Perfecting Both Is Almost Impossible
SuperMom Or Successful Businesswoman: Chances of you perfecting both are slim
It seems to happen every few months: a new book or study fuels the “Mommy Wars,” the intense debate over whether moms should stay home with the kids or work outside the home. Each time there’s spirited talk, angst, and some guilt from mothers who fear they’re doing the wrong thing. Now the guilt seems actually tangible.
In an eye-catching national survey from the Pew Research Center released last week, full-time working mothers rated themselves slightly lower as parents than those who stay home or work part-time. And that was even more striking when viewed along with the survey’s primary finding – that fully 60% of working mothers now say part-time work is their ideal rather than full-time, compared to 48% a decade ago. What does it all mean? Four decades after the feminist movement laid claim to equal footing for women in the workplace, are these findings and others like them a tacit admission that in the end, it’s really not possible to have it all?
Opinions From Different Angles:
- As moms, Erica Rubach and Joani Reisen founded a networking site devoted to matching mothers with services in their communities. To both, “having it all” is a question of how you define it. “You can’t be a part-time vice president,” says Reisen. “And maybe you can’t attend every PTA meeting. But I do believe you can have it all, in bits and pieces.”
- Author Linda Hirshman, forcefully argues that mothers are wasting their potential when they shun the work force to care exclusively for their kids. Hirshman says it’s clear that increasing numbers of women are working less or not at all – and at all different strata of society. And why? She attributes the trend largely to a “ramping up” of the job of motherhood, by a culture that expects women to be super-moms, perfect at everything.
- Author Leslie Bennetts argues that by quitting your job or switching to a much lower-paying one, you’re cooking a recipe for financial disaster. “Many women romanticize the stay-at-home life, but most don’t realize the consequences. The reality is that to give up your career and depend on someone else to support you is a very high-stakes gamble – for women AND their children.”
Stay-At-Home Moms are underrated. If the typical stay-at-home mother in the United States were paid for her work as a housekeeper, cook and psychologist among other roles, she would earn $138,095 a year. This reflected a 3 % raise from last year’s $134,121, according to Salary.com Inc, Waltham, Massachusetts-based compensation experts. The jobs listed as comprising a mother’s work were housekeeper, cook, babysitter, driver and psychologist. The typical mother puts in a 92-hour work week, it said, working 40 hours at base pay and 52 hours overtime. Face it: You can’t be great at both, so why look down at stay at home moms?
