engage in the national conversation about work/life balance. After all, she notes, this demographic is already rewriting the traditional family model. Research indicates that the majority of Gen X men reject the long-established model of man as breadwinner and woman as homemaker. Young dads spend much more time with their kids than previous generations.� Meanwhile young moms and dads appear to be rejecting the career-centric trajectory their parents were on in order to carve more time out for family.

But Generation X parents are not going to create the revolution on their own. (After all, they’re kinda busy with kids, work, school, and whatever else life throws at them).  Draut notes that public policy advocates need to bring these young people into the progressive family movement where they’ll have a structure for organized advocacy. Nevertheless, they’ll encounter “stubborn obstacles” that make family-friendly policies a hard sell.  Draut outlines the three main stumbling blocks:

1. There is a deep-rooted belief in our national psyche that childrearing is a private affair, and that parents tend to think it should stay this way. While polls show that parents support better regulation of child-care providers, they are lukewarm on government-funded programs.

2. We don’t see that our middle class has a child care problem. Draut explains:

[E]ven the most well-off parents in America often think of themselves as part of the middle class, so their ability to secure child care keeps them from fully understanding that the real middle class is desperate for help. This well-off, well-educated minority exerts inordinate influence in our democracy, from the voting booth to the beltway.

Draut shares a conversation she had with a Senator’s senior staffer who nodded when Draut described the middle class’ child care struggles. The staffer sympathetically offered, “I know, my husband and I can barely afford the $35,000 a year for our nanny.”  This is a woman who is helping shape public policy, but she has no clear picture of how pinched ordianry parents are over child care issues.

3. The final obstacle is, according to Draut, the “toughest nut to crack.” Put bluntly, she says, “We simply don’t value mothers’ work.” As a nation, we tend to believe that poor single mothers should work (hence welfare reform, welfare to work programs, etc.) and that the�government should make child care available for these mothers.  But:

Add a working dad to the mix, and the value of a working mom — to herself, to her kids, and to society — isn’t part of the conversation. In a 2000 poll of registered voters, 52 percent strongly agreed and 28 percent somewhat agreed that while “it may be necessary for mothers to work because the family needs money, it would be better if she could stay home and take care of the house and children.”

So moms who can afford it stay home, and feel guilty about not working, or work, and feel guilty about not being at home. And if they don’t feel guilty, there’s obviously something wrong with them. Meanwhile there is the silent majority - the moms who don’t get a choice, who have no paid maternity leave, and who struggle to pay for child care - shut out of the debate, as well as dads who want more hands-on time with their kids but who have no recourse to secure it.

I think Ms. Draut has it just right: Our generation has a better grasp of how moms and dads can balance roles as breadwinners and caregivers, and we want work options that fit this new model, for all parents.  MomsRising is one organization trying to galvanize support for family-friendly policies. But I’m with Draut - we need a DadsRising, and how. Or better yet, an activist movement for all young parents�that will advocate for family-friendly policies and form a voting block with teeth.

Think of AARP for the�20-40 set.

Posted by MommaSteph.

In a recent story on NPR, demographer Suzanne Bianchi, author of Changing Rhythms of American Family Life, reported on a study that found that working moms today spend about as much time directly engaged in activities withtheir children as stay-at-home mothers did in the 1970s, roughly 10-11 hours per week.

Why so? Ms. Bianchi notes that there appears to be a “cultural ratcheting up” of how much time parents are expected to be engaged with their children, so working moms are filling their off-hours with kid-friendly activities. Fear of letting children just go out and play is also a likely factor. Three decades ago it was more normal to have children around, but in the background or outside the house, not directly engaged with mom.

But where do working women find the time� Apparently, less housework and cooking is happening these days. (True here, but I don’t work, so what’s my excuse?) Also, working moms of today are getting less sleep and having less leisure time, either alone or with spouses and friends, than mothers in the 70s were.

So, the million dollar question:  Should a working mom be giving up so much in order to fit in more focused attention on her kids� In doing so, is she satisfying her children’s actual needs, or would everyone in the family be better off if she got a little more sleep and some time to read a magazine� Ms. Bianchi is not saying. Her study was not looking to answer this question, but rather examined parental time journals and explored maternal feelings about balancing work and motherhood. But not to worry, there are plenty of experts around to weigh in on the question and make us feel like we’re doing everything wrong!

(Thanks, S, for the link.)

Posted by MommaSteph.

The latest salvo in the ongoing “Mommy Wars” is coming from author Leslie Bennetts, who argues in her book The Feminine Mistake that when a woman takes a break from her career to care for young children, she’s engaging in a dangerous risk because she puts herself in the position of financial dependence on her husband. Moreover, she’s at risk of being unemployable if and when she returns to work because, apparently, employers resist hiring women who put themselves on the “mommy track.” Ms. Bennetts recently appeared on NBC’s Today Show discussing her findings.

While I found her logic to be solid, and her research to be indicative of what is readily seen in today’s workforce (but not often acknowledged), I was still troubled by her whole line of inquiry.

I’m certainly glad that it is starting a conversation about what women, and even further, what parents need from the working world. What bugs me about the line of thinking presented in the Today Show piece, though, is that it closes down discussion about creating a pro-balance, pro-family, pro-human lifestyle in the American workplace. The truth is, there is validity to what she is saying about “offramping” from the corporate ladder—spending time away from work can damage a woman’s ability to climb and earn later in life, not to mention to achieve the leadership positions that will allow her to influence the issues women care about most.

To me, this indicates that the trajectory or “work life span” in America is geared towards a man’s life. Sure, we have won the fight to work side-by-side with men, but the actual make-up of work—i.e., fight though your twenties to climb, establish your management and leadership skills in your thirties, take on more top-line responsibility in your forties, coast into retirement—is geared toward the biology of men. Pregnancy and childrearing are not even factors in this schedule. This is not good for men or women in a pro-balance or pro-family lifestyle, because it says that hopping off the ladder in your twenties or thirties, for whatever reason (but particularly true for children), will make you suffer in your career. It hurts women, clearly, but it hurts men, too, who don’t want to live as their fathers did, with their number one “family” priority being breadwinning.

Why on earth would women want to join this old mentality, where providing financially is the number one way we show love and support to our kids? If it worked so well for men, why are modern men taking such delight in more actively raising their kids� Of course, money is always important, but more important than everything?

Speaking as someone at home now who truly misses work outside the home, I feel stuck. Affording full-time daycare is really out of the question, and honestly, I don’t want to be away from my daughter all day. Where are my options? Furthermore, where are the options for my husband� What would be so wrong about having a different kind of work schedule? A BALANCE-CENTRIC schedule?

I think we need to work to reengineer our lifestyles so that the work week isn’t so long. So that there is ample opportunity to still have intellectual and financial fulfillment working part-time or in flexible situations. So that child care options are fluid and possible for all types of families.

Simply instructing women that their career might suffer if they stay home is not enough. It negates all of the value of that time spent at home, and doesn’t provide any solution that will work for whole families. We need revolution for men and women. We need a healthier, more active, more relaxed, more family-oriented, more HAPPY society. Continuing to spin on the hundreds-year old hamster wheel is not making us better OR more productive, in my opinion.

Posted by korilu.

Radical Catholic Mom was shocked recently to find that so many moms in her playgroup are the sole diaper-changers - even when both mom and dad are home. This is not the childcare model she and her husband subscribe to:

I don’t get it. Where is it written that because women are connected to their new babies they are responsible for the dirty diapers, even when their husbands are home. I made it very clear to my husband that if I wanted to be the sole caretaker of our daughter I would have had a child out of wedlock and never married.

I think RCM would be disappointed in our arrangement here, which is that we both change diapers, except I do almost all of them when we’re both home.� In truth, I don’t mind. It’s the cliche excuse, but my husband is a terrific, hands-on dad in so many ways that it’s fine with me that the diapers fall more or less in my column. (Though I admit, it gives me a tiny evil pleasure when one of the boys starts pooping just as I’m heading out the door…)

So I threw a poll up over on the boards. With 49 moms responding as of this morning, roughly 49% report that when both parents are home, dad changes the diapers around half the time. 35% of dads do change diapers regularly, but mom does most of them, and 14% report that dad changes diapers only once in a while. And one lucky mom has a husband who changes diapers more than she does.

Leah’s comment on why she does 90% of the diapers might ring true for other moms paired up with helpless (or faux helpless) dads:

It’s just easier for me to take the 30 seconds to do it, than the 3 minutes to talk him into doing it, the 5 minutes to coach him through it, and the endless, “Oh, I forgot to grab a clean diaper… Can you get it? Where are the wipes?!?”

And Corrine has a set-up that I wish I had thought of instituting in our family: She does the diapers, her husband cooks!

So…who changed your baby this morning?

Posted by MommaSteph.

Welcome to the club. According to the National Sleep Foundation (”Waking America to the Importance of Sleep”), which conducted a survey on how lifestyle affects women’s sleep habits, 70% of women report that they have sleeping problems, with 60% getting a good night’s sleep only a few days a week. 72% of working mothers report that they struggle with insomnia. Lack of sleep leaves women stressed out, late for work, too tired for sex, and with little time for recreation with friends.

Worse, women tend to shortchange their health in order to accomplish more in a day. Women are likely to compromise on diet, exercise, recreation, and sleep in order to meet their other obligations. Women also tend to sabotage their sleep by drinking caffeinated beverages in order to keep going, or by working or watching TV in that last hour before they turn in.

Women who allow children to share their beds are the most sleep disturbed. Sigh!

And lest you think you’ll make up all that sleep when the kids are bigger, older women often suffer sleep disturbances as a result of menopause.

How to maximize sleep?� You’ve heard the drill, but here it is again:

• Avoid caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, and chocolate in the last few hours before you turn in.
• Do your workouts at least three hours before bedtime.
• Have a bedtime routine to help you wind down, try to keep regular sleep hours, and give yourself a nice, cool, dark environment with cozy pillows and coverings.

You know how financial planners are always telling us “Pay yourself first” - that is, put money into savings, retirement funds, etc. before paying bills? Maybe we need to think of filling our sleep bank as another way of paying ourselves, and make it a priority. And then work on the sex thing.

Posted by MommaSteph.