Mojo Mom Podcast: 'Opting Out?' author Pamela Stone

We posted our Mojo Mom Podcast episode a little early this week to give you time to listen to Professor Pamela Stone and register for next Wednesday's Carolina Parent Women@Work breakfast, where she will be the keynote speaker. The registration deadline is this Friday, September 12.

Last week's podcast guest, Kella Hatcher of Balancing Professionals, will also be offering a satellite symposium later that day, a Career On-Ramping workshop. If you are thinking about work but don't know where to start, both halves of the Women@Work event could be inspirational, rewarding, and a great opportunity to network.

Listen to the podcast now:


Here's the podcast episode description:

Amy and Sheryl are in a giddy mood this week, which is a nice change of pace!

They are happy because Pamela Stone, author Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home, is the guest on the podcast, and she'll be speaking in Durham, NC in person next week.

So if you are in the area, we hope you'll register for the Carolina Parent Women@Work Breakfast on September 17, and join us to form a Mojo table!

Podcast will return; Judith Warner's latest blog

The Mojo Mom Podcast is taking the week off, I hope you'll visit our podcast archives and listen to a previous July episode to learn how to enter our drawing to win an iPod Nano.

Entries are coming in and I love hearing from real podcast listeners in Iowa, Hawaii, New York, Ohio, and Canada, to name a few places we've heard from.

Next week I will be talking to Julie Shields, author of How to Avoid the Mommy Trap. I am excited on many levels. I adore Julie's book and it has been a big influence on me. I found it after Mojo Mom was already in press, but I have blogged about it and I'll incorporate some of those thoughts into the new edition of Mojo Mom.

I am working on the revisions and yet I keep coming across new relevant material every day. Take Judith Warner's latest Domestic Disturbances blog post, "The Other Home Equity Crisis." I have not had time to digest it thoroughly yet, but the piece takes a look at the post-Opt-Out narrative. This is the very topic I've been thinking about for Mojo Mom. We need to move beyond that limited storyline, but I can't help but worry that as we risk throwing stay-at-home Moms under the bus in the process. Warner describes "opt-out" Moms (in the context of the media zeitgeist) as "a sort of angel [who] has appeared to guide their way and re-label their unfortunate circumstance as virtuous choice."

Argh. I realize that women leave the workforce for many reasons: choice, circumstance, being pushed out. On a societal level we need to understand these contexts. But on an individual level, what is wrong of making the most of the hand you are dealt? Given our current situation that expects many workers to put in 50+ hours per week, it is rational for one parent to decide to stay at home to care for the kids. It's not always ideal and need not be idealized, but it's a valid choice. And while we are there, why not enjoy ourselves? I'd like to combine work and family with enough time to enjoy and succeed in both roles. This is my idea of an ideal life, not an "unfortunate circumstance."

And do other people somehow get to be career mavericks, but we Moms have something to prove? Timothy Ferriss wrote a bestseller, The 4-Hour Workweek, built on the premise that he wants to generate an automatic income so that he can race motorcycles in Europe, ski in the Andes, and dance tango in Buenos Aires. He gets to be completely brazen in his life's goal to be a professional dilettante (and he's laughing all the way to the bank right now). Somehow Moms risk getting labeled as a loser for wanting to go off script. And the real kicker is, there are so many scripts out there that there is one to potentially bash every Mom, employed (a la Caitlin Flanagan) or at home (a la Leslie Bennetts).

That's one reason I am excited about the book Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It. In addition to having a real solution, Cali and Jody acknowledge that work as it is currently constructed does suck a great deal of the time, particularly for caregivers who are expected to function as though they have no other responsibilities.

We have the potential to make work more rewarding, productive and efficient, and less punitive. That would be good for everybody.

We also need a corrective narrative to the Opt-Out storyline, but in the process let's make sure that we don't come up with something that is equally divisive.

That's another reason why I am excited to talk to Julie Shields. She is able to cross the gender divide with really good strategies to help Moms and Dads share parenting. And in the long run, getting true workplace flexibility (i. e. with proportional benefits and promotional schedule) for everyone will allow men to create humane work schedules for themselves, which will allow them more time as Fathers and more options for Moms to work as well.

More on this next week after I talk to Julie!

"Pushed out" of work by a weak economy?

So The New York Times, the source that brought us the so-called "Opt-Out Revolution," back in 2003, now reports that the "Poor Economy Slams Brakes on Women's Workplace Progress." Here's a quote:

After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut. And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or disappearing for a while.

“When we saw women starting to drop out in the early part of this decade, we thought it was the motherhood movement, women staying home to raise their kids,” Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which did the Congressional study, said in an interview. “We did not think it was the economy, but when we looked into it, we realized that it was.”

Now they tell us!

Actually, sociologist Pamela Stone already did. For an in-depth look at mothers & work, be sure to read her book, Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home.

If you live in the Triangle, you can hear Dr. Stone speak in person this fall at the annual Carolina Parent Women@Work breakfast. Whether you are currently employed or taking time out of the workforce, this is one talk you'll want to hear. That day you can also attend an optional satellite workshop, On-Ramping: Strategies for Re-entering the Workforce, conducted by our talented local experts Kella Hatcher and Maryanne Perrin of Balancing Professionals.

Beyond Opting Out

As I sit down to revise Mojo Mom I am digging in by starting on my chapters about relationships, work and family. Even as I build on years of studying these issues, relevant new reporting is coming out at a dizzying pace.

Earlier in the week I was writing about gender roles and power dynamics, when Tara Parker-Pope reported in her Well column really interesting new research about what heterosexual couples can learn from same-sex partnerships.

Then today, just as I was thinking about how we can rewrite the "Opt-out narrative" to more accurately reflect women's lives, Lisa Belkin herself published a New York Times Magazine cover story that suggests that she is ready to develop a nuanced sequel to the storyline she ignited back in 2003.

In her new feature When Mom and Dad Share It All -- Adventures in Equal Parenting Belkin highlights how gender roles lead to typical unequal parenting in the first place:

The obstacles to equity are enmeshed and interwoven, almost impossible to separate from one another. Deutsch did a study of 150 couples who tried sharing to various degrees, and her results suggest that social norms play a large part in why so few marriages are truly equal. Choices are made in a context. It is rare that you choose something you have never seen. So men who do more around the house than their fathers and spend as much time with children as their neighbors feel that they are doing their share and their wives feel grateful to have such involved partners....

Messages, loud and soft, direct and oblique, reinforce contextual choice. “A pregnant woman and her husband,” Deutsch says, “how many people have asked her if she is going to go back to work after the baby? How many have asked him?”

Looked at through that lens, what seems like an external institutional barrier to equal sharing becomes something else entirely. He makes more money than she does, so of course she should be the one to step back her career; she has a more flexible line of work than he does, so of course she should be the one to work part time. Those may seem like choices, but they have their roots in social norms.

Belkin's article is nuanced and worth reading in its entirety.

You'll hear much more on this topic from me in a new chapter to be added to the forthcoming edition of Mojo Mom.

Mojo Mom on the CBS Early Show and The Today Show

From my Mother's Day 2008 appearance on the CBS Early Show:

Employers are tapping into the pool of talented "SWAT Moms" -- Smart Women with Available Time -- to get professional results for short term projects. Mojo Mom author Amy Tiemann tells moms how to stay competitive in the workforce as they move their careers in a new direction.



And for good measure, here is my 2007 Mother's Day appearance on The Today Show. I still feel good that I held my own during a contentious panel discussion with Leslie Bennetts, Lisa Belkin, and Gail Saltz:



I wonder where I'll be next Mother's Day!

"Opting Out?" author on podcast and in Durham next week

Sociologist Pam Stone has done all Moms a great service with her book Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home which is currently my pick for the top motherhood book of 2007. When Stone began to wonder about the back stories of stay-at-home Moms who had formerly held high-powered jobs, she didn't rush to judgment. Instead she put in the hard work required to research the trends in Moms and employment. Her book is compassionate, intelligent and thorough. It has influenced my thought about "life choices" and reframed the issue. Stone understands why women like me would naturally embrace a narrative that we have "opted out." She tells women's stories with great compassion--and at the same time she blows the lid off the opt-out storyline and shows why it does us a disservice. Stone shows us that far from "opting out," many women are "pushed out" of their careers despite efforts to keep working. Instead of blaming women for their individual situations, Stone puts the focus back on employers and the workplace. I hope that over the next 5 to 10 years we can develop some win-win strategies that will address these issues on a society-wide level.

Pam was the headline guest on North Carolina Public Radio's program The State of Things earlier this week, and you can access it here by podcast through WUNC's archives (also available on iTunes--free in either case). We are blessed to have this uncommonly good show produced right here in our community, with a extraordinary host, Frank Stasio, so I recommend the show to you.

Pamela Stone will be visiting North Carolina in person next week, for a book reading and signing at The Regulator Bookshop in Durham. She'll be appearing next Wednesday, October 3 at 7 pm.

If you can go, you should GO, even if you can only get out by yourself. I know it can be hard to mobilize a Moms' Night Out but this one is worth a serious effort. Unfortunately, I will be out of town, or else I would be there. The Triangle is full of incredible women who have important stories to share, so why not go, introduce yourself to the person next to you, and make a new friend.

"Opting Out" at the tipping point?

The "opt-out" phenomenon has reached a tipping point with new books and media coverage coming out this spring.

In my new podcast episode I talk to Opting Out? author Pamela Stone. Opting Out? provides a clear-eyed look at the lives of stay-at-home mothers. As a sociologist, Pamela Stone conducted extensive interviews with 54 women to trace their life-career paths. This research is just what was needed to shine a fresh light on this often-divisive topic.

I had an insight this week that the heated discussions over different views of the opt-out phenomenon can be seen as a battle for the definitive narrative of mothers' llives. (The following interpretation is mine, not Pamela Stone's, so if anyone doesn't like it they can be upset with me.)

Leslie Bennetts has written a narrative based on scary stories of economic dependency.

Linda Hirshman comes from a philosophical background that is internally logical, but in my opinion is an inaccurate and limiting sterotpye of mothers' lives. I believe that you can live a full and meaningful life as a mother who has taken leave from the paid workforce, because I've seen many women do so.

Lisa Belkin's original Opt Out article sparked this discussion with a narrative built around choice feminism. She gave us the term "opt out" which has had incredible staying power even though it may not be the most accurate descrption for the workplace pushes and family pulls that lead women to exit the workforce. I get the feeling that Lisa Belkin didn't foresee the controversy she was unleasing with her Opt Out piece, and I give her credit for continuing to follow this developing storyline in her Life's Work column

In Mojo Mom, I wrote a guidebook for women who were navigating the identity transitions of motherhood. I embraced motherhood as a catalyst for transformation, saying that change was going to come anyway so you might as well make the best of it. It was a delicate balance between individual strategies and advocating for systemic changes, which I have continued to work on since finishing my book. I am proud of the fact that I researched and wrote my book while I was still in the process of raising a young child. My goal is to create mom-to-mom conversations with an eye on the larger culture.

Pamela Stone gives us the research background that combines women's own stories and sociological analysis. Written with respect for her subjects, Opting Out? provides the fairest and most objective map of the landscape that I have seen.

Just this month there has been an incredible amount of discussion about mothers and the workforce. Interestingly, the data themsevles pesent us with a Rorschach blot of ambiguity. Depending on the time period you are studying, and the significance you assign to the fluctuations between approximately 70 and 75% of college-educated, married mothers of preschoolers in the workforce, you can either see huge changes or a trend that has been remarkably consistent over the years.

Is the glass half full or empty? A little emptier than five years ago, and what does that mean? It's open to interpretation that varies widely depending on your point of view and storyline of choice. Is it time to come up with a new term to replace "opt out"? Can we come up with a new phrase that is just as sticky and memorable, but more accurately reflects the work-life tradeoffs women face?

More coverage you should know about:

Helaine Olen did a Q&A with Pamela Stone on Babble.com that dovetails nicely with the topics that Pamela and I discussed on my podcast.

Harvard Business School Press has just published Sylvia Ann Hewlett's new book, Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success, which presents the business case in favor of offering flexible employment.

Ellen Goodman, my favorite columnist, wrote a brillant Mother's Day piece on women being marginalized as "A third gender in the workplace" when our complicated lives are actually the norm. She wrestles with the "deep-seated bias that puts the image of a 'good mother' at odds with that of an 'ideal worker.'"

Sharon Lerner on Salon.com reminds us of the limitation of the opt-out storyline in her article, "The invisible mommies."

And finally, let's not forget the other scholars who have been writing about gender and the workplace for years now. I am planning to go back and really study Joan Williams' Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It.

Mojo Mom's A-Ha Moment: Cracking the Privilege Code

After all the years of researching and writing Mojo Mom, reading the Mothers Movement Online, working with MomsRising.org and reading the Mothers & More POWER loop, I believe that sitting on the Today Show couch with Leslie Bennetts and Lisa Belkin and reading Pamela Stone's new book, Opting Out? have pushed me over an important tipping point of understanding.

I have cracked the feminist code and I understand why the Baby Boomers are mad at us younger women who have opted out. The text is about money and career, the subtext is about power and privilege. Boomer feminists worked to give us a place in a man's world, the world of power and privilege. That world is built on a foundation of a lower class, low-paid support system that is assumed to exist but rendered invisible. This could be the unpaid work of wives or the low-paid wages of service workers.

In the 1970's, women were given begrudging access to this kingdom, as long as they "played like a man."

Fast-forward to our generation. The invisible work, the second shift is still there and "playing like a man" just isn't working for many of us. We are able to eke out egalitarian relationships before we have children, but gender roles haven't changed that much. Men still don't expect to divide that work 50/50. When babies arrive, this invisible workload shoots through the roof. The truth is that someone has to do it, and we don't have a social infrastructure that lifts this burden off women's shoulders. So in the most privileged couples, the "opt-out" dynamic becomes very apparent when a high-power woman leaves her place in the man's world to go home.

Boomer femininsts are mad that women would leave behind the position of power, privilege and money that they worked so hard to earn on our behalf. One woman leaving the corporate ladder signifies gender failure when one man leaving the corporate ladder is just a guy making a choice.

Privileged men are generally glad to see women move home because this allows the men to have more time and energy to focus on their careers, thereby exercising their male privilege. Egalitarian marriages become more "traditional" to some degree when women stay home.

Women who leave the workforce are frustrated to see that they lose their previous status and become socially invisible and devalued in their role as a mother. Work at home is necessary and important but it is not admired, valued, and privileged. Sometimes this work it is only noticed when it is NOT done perfectly, which is expecially frustrating. We mothers see the value of the invisible work we are doing. We certainly see how much of life is made up of that work. Our eyes are opened to this big picture and we can't comprehend why others don't understand it.

So I finally understand why opt-out women are truly radical: we expect to be able to leave the world of privilege, take the blinders off our eyes and see the whole picture of life, expect others to do so, and return to the world of privilege on our own terms. Although we say in our democracy that "all men are created equal," the last thing the world of privilege wants is to be asked to see the big picture that includes caregiving, poverty, and discrimination. This is why I want more mothers in public life. Nancy Pelosi may play the political game with the best of them but I love knowing that she knows understands what it means to be a caregiver.

The younger generation of mothers hopes that we are reclaiming power in a new way by creating a career spiral to replace the old career ladder. Our plans challenge the whole system. With Mojo Mom I aspire to be more than just a writer telling individual women how to cope within an unfair system. This is why the short-lived Total 180! magazine and the book Happy Housewives drive me crazy--they are at best gallows humor that helps women adapt to the current system of privilege without challenging it.

For the first time I feel like our generation is attempting something truly radical. In Mojo Mom I consciously traced a path from self care to women's leadership and that trajectory continues to soar. We have to keep working to get caregiving counted in our society. As Pamela Stone says in Opting Out? mothers are the canary in the coal mine for an often inhumane workplace. We are cracking under the double-bind pressures of being an ideal worker and and ideal mother and we are finally demanding that something has to give. I want to be a good mother and a good worker. I want to work on my own terms and have paid opportunities to contribute even though I've taken time away from work. I am determined to make this happen even if I have to create my own path, in a manner that I hope paves the way for other women to do the same.

There is a tsunami of caregiving need coming our way. We are the ones who will have to shepherd the older generations through 20, 30, 40 years of retirement and elder care. Many of us will spend more years worrying about our parents than we will caring for our children, and as I have written before, that is not a matter of choice. If parenting cracks us, will elder care crush us? There is only so long we can get away without making the invisible work visible and dividing it fairly. We'd best get started now.

My Media Breakthrough

After three solid years of knocking on the national media's door, I finally got the big call! I've been invited to appear on The Today Show this Saturday, May 12. I couldn't have asked for better timing than the day before Mother's Day.

I am really excited about this opportunity to represent Mojo Moms everywhere on the national stage. I'll be bringing my perspective to a discussion about "Women Who Opt Out" of the workforce and what happens next. My goal is to breathe some fresh air into this topic with my ideas about identity, career reinvention, and mothers making a difference whether or not they are in the paid workforce.

The discussion is scheduled to include Leslie Bennetts, author of The Feminine Mistake, and my blogging about her book is what drew The Today Show's attention to my work. Fortunately the panel will be rounded out by Lisa Belkin, author of the original "Opt-Out Revolution" article, and Today Show regular contributor, psychologist Gail Saltz.

This is an interesting group and I have been thinking about what distinguishes my Mojo Mom perspective. Three main qualities jumped out: First, I truly represent Gen X and newer Moms among a panel of established Boomers in this discussion. Second, although Lisa Belkin's Opt-Out concept has been criticized for representing a small sliver of women, I am a member of that precise demographic, so if they want to talk about that group I can speak from experience. I hope to broaden the topic to connect to the needs of all Moms. And third, I am much more of a media outsider, working my way up as an independent author.

When I approached agents and publishers with the book proposal for Mojo Mom, the uniform response I received was "This sounds like a good idea, but it's a crowded market and you don't have a platform." Translation: I wasn't famous enough. So rather than giving up, I created MojoMom.com independently, published the book independently, landed a national distributor, and hired a publicist. I like to think that this entrepreneurial spirit represents Gen X at its best. I came of age in Silicon Valley in the 1990's. By the end of the decade, everyone and their brother had a startup, so it didn't intimidate me that much to launch my own company. Desktop technology allows me to publish my blog, create & distribute the Mojo Mom Party Kit, and produce my podcast. I have kept writing and publishing as I built my "platform" one plank at a time.

After receiving the call from The Today Show, my first reaction was to email my colleagues at MomsRising.org and Mothers & More to ask them to help me gather the most relevant statistics to arm myself with. This was a useful exercise, but I soon realized that I have been preparing for this moment for years now. I know who I am and what my message is. This is like a final exam in being myself.

My friend Meghan Gosk, whom I interviewed in Mojo Mom about her family-work-life path, will be coming to New York with me. We've been friends since our children were in baby and toddler playgroup together and our friendship has grown to include my book, joint activism, and a year together in our Mojo Advisory Circle that focuses on business development.

And finally, as I come up on my 300th Mojo Mom blog posting, I want to thank all of you who are reading this for joining me on this journey. I've written the equivalent of a second book on this blog, and I enjoy our timely and interactive discussions even more than book publishing. Keep reading the blog and listening to the podcast--and please send some mojo my way on Saturday. I promise I'll do my best to make you all proud.

Dialogue with Linda Hirshman

Linda Hirshman posted a comment to my last piece, "Wake up and smell the money." My reponse to her got pretty long, so I am going to put it up as a new post.

Linda Hirshman said...

Dear Amy,
I am having a little trouble understanding your position. Bennetts is talking about the opt out group and cites the new BLS data that it is for real. Graff says the opt out story isn't true and is a damaging lie to boot. Which is it?

***

Dear Linda,

As you point out in your latest blog post, the analysis of the labor statistics is in flux right now.

Let's agree for the sake of this discussion that many elite women are "opting out." You see this as a huge mistake, while I insist on seeing it as an opportunity. Perhaps this is in part due to the fact that I became comfortable with career change before having a child. I have worn many hats and I expect that my career will continue to evolve over time. Leaving the 9 to 5 workforce freed me to become an entrepreneur and create opportunities for myself. I feel that entrepreneurship is an underutilized possibility for career-changers of all kinds. I will be speaking to UNC and Duke MBA students on this topic this Friday at their Women in Business Conference, and it will be sure to report back what they have to say on this topic.

I am what you would call a "third wave feminist transformed by childbirth" and I have channeled that transformation into a call for women's leadership. I have become a published author, entrepreneur, media analyst, and activist after "opting out." Not just because motherhood magically transformed me, though motherhood definitely opened my eyes to the non-elite realities of the world. I have said before that I would love for our policy makers and leaders of the ruling class to be made up of people who have had first-hand caregiving experience. I wish we had a much more diverse roster of characters in our Congress: more women, racial diversity, people with substantial careers other than "career politician" and yes, people who have been primary caregivers at some point in their lives.

I view MomsRising.org as a great example of a group of women creating a community that allows them to put their education and talent to use in service of a larger social cause.

My message about "opting out" is that no woman should view being a stay-at-home Mom as a one-way street (or should I say, blind cul-de-sac?). I will probably have a 40 year work career, with 3 years of full-time motherhood in that mix. The mistake comes when women feel like the time home with their kids is the end of their story. It's not, and women need to take charge of their financial future, and responsibility for planning the next phase of their lives.

You would probably say that if childcare is such a great experience for women, why shouldn't men be doing it too? I agree that we are not there yet and I am not sure when we will be. I find this a challenging area, walking the line between individual accommodation and larger structural issues. I have been able to create a relationship that feels equitable, a marriage in which we each feel cared for and generally happy with our roles in home and work lives. Am I accommodating within a sexist system? That's the question I still grapple with. I want to make sure that my own personal comfort level doesn't keep me from looking at the big picture and working for social progress.

Thanks for your comment.

***

I have just received a copy of Leslie Bennetts' The Feminine Mistake and I will reply with a full review when I've read it.

Wake up and smell the money

"Will you regret staying at home with your baby?" Author Leslie Bennetts pushes this emotional button to get women to wake up to the financial risks of giving up a career. Bennetts makes her case in her online Glamourarticle and in her new book, The Feminine Mistake.

Deep breath here. This is a tough topic and Bennetts' approach is designed to stir controversy. But she is getting at important truths about marriage and motherhood. It's very tempting to live in denial of these hidden risks of financial dependency, but by the time a crisis happens, it is too late to prepare. One of her interviewees says, "It's very nice to believe, 'I don't have to worry, I can have someone take care of me. But you never know when he's goign to stop wanting to take care of you, or lose his job, or drop dead. There are too many what-ifs to be lulled into a sense of complacency like that.'"

I devoted a chapter to this topic in Mojo Mom. Rather than telling women not to take time away from the workforce, in "Keeping Your Resume Fresh and Financial Future Secure" I emphasize the skills and strategies women can use to stay competitive. I encourage you to take a life-long view of your career. Becoming a stay-at-home Mom should not be a one-way street and it's unfortunate that we tend to view it that way. The Opt-Out narrative has certainly been overwritten. (The Columbia Journalism Review has an excellent article on "The Opt-Out Myth." Thanks to Cooper for pointing out this article to me.)

Mojo Mom's strategies for a healthy financial future:

1. Take charge of your financial life. Be a full participant in your family's financial planning--do not delegate this responsibility to your life partner! Make sure you know how much money your family has, what your joint financial planning strategy looks like, and what your credit scores are. Do you know whether your bills are all paid on time? How much credit card debt and other liabilities do you have? Make sure you have credit cards and a few household bills in your own name to develop your own credit history. Start saving for a 3-months-expenses emergency fund in your own name.

2. Keep in touch with your professional contacts. Set up regular meetings or lunches with your former colleagues. Show up in your professional persona and talk about your expertise, not just your kids. Look for opportunties to stay active in your field and keep building your resume, even while you are out of the full-time paid workforce.

3. Continue developing new interests and skills. The "stay-at-home" period can be a chance to reinvent yourself. Take short courses, online classes, or enroll in a degree program. Many jobs these days require a Masters' degree, and even if you don't intend to return to work for years, you may be very glad that you made the effort to get those qualifications under your belt now. I have known semi-retired women who had to go back to the workforce full-time when they were suddenly widowed. Even with decades of valuable life and work experience, they found themselves shut out of many job opportunities due to the lack of an advanced degree.

4. Develop an entrepreneurial spirit. Your life is your "start up" company! What do you want to make of it? Yes, it can be hard to re-integrate into an inflexible workplace with a family. But more flexible options are opening up and starting your own business is one way to make that happen. I don't mean to be overly optimistic about these possibilities but I truly believe that a "results oriented" work approach that is freed from rigid schedules will become common in the near future.

5. Take advantage of the opportunity to make progress when you are in calm times. I have learned this lesson the hard way! Over the past year my family has faced several unexpected crises. If I hadn't stayed on track to finsih Mojo Mom when I did, it would have been hard to get it done over the past year. Always keep your own projects simmering, and turn up the motivation when you have the chance. If you stay focused you can get a lot done. I finished a novel and wrote a screenplay when I only had 6 hours per week to write, while my daughter was in a toddler preschool program. I valued that time like a hidden stash of gold and I didn't squander it.

Leslie Bennetts brings up excellent points about the financial penalities of taking time out of the workforce. I look forward to reading her book as a bracing wake-up call. Women do face a serious financial burden by becoming mothers. Ann Crittenden has famously said that becoming a mother is a top risk factor for women being in poverty in old age. And college-educated women can expect to lose a million dollars in lifetime wages when they raise kids. But this isn't just our individual responsibility, it's a societal issue. This is one of the problems of the Opt-out narrative. As E. J. Graff says in the CJR piece:

"The moms-go-home story’s personal focus makes as much sense, according to Caryl Rivers, as saying, 'Okay, let’s build a superhighway; everybody bring one paving stone. That’s how we approach family policy. We don’t look at systems, just at individuals. And that’s ridiculous.'"

So my final appeal to you is to get involved in advocating for pro-family social policies, and to work to fight employment discrimination against mothers. This is a huge societal issue. This is why I am so excited to work with MomsRising.org. There are many groups and individuals working on these issues, and MomsRising gives us a mechanism to work together to give mothers a strong political voice.