Fifty years ago suggesting that one parent stay at home and forgo paid employment to provide child care would have made plenty of sense both culturally and economically. This was largely because families could live comfortably on one breadwinner’s income and also because women had traditionally been relegated to the domestic sphere. But in the past 40 years, due to both social advances and economic changes, American families have undergone a dramatic change. Leaving the workforce to provide care today, even temporarily, carries real risks.

The majority of parents now work, regardless of the age of their children. Parents are workers and workers are parents, both out of necessity and preference: 70.5 percent of mothers are in the labor force, including 64.8 percent of mothers with a child under the age of 6. That’s in large part because many families in today’s economy rely on two incomes in order to pay the bills. In fact, the only married-couple families that have seen real income growth over the past 30 years are families where both parents work.

Given that the cost of child care may be nearly as large as one parent’s entire salary, a worker’s choice to leave the workforce or work part time so that his or her family doesn’t need to cover those costs may appear to be an economically rational decision. And while there are mothers who choose to stay home for other reasons, short-term economic pressures are often part of the equation. But this choice is not without consequences.

Women are more likely than men to cut back their work hours or leave work entirely to care for their children. Unfortunately, this puts them at an economic disadvantage in the long run. Leaving the workforce, even for less than a year, can have long-term negative consequences for women’s careers and lifetime earnings.

The fact that women are more likely to take time out of the workforce to provide unpaid care for their children is part of the reason why there is a persistent gender wage gap in this country—10.5 percent of the differences in men’s and women’s earnings can be attributed to labor-force experience. When women work less, they pay less into Social Security over a shorter period of time, which is one of the reasons why retired women are more likely to live in poverty than retired men.

Access to child care is essential to a woman’s ability to participate in the workforce, and a lack of access to child care affects the work-family balance of both women and men. Women need to have the ability to make the choices that are best for them and their families in both the short and long term, and greater national investments in child care and preschool programs could help remove some of the constraints that may push mothers toward decisions that have negative economic consequences for them and their families down the road. It would make quality care more affordable for American families and support mothers’ employment.

I encourage you to take a look at the whole brief, comparing private and public funding for early education, right here.

‘Til next time -

Your (Wo)Man in Washington

There is simply no debate over the advantages of quality early education.  Exposure to an affirmative pre-school experience improves subsequent school performance, income potential and health, and decreases the likelihood of interactions with the criminal justice system or dependence on public assistance programs.  It is also quite settled that most American children  live in households where their parent(s) or adult guardians are employed outside the home. (70%)  So child care is an absolute must for families, because the old model of  a working father and stay at home mother is a long gone relic of the past.

What may surprise you is that a huge chunk of child care providers out there are entirely unregulated by any governmental agency.  In most states. at least half of all children in non-parental care are in places no inspector ever sees and subject to no minimum safety or education standards whatsoever.  As far as the federal government is concerned, only the very poorest can qualify for public funding child care subsidies,.  What’s worse, millions of eligible children will qualify but not get the help they need because not enough money is available.  Each state can set its own rules, and there is no consistency from one jurisdiction to another.  Anyone – absolutely anyone – can put up a sign and start taking care of children for money if s/he wants to.  How terrifying is that?

Also shocking – according to the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD – an international alliance of 134 countries in the developed and developing world), the US spends less on early education than any other country.  One reason is that child care providers are viewed as “babysitters” rather than educators, a huge mistake considering how much a baby learns in the first few years and the impact it will have on the child’s later life.  Often paid less than parking lot attendants, plumbers or dog walkers,, these caregivers are more often than not poorly trained or not trained at all, with no expertise in child development or CPR.  The truth is, there is never a time in a child’s life when the quality of care doesn’t matter.  Babies are born learners and are developing their brains and bodies even before they leave the womb.  The idea that nothing of any significance happens in a child’s brain until he or she shows up for kindergarten is just flat wrong.

Child care is an economic issues.  It is not a  private matter, or a family issue, or a woman’s issue, or so peripheral as to not figure as a national priority.   Unless there is a safe, nurturing place to leave a child, dads and moms can’t support the family financially.  The nation simply cannot be economically strong if workers can’t go to work because of no access to quality care.  The economy can’t function unless educated and trained workers are available for paid employment.  These days, that most certainly includes women, who are better educated than men, comprise half the paid workforce, and 80% of whom will become mothers.  An economy that can’t utilize its labor force to best advantage imperils its national security.  Yes, it’s true – lousy child care options are a threat to national security.

Child care is a social justice issue.  There are more single parent households in the US than in other OECD countries.  Children in households headed by single mothers have a poverty rate of 63%.  For all parents, the US offers the absolute least in terms of social supports - we have no paid leave for new parents, no cash supports for parents of young children, no national child care program, and an inadequate child care subsidy program.  To make matters worse, women on average earn less than men, and it is in precisely households with women ( or headed only by a woman) that must bear the cost of child care.  This explains in part why social mobility, or the ability to move up to a higher income and increase your standard of living, is actually lower in the US than in many other countries, including….FRANCE!

Child care is an education issue.  We know that education does not actually close the income gap.  Kids from poor families are more likely to be poor themselves, and kids from well off families are likely to be well off.    There is no argument that access to affordable, high quality early education results in higher reading levels, higher graduation rates, less truancy, less incarceration and less money spent on interventions when children are older and change is harder.  The return on investment in early care and education has shown to be in the vicinity of 16% – huge! (Best return outside of a Ponzi scheme.)  Our current public education system actually exacerbates income disparity.  The real window of opportunity is not in elementary education, or even a college education.  If you want to improve a child’s chances at life, and improve the quality of life for all of us,  making the most of the pre-school years is where the opportunity lies.

Over and over again, the experts at the briefings I attended emphasized that child care has to be a national policy.  Every citizen is impacted and affected whether he or she has children or not.  The quality of our individual lives is dependent upon the quality of the lives of the people next door, down the street, running our businesses, serving in our governments, policing our streets and designing our cities.  We have to change the conversation and put child care right where it belongs – smack dab in the middle of our most pressing national priorities.  Other countries already have.

You can read about both briefings here and here.  You can also watch videos of the speakers – Kristen Rowe-Finkbeiner at The Aspen Institute briefing and Karen Kornbluh at the New America briefing are particularly good!

Til next time,

Your (Wo)Man in Washington

What made you want to write this book?

When I was a child, my father left our home and my mother had to get back to paid work after many years as a homemaker.  At first, she had a series of hourly jobs with no benefits.  I remember the worry in her eyes when she talked about the possibility of my becoming sick at school.  She was genuinely fearful of this happening, since it would mean her having to leave her job and lose those wages to come and get me.  Today, it is still a terrible bind that many mothers face.

Do mothers have more in common, or more that divides them?

I definitely believe that mothers have more in common than issues that divide them.  During the course of my research, mothers from all walks of life all wanted the same thing: to raise happy and healthy children.  Both mothers who worked for pay and those who were staying at home for a period of time stated that their ideal job would be one where workplace flexibility would be an option for them.  This would enable them to do the best possible job for their employers as well as tend to the needs of their children.

 Where does the NAMC fit within the context of all the groups you talked to?

Besides NAMC, I studied four other groups: Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS), Mocha Moms, MomsRising, and Mothers & More.  NAMC was fascinating because of its origins and organizational philosophy.  The group has always been mindful of the ways in which mothers, at the grassroots level, can activate positive change in their lives.  NAMC members consistently shared information with one another, from how to instruct their children on fire safety at home to dealing with rambunctious toddlers.  They also had strong views on important policy issues like workplace flexibility.

What purposes do mothers’ groups serve?

Mothers’ groups function in many helpful ways across women’s lives.  Mothers typically turn to these groups for personal friendship and camaraderie.  Since motherhood can be an isolating experience, they also look to the groups for emotional support.   Finally, they find the groups useful places to exchange information on parenting, child care, and public policy that affects their everyday lives.

Motherhood can totally take over a woman’s life.  How do the mothers you met manage to be activists as well as family caregivers?

Mothers today have so many demands placed upon them.  They have to juggle the tasks of their home life and childrearing responsibilities, and for the majority of them, the demands of paid work.  I think that these obligations are so overwhelming that mothers can easily focus on meeting the needs immediately before them, and rightly so.  However, in order to effect change in the area of workplace flexibility, mothers need information about the options that can exist for them, options that will help them shape new lives of greater opportunity.  I firmly believe that with this heightened level of education, activism will naturally follow.

Thank you, Jocelyn, and Happy Mother’s Day to one and all!

‘Til next time,

Your (Wo)Man in Washington

As the mothers struggle to intervene and maintain some order, the NAMC chapter leader starts the meeting by reminding her members that they have been focusing on safety issues over the past several months. At the last meeting, they discussed how to approach the topic of “stranger danger” with their children. This month’s topic is fire safety, and a local firefighter has come to answer the members’ questions about keeping their families safe in the event of a fire or medical emergency. In this particular NAMC chapter, most of the mothers now stay at home, following a period when they worked for pay. Later in the meeting, several describe the stressful jobs they used to hold, which had no workplace flexibility options, making life very difficult for them. Despite such problems, they also point to the conflict they experience now that they remain at home. In their comments they reflect on the changes they have gone through. 

NAMC Member 1: I [used to be] a guidance counselor for over eight hundred students living in the inner city. [I worked so hard and had no flexibility, but I loved it]. When I had a child of my own [and left paid work], I had to rediscover who I was and the group gave me support. I needed support in my role as a caretaker. I was lost. I didn’t know where I began and where I ended when I had kids. When I became a mother, I became more humble.

NAMC Member 2: I was an agent who represented photographers in New York City. I was mothering my career. It brought me confidence and money. But when I had a kid, I was leaving my kid every day [at day care and there was no way around it with my inflexible job]. Coming to the Mothers’ Center has helped me. Conflict exists with the modern family. The group is like therapy. I operated very highly in my career. Mothering helped me realize I was too type A. It helped me negotiate that and now [to focus my old work energies and talents toward the idea that] my kid is my new job. I can research this job just like I researched my new clients. My son is my career. You are going to have bad and good days. This group grounds me.

The two mothers at the NAMC meeting are clearly not alone in representing the complicated issues facing American families today. Both described the rewards they experienced while working full time at satisfying careers that they truly loved. Interestingly, however, both noted that their jobs were extremely inflexible. There was no way to get around the nonstop demands of their employers, co-workers and clients. After they had their children, through a process of careful consideration, they decided to remain at home. Yet they were confused by their new lives. In many ways they gradually adjusted, but they were left wondering if there could have been other ways for them to combine their passion for their careers with raising their children at the same time.

These two NAMC members chose to leave their paid jobs and, fortunately, were able to make ends meet after doing so. Many mothers who work for pay, however, either do not want to quit or cannot do so. These mothers face a variety of stresses in terms of the daily tasks required of them. The bulk of the stresses have to do with these mothers’ multiple roles and how they are expected to perfectly meet the needs of these roles. The first type of challenge relates to role conflict. For mothers, this conflict emerges when the demands of their paid employment directly interfere with their familial and caregiving responsibilities. Role conflict is especially difficult because there is seemingly no way out of its pressures; that is, by definition, this conundrum means that two or more sets of obligations are competing for attention during the same time block.¹

The second issue that mothers face is role overload.² Role overload relates to the mothers’ perceptions that the demands placed on them cumulatively are simply impossible to fulfill. Unlike role conflict, which emphasizes that stress occurs because two different sets of tasks are competing for the same period of time, role overload occurs when the magnitude of tasks is simply too overwhelming to complete in any given time period. As individuals struggle to execute these tasks, they may feel as if they are unable to do any of them adequately. The daily grind, then, simply becomes an exercise in frustrating futility.^3 *

This is an excerpt from the great forthcoming book written by my friend and colleague, Jocelyn Crowley, Ph.D.,  a Professor of Public Policy at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.  She studies families, public policy and motherhood, and has written a wonderful book about mothers’ experience and activism called Mothers Unite! Organizing for Workplace Flexibility and the Transformation of Family Life. The NAMC and its members figure prominently in this work, which you will want for your very own – you can preorder it here —– and ask for it for Mother’s Day. Its release date is June 4, 2013.  If you are an NAMC member, watch for a special 30% discount in a future issue of the NAMC eNewsletter.

I’ll interview her in an upcoming post – so stay tuned, and order that book now!

‘Til next time,

Your (Wo)Man in Washington

1. Laura M. Hecht, “Role Conflict and Role Overload: Different Concepts, Different Consequences,” Sociological Inquiry 71, no. 1 (2001): 111–21; Carol J. Erdwins, Louis C. Buffardi, Wendy J. Casper, and Alison S. O’Brien, “The Relationship of Women’s Role Strain to Social Support, Role Satisfaction, and Self-Efficacy,” Family Relations 50, no. 3 (2001): 230–38; Esther R. Greenglass, Kaye-Lee Pantony, and Ronald J. Burke, “A Gender-Role Perspective on Role Conflict, Work Stress, and Social Support,” Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 3, no. 4 (1988): 317–28.

2. Hecht, “Role Conflict and Role Overload”; Faye J. Crosby, Juggling (New York: Free Press, 1991).

3. An opposing point of view, however, argues that individuals benefit greatly from holding multiple roles with respect to a positive self-identity, purpose, and meaning in life. See Peggy A. Thoits, “Personal Agency in the Accumulation of Multiple Role-Identities,” in Advances in Identity Theory and Research , ed. P. J. Burke, T. J. Owens, R. Serpe and P. A. Thoits (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum, 2003). In addition, while perhaps experiencing role conflict and role overload, employed mothers generally have higher rates of mental health than stay-at-home mothers. See Rebekah Levine Coley, Brenda J. Lohman, Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, Laura D. Pittman, and P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, “Maternal Functioning, Time, and Money: The World of Work and Welfare,” Children and Youth Services 29, no. 6 (2007): 721–41. See also Cheryl Buehler and Marion O’Brien, “Mothers’ Part-Time Employment: Associations with Mother and Family Well-Being,” Journal of Family Psychology 25, no. 6 (2011): 895–906.

*Copyright 2013 by Cornell University Press.  Used by permission of the publisher, all rights reserved.

To add to the complexity, people with “single mother” challenges may possibly be married. Married parents might have a husband or wife on military deployment, so the spouse at  home is operating as a single parent, in fact. A spouse could be in the kind of all-consuming job that just makes any  real caregiving at home impossible in practical terms. (Michelle Obama has said she feels like a single parent.)  When you get down to it, single mothering and single parenting can accurately describe such a variety of different situations and circumstances, the phrases don’t really tell us very much.

I was reminded of this when reading Single Moms:  The One and Only in the latest Working Mother magazine. A breezy, upbeat essay, it makes single motherhood sound like a straightforward logistical program. Author Lori Gottlieb advises punching up your routines, staying super-organized, accepting imperfection, dismissing the opinions of others, and taking time for yourself. How this is any different from what you’d tell any mother, or any parent, or even any well-adjusted person generally, I cannot make out. Yet, there is no discussion of the stress of making both the mundane daily and lifelong decisions for your children alone, shouldering all the worry, concern, emotional and financial support by yourself. Very curious.

Single mothers defy conventional wisdom – in other words, what you assume or think you know could be inaccurate. Poverty rates for single mothers are the highest in the country, but not because they are out of the workforce and subsisting on public benefits. Most of the 27 million women heading households with children are employed. Their poverty results from public policy failures, not their personal shortcomings, poor decisions or rotten luck.

According to  “The Face of American Poverty Today“, a product of the Women in the World Foundation, one factor is the lack of effective child support laws. State standards range from the totally inadequate to barely making it, and often go unenforced.  Another reason is the expense of child care – the U.S. does subsidize the cost for some low income households, but less than one in five eligible children actually get it. What’s more, eligibility standards are set so that you can make too much to qualify for the subsidy, but not make enough to pay the unsubsidized child care fees. To deal with the sketchy child care availability, moms often end up in jobs with meager pay and no benefits.

To top it all off, what we now call “welfare”, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), comes with strict rules, and only lasts for a maximum of 60 months, requiring recipients to be in jobs or job training, which usually does not offer paid sick days. Missing a shift because you have the flu or your child is vomiting means you lose your job, which means you become ineligible for TANF, which means you and your children go hungry. Oh – and going to school to work towards a better paying job doesn’t qualify as “work” for TANF. So, you can only get those 60 months of benefits for minimally paid work with little or no chance of promotion, and it’s not enough to cover basic expenses, either.

Single parents, and all family caregivers, are in a time bind, overwhelmed by obligations, and engaged in an eternal quest for that elusive work/family balance and economic security. Some of the most effective policy solutions, if we had the will to implement them, would strengthen our social safety net for all parents, as well as anyone who has a family care role. Anyone can get sick, or have to take care of a sick child or spouse, or even a sick parent. Paid sick days as a statutory guarantee, and not dependent upon the whim of your employer, could get you to the doctor today and back at work tomorrow. Making the minimum wage a living wage would positively effect household incomes, stimulate the economy, and move people off the welfare roles. Making sure that everyone has health insurance means mom doesn’t have to decide between whether to buy medicine or food. Having affordable, quality child care available on a reliable basis means moms can go to work, no matter where their income – or marital status – happens to be. Policies that would help women raising the children upon whom all of our futures depend are good for most everyone.

Are you a single mom?Were you? What were the biggest preconceptions people had about you? And what would have helped you most in raising your children?

‘Til next time,

Your (Wo)Man in Washington

She looked up, startled.  “Uh, about five and a half months.”  She slid her hand protectively over her stomach, and for the first time I noticed she was clearly pregnant.  “I meant the book, actually” I stammered, embarassed.

We had a good laugh, and she told me her story.  She already had a two year old, but working a full-time job she felt like she never saw her daughter.  When she got pregnant, she left that post, and was admitted to graduate school, because, she said, it was a “socially acceptable reason” to stop working.  I’m not sure whether she meant wanting to see your two year old awake wasn’t socially acceptable, or not working while pregnant wasn’t socially acceptable, or maybe both, but that was the gist.  Besides when she did go back to work, she’d be able to make more money with that graduate degree.  Her husband was totally on board, so she’d found a way to take it easy for awhile, since grad school was less rigid time-wise than work.  She’d be able to really mother her daughter, and deal with the pregnancy too.  Win-win.

Never happy to let something peacefully drop when I can forge ahead like a spasmodic water buffalo, I asked what she was studying.  Business, she was getting her MBA.  Where?  Johns Hopkins University.  Then it was my stop, so I thanked her for letting me invade her privacy, wished her luck with the new baby and the degree.  As I stepped out to the platform, I handed her my card.  The doors closed and the train moved off into the dark.

And I thought….she’s got a 2 year old.  And she’s pregnant.  And going to MBA school.  At Hopkins, for pete’s sake!  And this is the LESS arduous path she has chosen.  And so as not risk an unproductive moment, on her downtime she reads Lean In, urging her to try harder, do more, push on, manage her guilt, line up a supportive partner, and make good choices.  Oh. My. God.

Lady, whoever you are, I am in awe.  If anyone ever gives you a hard time for “opting out”, putting yourself on the “mommy track”, or being “just a mom”, call me, and I’d be happy to screw their head down to their shorts.  You do your thing, and I’ll do mine to get you the respect, public policies, and political leverage you will need to get the best for yourself and your children.  You deserve it.

You rock, girl, you rock.

‘Til next time,

Your (Wo)Man in Washington

More and more babies are being born to single women. Very soon, more babies will be born to single mothers than married mothers. And these new moms are not teenagers – less than 25% of single moms are under 20. Two-thirds are in their 20′s.  In fact, by age 25, it is more likely that a woman will have a child than be married. So, motherhood continues to appeal to women, but marriage is getting pushed back later and later in life, and more women than ever are just not marrying at all.

If these trends continue, our daughters may become mothers first, perhaps while living with a partner whom they may or may not ultimately marry. Later, once they have established their financial independence, completed their education, and launched themselves into adulthood, they could tie the knot. We,  the future grandmothers to this next generation, will be enjoying the benefits of greater longevity, but still paying much more for medical care and still working, thanks to the savings we never accumulated as a result of the Great Recession. Fewer of us will be able to drop everything and help with the newborn. Fewer of us will be in a position to look after grandchildren while our daughters and sons go back to work. If motherhood is changing, then grandmotherhood will certainly be changing, too.

I would love to know why marriage has lost some of its appeal. I have a few theories of my own, but I’ve not seen much research. Even more fascinating to me  is women’s refusal to walk away from motherhood, even in the absence of a marital commitment. After all, a new mother cannot count on a supportive work environment. Nor is birth or child-rearing rewarded with much status or esteem. Poor mothers, in particular, are often demonized and vilified in our politics and media. Paid family leave is a hit-or-miss proposition in the U.S., and those women whose families depend most on their wages are the least likely to have it. The public funding available for subsidized child care doesn’t even approach the current need for the poorest families, and affordable access to quality care is sketchy at best in this country. Parents in all but a handful of cities and a few states can’t go to a parent/teacher conference, or stay home with a sick kid, without putting their own jobs on the line. Given women’s lower wages and higher rates of poverty, a shaky economy and persistent gender discrimination, I marvel at the sheer grit these women have to pursue and embrace motherhood with so much pushing them back.

Props to you, Mama. I hope it works out great. But I am still pushing for paid family leave, paid sick days, part-time worker parity, paycheck fairness, universal pre-K, a living wage,  and access to birth control for all of us, everywhere, all the time. When I’m a grandma, I want to be able to keep my job and still show up when you have my first grandchild. I want to be healthy enough to bounce that child on my knee. I want to support myself and never ask you for money. And I want to be as fearless and fierce a mother as you.

‘Til next time,

Your (Wo)Man in Washington

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/25/nine-facts-about-marriage-and-childbirth-in-the-united-states/

We may be in the 21st century, but our history is still the history of men.  Men who were kings, who invented machines, conquered weaker nations, compelled religious conversions, made scientific discoveries, sailed to foreign lands, and slaughtered each other with increasing efficiency as the centuries rolled by. For every Cleopatra, Nefertiti, and Dolly Madison, there’s a thousand famous men, like Caesar Augustus, Marco Polo,  Eli Whitney, Karl Marx, John Locke, Mahatma Gandhi,  or Richard Nixon.  Honestly, you could be forgiven for thinking that women did absolutely nothing of consequence until 1920, when women won the vote, insisted on equal rights in the 1960′s, and then nothing again, until Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State. Okay, I’m exaggerating. But not much.

It rather reminds me of the way an invading force subdues a native population. Outlaw the mother tongue, impose the culture and law of the invader, teach only the history of the oppressor, and devalue any source of pride or identity of those you wish to control. If everyone buys into the idea that women haven’t done much of historical significance, and were not a part of the major advances or achievements of society, they are less likely to muster any significant opposition to the actions of men. It’s genius really – half the population neutralized in one fell swoop. Probably has something to do with that tendency women have to hang back, not speak up, settle for less, and let others take the credit, that Sheryl Sandberg wrote her book, Lean In, about.

I remember a couple of years ago, I commented to another parent that the list of 100 scientists from which our children were allowed to choose their subject for a report contained only the names of men. He replied that, if a woman had, say, figured out the solar system, or  stumbled across the theory of relativity, or done anything important, of course we would have heard about it. I furrowed my brow but kept silent. Wasn’t it obvious that the absence of women’s names in history arises from the customs and prejudices of the time in which that history was recorded, not from the failure of women to play a pivotal role? I realized that not everyone shared that opinion.

So, in this one month of the year we have to ponder women’s history, I offer a few relevant facts about women in the United States. We may mourn that so much of our story was never recorded, and therefore can never be discovered or reconstructed. But we can know our present. We women are worthy of study, we are engaged at all levels of human experience, and in fact have a unique perspective because of our gender. We can start here, now, and remember these things.*

• Women outnumber men in the U.S., about 158 million to 153 million.
• 58 percent of women 16 and over are employed.
• There are over 204,000 women in the U.S. military, about 20 percent of all those who serve.
• Women who work full-time, year round, have median annual earnings of about $37,000, while the figure for full-time, year round working men is over $48,000.
• Women are more likely to earn high school diplomas, undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees than men.
• More women are registered to vote, and actually vote, than men.
• 80 percent of women become mothers, and they have an average of two children.
• There are 7.8 million women-owned businesses, employing around 7.5 million people, and generating about $1.2 trillion in revenue annually.
• Women are twice as likely as men to live in poverty in old age.

And one more fact – Maria Mitchell was the first female American astronomer, and she discovered a comet in 1847. She subsequently discovered that she was being paid less than male professors of astronomy at Vassar College where she worked. In a fine example of leaning in, she insisted on a raise, and got it.

‘Til next time,

Your (Wo)Man in Washington

*Source:  US Census Bureau, Facts for Features, March 2013 Women’s History Month

If you stacked up everything that’s already been written about Sheryl Sandberg and her social-movement-in-a-book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, you’d have more pages than the book itself. Who needs to read the book now? We already know what’s in it! The pre-publication buzz has been nothing short of astonishing. With her Harvard degrees, extraordinary success, TED talk, and shards of the glass ceiling crunching under her feet in Silicon Valley, she makes it all look so … possible! Forget about the barriers you face, the attitudes you can’t change, your spouse’s unbelievably long work hours that make you a de facto single parent. I’ve made it, and you can too, she says. Try harder, do better, fire up your ambition, don’t make excuses. Work your way up to a place at the table, then fully occupy your seat. Check any self-doubt or second thoughts at the door – the one that leads to your corner office.

There is certainly a place for Sheryl Sandberg in the feminist universe, given her exceptional professional influence and hefty monetary compensation. There’s just an awful lot of space left – the space not filled by power, prestige or money. Particularly troubling is the anchoring of ambition in all Sandbergiana only and always to the workplace. This premise leads inevitably to the conclusion that a preference for anything other than paid employment indicates a lack of ambition. In order for women to lead, we must compete and succeed in all the places men are, Sandberg suggests. Anything else and we fail. Caregiving and ambition don’t seem to belong to the same world. But how will it ever be all right for her son to be the family caregiver if we have to wait for her daughter, and all our daughters, to break into positions of real power and influence, and change cultural expectations, not to mention the way our workplaces and federal programs function?

While we may typically think of ambition in terms of money and power, is it really so narrow? I can think of scads of women who change their employment because they are overwhelmingly ambitious in a much broader sense. They want to do work that matters to them, perhaps not the work that generates the most income. They want to spend a few waking hours fully present with their children, able to engage, connect and pay attention. They work to make a home for living in, that nurtures the people they care the most about. They are ambitious not only for the quality of their own lives, but committed to the belief that their care will enrich the lives of the ones they love. So, along with making money, they help with homework, make dinner, coach softball teams, fold laundry, drive carpools, rock babies, pay bills, mow the lawn, treasure their children’s confidences, and try to be there for their partners. If that’s not ambitious, I don’t know what is!

If Sandberg wants her son to have the option of being a stay at home parent, the mother of his children will have to make much more than the typical woman earns in the U.S. to be the sole income earner. He and  his family will still need paid maternity leave. When he gets sick, his partner will need paid sick days to take care of him. Ms. Sandberg’s definition of success shows the limits of her “lean in” strategy. If family caregiving is ever to receive the same respect, dignity, and status as making a killing in the tech world, it’s going to be because we finally admit the economic and social value of what caregivers do at home. We would protect them from economic dependency and promote their well-being in our public policies.

You can lean in all you want – but if you don’t have anything to lean on, you’ll just fall over. How ’bout a social movement to work on that??

‘Til next time,

Your (Wo)Man in Washington

Reactions to Mayer have been all over the map. A torrent of opinions have been unleashed,  and I have a few of my own. Here’s one – Marissa Mayer is not anybody’s poster child for momism, feminism or workers’ rights. She’s the boss, and that’s all. She can do whatever she likes with Yahoo! Calling employees away from their home computers and into the office is just fine if that’s what she feels the profitable operation of her company needs. As the CEO with legal obligations to shareholders, she is required to do what she thinks will make the company profitable. She may be a woman, she may be a mother, but she refused to call herself a feminist in the the fabulous PBS documentary about the women’s movement, MAKERS, and she never signed on as an advocate for working women with children. If you are like most women in America, with children, a job, and not enough hours in the day, she is not going to help you. I know, I know. The truth hurts. But there it is.

However, if the media wants to splash pictures of her all over, and writing about how she used some of her own millions to build a nursery for her new baby next to her office, it can only help. What mother, I ask you, gets to BUILD a nursery next to her office?? The contrast between Mayer as an icon of corporate excess on the one hand, and the child care nightmares most of us face on the other, is so striking, a member of the U.S. Congress might even be able to grasp it. If building your own nursery at the office is what it takes to create some semblance of work/family balance, what chance do American mothers have? Well, I’ll tell you – our chance lies in shifts to public policy. We will have to rely on our own political activism to implement workplace policies like paid sick days, paid leave, flexible schedules and part-time worker parity.  We have to make working for money and raising children and/or caring for family, sometimes at the same time, sometimes one or the other, the  new normal, the standard practice, the cultural norm. It has been our private reality for decades, of course, but that reality must be reflected in our politics, institutions and public life as well.

I wish Marissa Mayer all the luck in the world. She has two really hard jobs – fixing a company and raising a fully functional human being. I have two really hard jobs also – advocating for mothers’ rights  and raising two fully functional human beings. The mothers she employs may find life more difficult now that they can’t work from home. But if the decision of their boss makes the critical needs of all parents more obvious, and the obstacles families face at every turn more challenging, my job just got a little easier. Maybe more mothers will take matters into their own hands and throw their political weight around. The only people who can help us is … us.

‘Til next time,

Your (Wo)Man in Washington