Multi-Taskers In Training Pants

Like all busy moms, I multi-task. I don't think I do this necessarily well, but I do it simply to survive. For instance, I live on my cell phone. It's permanently attached to my head probably wreaking extraordinary havoc on my overworked and under-rested brain cells, but it's my essential instrument in which I conduct business with the outside world. So while I'm in carpool lane I can usually be found talking to my editor, making doctor's appointments for my kids, strategizing with my babysitter about all my kids' activities that will transpire over the next six hours, or commiserating with a girlfriend about how exhausted I am because my son is still sleeping in bed with us (he's 4) which means no one is getting any sleep. (For the record he starts out in his own bed and inevitably ends up in ours)

Because I work from home or at Starbucks where the bulk of my book was written, (because I couldn't get any real work done at home) along with being attached to my cell 24/7 I am also always on email. No, sadly I don't own a BlackBerry, but I cart around a laptop wherever I go and obsessively check my email. My children are highly aware of this, and this morning I realized just how much my multi-tasking can trickle down into my children's lives.

My daughter, who is not quite 2 years old loves to crawl into my lap when I turn on the computer and race the mouse all over my desk. This morning when my AOL came on she repeated in unison with the mechanical computer voice: "You've Got Mail." Now this may not sound exceptional, but given that her only other two phrases are, "I Want It" and "Pick My Nose" this AOL welcome phrase feels well, sort of incredible or incredibly sad.

I'd like to think that I'm somehow teaching my toddler computer skills as she squirms on my lap punching all of the keys as I desperately try to restrain her from crashing my computer. But I can't help to feel kind of guilty that "You've Got Mail" has become implanted in her new repertoire of expressions.

My son, on the other hand, seems to know exactly what it is that I'm doing when I'm on the computer. Last week he said to me sweetly, "Mommy now that you're book is done, you don't have to work anymore, right?"

The Nerve Center

The topic of Stay-at-Work Mom vs. Stay-at-Home Moms is explosive. It strikes at the very nerve center of who we are as women and as mothers. It taps into our insecurities and unfairly forces us to respond to society's expectations both in the workplace and at home.

I knew this when I was writing the book and I'm feeling it even more now as I go on the road to publicize the book. This week I spoke to a group of professional women in Washington, D.C., and when the topic of the "mommy wars" came up, women could hardly contain themselves. Almost every woman had a story to tell of how they've been either ostracized, ignored, snubbed or judged by stay-at-home moms.

"There really are two camps in my town," one mother told me. "The lines are divided and you really feel as if you're taking sides." Some women swore that the mommy wars got even more heated as their children got older. Great, something to look forward to, I thought (since my kids are only 4 and 2 years old). When I was writing my book an at-home mom said to me that she has to feel that she is doing a better job mothering than working moms, because why should she have surrendered her career if her kids didn't turn out better.

It is that kind of feeling that has made mothering into a competitive sport. The research shows that children of working moms do just as well as the children of at-home mothers. We have to do what's right for ourselves and our families. Working, not working, even the decision to have children at all is extremely personal and individual. We should stop judging one another. Stoking the mommy wars hurts all of us. Women need to work together for more flexibility at work and more time at home. After all, isn't that what we all want?