From One Working Mother to Another
August 4th, 2012 © by Susan SwartzMy daughter sat down in a coffee house, opened up her laptop and said, “Oops, milk on the keyboard.” No surprise there. With a 10 month old baby, she often pumps while working in her home office. I smiled and said, “The new working mother.”
She is not exactly like those controversial working mothers who have been so much in the news lately but she understands them. You know, Marissa Mayer, the pregnant and brand new Yahoo exec who said she will work through her maternity leave. And Anne- Marie Slaughter w
ho gave up her state department job to spend more time with her kids and wrote in the Atlantic that working women still can’t have it all.
My daughter Sam, a freelance writer, went back to work within days of giving birth. Her book deadline had been pushed up and she had to get writing. Before I could protest, she said, “I know it’s crazy but please don’t tell me I can’t do this. ”
And she did, scheduling postpartum conference calls with her editor and co-author from her hospital bed and meeting her deadline not three months after delivering a baby boy. But no, she doesn’t go along with the idea that working women should keep pushing right after delivering. In fact she’d advise new mothers to take their three months maternity leave and sit back.
As she says, “the only time working mothers get permission to take time off is during maternity leave.”
I need to add that her husband also thought it a bit ambitious to jump back into the job but she was determined. Too much time off might put her at risk for losing the next project. Now when I ask her when she intends to take a genuine maternity leave, she says, “Soon, maybe 2013.”
Anne-Marie Slaughter, the one who found it impossible to continue her government job and be at home for her teenage boys, wrote in the Atlantic that younger professional women are right to resent the expectations set by older working mothers. The ones who gave the impression that you could have both super career and super kids.
In the 1970s when I was a new mother I took three months off my reporting job, worried I might be losing career ground, made sure I read the newspaper every day and continued to write freelance until I went back to the office.
My generation of working mothers felt we had to prove we could do it all – to our bosses, ourselves, society, our own mothers. We didn’t dare relax. Our assignment was to get one high heel in the door and hold it open so others could follow. And we knew if we failed to show we could handle our jobs as well as our kids without complaining we’d mess it up for the next pregnant professional.
Things have improved for working mothers. Better day care. Family sick leave. Some progressive employers offer flexible work hours. More women, like my daughter, work from home and are self employed. That gives them more freedom to juggle their time. But they know the same guilt, exhaustion and worry of every working mama that the baby or the job is getting short shrift.
A nanny has made it work for my daughter. She can write in her home office, take breaks to nurse and pump and check in with her baby who’s in the care of a loving honey-haired Montessori-trained Texan who likes making organic baby food. My generation would have considered a nanny a luxury for rich women. My not-rich daughter set up a nanny budget as soon as she knew was pregnant. It’s a big financial chunk but she says it’s a cost of doing her job. And staying sane. And being down the hall from her baby.
We both agree with Anne Marie Slaughter that the best thing that could happen for working mamas is to elect a woman president and 50 women senators. Women with children who know in their tired bones what it really means to put family first.
Tags: Anne Marie Slaughter, Atlantic, Juicy_Tomatoes, Marissa_Mayer, Mommy_Wars, nanny, susan swartz, working_mothers, Yahoo
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August 4th, 2012 at 11:45 am
Well, I think it’s great when mothers like Sam can juggle enough to stay home. Then there was I, a single parent who had no work from home opportunity, so I hired a woman to come to my flat in the Richmond Dist. to care for the girls there. Until I found one of the cuddlies used by my younger was stashed high up in the linen closet. Mrs. X, it seemed, felt that rocking in her bed with the soft toy beneath her was an evil thing my younger daughter was doing. Then, I decided, as long as my girls couldn’t have me at home, I’d at least get professionals to take over. So until my daughters went, in SF, to the SF Unified School district pre and post school facility, where they were healthy and happy and had other kids to play with. So we all do what we must, with what is available. But I still wish I could have spent more time with them as they were getting to that critical age of about 7 or 8, when, IMO, most of the ground work had been laid. P.S. They are both wonderful adults whose daughters are well.
August 6th, 2012 at 12:10 pm
this from Nancy, an author and freelance writer:
When my girls were both in grade school, I took a job-sharing position as editor at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich — the textbook division when it was in SF. The other woman had children the same age (we had proposed the arrangement!). We worked 3 days a week on staff, sharing the 3rd day, and though it felt much more than a part-time position it allowed both of us to have two days a week to ferry our kids around, wash laundry, do errands, the usual. Before they were in school (and after Harcourt moved their offices to Florida) I worked free-lance, mostly educational materials, but later long hours as the team editor for a management consulting company in the South Bay. At one point, I remember working 3 free-lance writing projects at the same time and making the deadlines. And there would also be stretches of time between projects where I would do lots of stuff with the girls and, once, turned down a project because my youngest daughter was in the nutcracker ballet (as a child) in the city and it was a huge commitment. I don’t think I would have done so well had I worked all that time on staff — maybe I stayed up past midnight more than a few times to meet a deadline, but I loved the flexibility and time it gave me with the girls. It helped that my ex-husband was a free-lance journalist and a very good cook!
He had dinner on the table all 3 days when I was working the job in the city. I feel bad for any woman who does it alone or has a husband who doesn’t pitch in! Fun reading this!