Mojo Mom Podcast with Balancing Professionals career expert Kella Hatcher

I'm continuing my series of Mojo Mom Podcast conversations with Courageous Parents, Confident Kids contributors, this week speaking with Kella Hatcher of Balancing Professionals consulting. Kella, collaborating with her business partner Maryanne Perrin, contributed a chapter on "Tools for Career Reinvention" to our new book.

Listen to the podcast now:



This week Mojo Mom is talking career strategies with Kella Hatcher, who along with Maryanne Perrin is a principal in Balancing Professionals consulting, advocating or a flexible, strategic, sustainable workplace. Kella and Maryanne have also contributed a chapter on career development to the new anthology that Amy Tiemann is editing, "Courageous Parents, Confident Kids -- Letting Go So You Both Can Grow."

Kella and Amy talk about strategies for lifelong career development, on-ramping, putting your best foot forward and getting your confidence back as you craft your own path, which may go "off-road" rather than follow a career ladder. Fortunately, these days more workers are advocating for alternative, flexible work, and that will benefit both Moms and Dads. Workplace change is coming, and we are the pioneers!

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Hail to the Mom-in-Chief, Granny-in-Chief, Sister-in-Chief...

Barack Obama brings a refreshing image of an involved Dad of two young daughters to the White House. I cheered to see him and Michelle attending teachers' conferences days after winning the election. Their family will be a very public face for work-life integration just by their very presence in the White House--not to mention the family-friendly legislation that President Obama may champion and sign.

Their family means more to me than the Clintons did because it blows my mind to think that the President and First Lady are finally people of my generation. Here I am writing about motherhood and family, and we just elected a guy who could be another parent at my daughter's soccer game. I turned the corner to 40 just in time for the election, so yes, it is quite formidable and inspiring to know that we elected a post-Boomer (in spirit if not by birth date) President who is also in his 40's. Honestly, it makes me want to up my own game, both professionally and otherwise--when I read that he hits the gym every day it makes me think that if he has time to make that a priority, I should, too. (Hasn't happened quite yet but stay tuned!)

But it's the women behind the man who are most on my mind today. Not only Michelle, but Barack's mother, Ann Dunham, his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng, and his mother-in-law, Michelle's mother Marian Robinson.

Like most families, Barack Obama's extended clan has a whole lot of intergenerational caregiving going on. I hope that his family will raise the profile of this issue--the crucial, invisible work that women do all over the world. You have probably heard about Madelyn Dunham helping his single Mom Ann raise Barack. He lived with his grandparents for extended periods of time while Ann did her research in Indonesia. But did you know that Maya Soetoro-Ng was caring for Madelyn Dunham until her death earlier this month? Obama's break from the campaign trail for a final visit with his grandmother made headlines, but Soerto-Ng's contribution remained typically invisible. Women caring for their relatives may be the fabric of life but it's rarely news.

Time Magazine reports on a recent email written by Soetoro-Ng:

Soetoro-Ng could have accepted her brother's invitation to be by his side on election night in Chicago. But, as she had for much of the past eight years, she chose to stay in the apartment on Beretania Street where Dunham raised Obama as a boy and where Soetoro-Ng later cared for her. In the post-election e-mail, Soetoro-Ng writes of the sometimes conflicting emotions surrounding her grandmother's death and brother's success — and of the need to unplug for a while with her husband Konrad and their 4-year-old daughter Suhaila on Oahu's rural North Shore. She writes that she has been flooded with e-mail messages "of both congratulation and condolence .... There's a wide swatch of emotion cutting through me, sometimes swirling, never simple ... a briny mixture of elation, sadness, determination, regret, pride, hope, fatigue. You can imagine ..."

Now that the Obamas know they'll be moving to Washington, Michelle will leave behind her job at the University of Chicago, which paid her $316,962, to become our national (self-described) "Mom-in-Chief." I welcome the discussion about her move, because the truth is that as extraordinary as her experience is, it's typical for women to take time off for family caregiving, an average of 11.5 years over her lifetime. Should it be different? Should this work be shared more equitably, or rewarded with social recognition and benefits (perhaps Social Security credit)? Let's make sure we get to that public aspect of the conversation. In the meantime I don't see how anyone can truly criticize Michelle. Many of us have had to put family first during moves and job transitions. Sometimes it is truly a wrenching decision but still completely necessary to do so. If anything in the world would require family leave, I think it would be one's spouse becoming President. Stanley Greenspan estimates that parents can fill "Four-Thirds" of a full-time job between them before they need supplemental child care. Being President must be like Four full-time jobs in itself.

Even Barack and Michelle together needed help--especially when the long campaign demanded that they hit the trail, together or in separate directions. The woman whose role as an unsung hero is only beginning to be recognized is Marian Robinson. Our new "Granny-in-Chief" made it possible for Barack and Michelle to campaign for the past two years while Mrs. Robinson cared for the girls in Chicago. I am sure that Obama would not have run if he had not had this family care available. Marian Robinson is expected to move to Washington D. C. to continue caring for her granddaughters and giving them as much continuity and normalcy as possible.

I talked to a MomsRising group just last night and one woman talked about how she as a working Mom just could not produce exactly what a single guy could. We have to keep working to open employers' eyes, so that being a worker with family caregiving responsibilities is finally viewed as the norm rather than the exception. I don't think they really want to see that--we're going to have to insist. (I am still depressed by how easy it was for "Joe the Plumber" to hijack the national conversation when he was a completely unrepresentative worker!)

If take the time to look closely, President-elect Obama's example can remind us that while he really is a "great Dad," behind every high-powered man there is not just one woman, but often a whole crew of unsung heroines who help hold family life together.

It's time we shine a spotlight on caregiving and make it count.

Why I left teaching

As I write the new edition of Mojo Mom, it has been rewarding to find that I am having new insights into old issues.

This morning I was thinking about why I left my teaching job after I became a Mom. I had originally thought I'd go back after a semester or a year, but then I didn't. It was an Opt-Out/Pushed-Out situation where there was not necessarily a ton of flexibility. Our family's life was complicated by the fact that we moved to North Carolina when our daughter was one year old. But even that could have been temporary. We were originally planning to move back to California after six months, but we liked it here so much that we decided to stay.

Here is the additional kernel of truth that I was thinking about today: the problem with teaching high school was that I never did make that job truly sustainable, even before I had a child. It was the kind of job that demanded 110%, which we all know is impossible to keep up over the long run. My first year I was up at 5:30 am every morning and frequently stayed up past midnight. After that first crazy year it got better, since I was more prepared, but there were always going to be papers to grade and classroom plans to be fine tuned.

And teaching at an independent school is the kind of job that extends tentacles, grabbing your time in many ways that are not listed on the job description or discussed during salary negotiations. In addition to teaching five classes, three sections of Brain and Behavior and two sections of Chemistry, additional expectations were: running an advising group, being on many committees, co-authoring the school's accreditation report, attending some student groups, chaperoning dances on the weekend, attending student performances, leading an "intersession" activity during several days before Spring Break, and making personal financial donations to the school to get 100% staff participation.

I remember one fall an eager new teacher came in to ask me to enroll in the blood drive and I thought NOW YOU WANT MY BLOOD, TOO?

There were two important things going on: first, the school would demand all it could of us (sort of like a family, hmmmmm?) and second, I willingly dove in headfirst. Both my husband and I were really job-focused at that time, and it all seemed to work at the time.

However, without really realizing it, I was laying the groundwork for a tough choice after we became parents. Had I shaped my job down into something manageable, maybe I could have continued teaching. I could have set up more realistic expectations for myself, and the others around me. I had a great time during my three years of teaching but did veer into burnout my final year, I can now see looking back. There was no handle I could grab on to envision a way to jump back into the fray at that school (which was also a 38-mile commute from my house, another complicating factor would have worked against any sustainable childcare arrangement). In the long run, it may work really well for some parents to create a job that can be done while parenting. If you can do that, and get some seniority so that you have some leverage in your work situation, your job may be sustainable, and your bosses may also be willing to accommodate you to keep you.

I didn't see any way to make that particular teaching situation work, so I looked for a teaching job elsewhere and almost took a position teaching at Stanford after we returned from North Carolina. But then we moved, I fell in love with the Triangle, and I got the new textbook to review during our "temporary" stay. I took one look at the Behavioral Neurobiology text and realized that my heart just wasn't in it. It was a reminder that I had left neuroscience for a reason, because I had learned that I was a Generalist who was becoming trapped in a Specialist's world, and once I got to that Specialist level, I really didn't care about the questions we were asking. There was nothing wrong with me or the field, but it just wasn't the right match over the long run. If I was going to go back into teaching, and work for someone else rather than myself, I wanted to be something I would enjoy and be good at.

So, in North Carolina I settled into motherhood, still needing to learn lessons about sustainability and burnout (ie sleep deprivation over two years is NOT a good thing). I thought about what was next for me, and reconnected with my passion for writing. I had started a young adult novel years before, as procrastination when I was supposed to be writing my Ph. D. thesis! That project had fallen during the wayside when I taught, even though I could have worked on my novel during the summers. So now, reinventing myself in North Carolina, I decided that I would commit to taking my writing seriously. I managed to finish High Water, wrote a screenplay, and then had the inspiration for Mojo Mom.

So you can see why I believe that life is not a ladder to climb, but rather a path to explore. My own career journey has had loops, side tracks, pauses, and days stuck in the wilderness. But when it comes down to it, I love where I am now, and I think that opportunity is open to many of us, if we give ourselves permission to explore and not beat ourselves up because we're not doing it the way we're "supposed to."

Julia Roberts: I love ya, but give me a f*%@ing break!

One of CNN.com's "popular stories" reports Julia Roberts' "dream," snipped of all its context:

"Julia Roberts envisions a future of domestic bliss. 'My dream is to be a highly fulfilled and productive stay-at-home mom and wife,' the Oscar-winning actress tells Vanity Fair magazine. 'The highest high would be growing our food that I then make, and then composting and growing more -- that kind of circle.' Roberts, 40, says that life would involve having 'my own creative outlet, even if it's silly needlework and stuff like that.'"

I don't really know how to take this comment, other than with a grain of salt. If she wanted to leave her fabulous career for a life of compost and kids she could. Really.

But I have to believe that she likes her career as the world's most successful actress. And that yes, some days, she would rather be home with the simple life. But I see her voting with her feet, finding a way to continue to make movies as she raises her three young kids. More power to that. Please don't give it up in favor of "silly needlework."

It's not often I find myself sounding like Linda Hirshman but there's a first for everything.

I hate it that the media always wants to pick up on the thread of "I have an amazing career but really I'm just a Mom" and I hate it that women have to come back to that point, as if they are minimizing or apologizing for their careers. I remember an egregious People Magazine profile of Celine Dion that had the same focus, that she had a one-women show in Las Vegas but was really just a Mom. I think they had a photo of her vacuuming her rug while wearing a satin dress and high heels. The dress fit her great--the vacuum looked really out of place. (Google has finally let me down as I cannot find the original May 2006 article.)

We know we can love our kids and still have careers. Why do we have to pretend otherwise to the media?