Author & Family

Michael, Jonah, Wendy & Alexandra - A family vacation

The Noble Profession

March 28, 2005

 

My friend Brooke, a mother of two and a senior vice president at a boutique private banking firm in New York City told me a story recently that epitomizes how much we are defined by our careers.  When Brooke's lifelong friend, Kate, a stay-at-home mom came to visit Brooke and her children, Brooke's precocious three-year-old daughter Lilly, all of a sudden, asked her mom's friend earnestly, "So what do you do?"  Kate, was stunned.  "I'm a mommy," Kate said sweetly.  Lilly didn't quite accept that answer.  After all, having spent three years in daycare, all of the mommies Lilly knew did something else besides just being a mommy. 

 

I don't personally know Brooke's friend, but I wonder if Lilly's comment struck a nerve.  I know it would with me.  About two years ago my husband and I were in the arduous process of buying a house.  At the time, I was seven and a half months pregnant with my second child, and the Internet company I had been working for had just imploded when the dot com bubble burst and at the same time I was working on a proposal for my book, How She Really Does It."  In other words, I thought of myself as a quite busy working mom.  In fact, in showing that we were house worthy, I had explained to our mortgage broker in great detail all of my jobs over the past few years, Capitol Hill press secretary, associate producer at Dateline NBC and now an unpublished, but determined, first-time author. 

 

But the bank where we were getting our mortgage from didn't see me that way.  When our papers came back, next to my profession in bold letters, it read "Homemaker."   I had a radioactive reaction to this label.  I know that motherhood is a noble profession, but to have no other identity other than the retro career of "homemaker" frankly makes me break out in a cold sweat.   

 

Our careers are completely entwined with our identities.  It's partly a cultural thing, and probably not an entirely healthy situation.  But nonetheless, we tend to define ourselves by what we do.  Many stay-at-home moms tell me that having surrendered themselves to fulltime motherhood and given up their careers they now feel uninteresting not only in social situations outside of mommy events, but sometimes even at home with their husbands.  They tell me that having given up their careers they feel a sense of loss. A loss of who they once were, how they were seen in the eyes of the world, and how they saw themselves.  I'm sensitive to this as well.  Up until I had children, I had always had Big Careers.  So even while I have been working on a book for several years, but working from home, I often found myself defensive about what it is that I was doing.  I was quick to tell people that I'm not just a mom; I'm writing a book.  That gave me worth, an identity other than mom.  And frankly, the work gave me stimulation I desperately needed outside of raising my kids.

 

Studies show that having a career is important to our overall self-esteem and worth.  Having a career is also important for a woman's marriage and relationship with her spouse and children. 

 

In this "age of anxiety"  where motherhood has taken on almost religious fervor, the least anxious mothers I've met are those who have careers separate from that of only raising their children.  They don't have time to overparent the way some at-home moms do. They are putting their energy and time not just into their children but into something separate from their family -- and this is a good thing.  We should be encouraging moms to stay in the workforce --- making it work for them, so they are happier mothers with healthier homelives.

 

 

(Reminder: You can see the book at Amazon by clicking this message's title.)

Author & Daughter

Wendy & Lexi

Resisting The Cult Of Mommyhood

Upon giving birth to my son three and a half years ago, I was quickly initiated into the cult of mommyhood. Part of the rite of passage in this post-partum society, is to enter a parallel universe, a highly social and active world where moms and babies spend their days hustling around to a wide array of classes, lunches and playgroup gatherings. It was here where I met my first mommy friends – a lactating sorority of out-of-shape, exhausted women who like me, were simply looking for sisterly support as we all struggled to survive those brutal first few months of motherhood.

The women I met had an impressive collective resume. They were lawyers, psychologists, engineers, financial analysts, social workers, marketing and advertising executives. Many had graduated from some of the elite universities in this country. So when talk turned to life after maternity leave, I was surprised to discover that only two women were returning to work. I had been a TV producer who left television to dabble in the dot com world on the cusp of the bust. I was eager to get back into television again but unsure how to go back to a Big Career and also be a very present mother. But many of the other women I met had made peace with their decisions to stay home and were getting settled into their routines of fulltime at-home mommyhood. As I became more antsy, they seemed more content.

Part of me envied them for being so thrilled with motherhood and not appearing to need more. And part of me was simply bothered by their satisfaction. I just didn't get it. I found myself getting sucked into traditional stereotypes of what defines a "Good Mother" and I began fearing that I simply wasn't good enough. If I were good enough, I figured, I should be relishing motherhood, not feeling a relentless churning for something more.

It was at this time that the inspiration for this book evolved. I was shocked to discover that so many smart, talented women were dropping out of the work force or “opting out” as New York Times writer Lisa Belkin called it. We’re the women who were raised in an environment where anything was supposed to be possible. We’re the ones who had the doors to advancement jimmied open for us to waltz through, so why were so many women turning on their heels and leaving once they become mothers? Had all of these women embraced their inner Marthas and discovered domestic bliss and fulfillment in baking the perfect linzer tortes as some headlines suggest? I felt desperate to find moms who weren’t dropping out but who were staying in – and I was equally desperate to discover how were they doing it all.

So I decided to interview famous and regular working moms about how they were doing it. What are the tradeoffs? How do they handle the inevitable conflicts? How do they reconcile the guilt? How do they come to terms with their own ambition? Are they happy? Is there anything they regret? What are the options out there?

The topic of Stay-at-Work moms vs. Stay-at-Home moms is an explosive one. It strikes at the very nerve center of who we are as women and as mothers. It taps into our personal insecurities and unfairly forces us to respond to society's expectations both in the workforce and at home. It challenges our priorities and identities and it sometimes leaves us feeling as if we simply can't win. While much has been made about our generation expecting and wanting to "have it all," women today are redefining what "all" means. For women today, definitions of "success" have more to do with job satisfaction and flexibility than with prestige and position. Women want to be respected and compensated fairly in our jobs even if we work three or four days a week at the office. We want flex-time, part-time and job-share to be viewed not as a privilege but as an integral part of the work culture. We want the freedom to amp up when we are ready and to cut back if we need to slow things down.

My book isn't about Having it All, because we know better -- it's impossible to really have it all. It's about having some of it, all of the time.

(Reminder: You can click this message's title to see the book at Amazon.)

Judging By Its Cover

Hot off the presses - the new book jacket.