Maybrooks — helping moms find flexible work

by Katrina on May 14, 2013

While the media is abuzz with advice that women should to “lean in” to their careers, many of us are looking for ways to “push back.” In other words, many of us want and need to slow down our careers for periods of time, especially when our children are young. But finding jobs that allow us to do this is not always easy.

stacey_delo_and_kids

I recently had the good fortune to discuss this dilemma with Stacey Delo over salads in San Francisco’s Levi’s Plaza. Stacey (along with her business partner, Debi Ryan) is a co-founder of Maybrooks, a company dedicated to helping professional women find flexible careers. Both women have young children, and have found ways to not only share a business, but a childcare arrangement as well.

Here’s what she had to say:

Q: What inspired you to start Maybrooks?

A: While I was on maternity leave with my first child, a friend of mine pointed out an option in my company’s maternity leave paperwork that said you could return to work on a part-time basis for the full length of the designated leave time (while your job was still protected), if your manager approved.

I asked to come back three days a week and my manager, a mother of three, said OK. I did that for two years, until my second baby was born. It meant the world to me and to my family that I could do this. It also helped my employer that I did not completely jump ship.

During this time, I began thinking about how many women don’t ask for these situations. I began to wonder where women could go to consider their options, learn how to ask, or find another job that might be more flexible.

I spent a vacation thinking only about this and pounded out an initial concept/business plan, which I shared with my friend and nanny-share partner, Debi Ryan. Together we realized there was no go-to online resource for working moms that rolled off the tongue in the same way Babycenter.com does when you are having a baby, or Amazon.com when you want to buy a book. So we built maybrooks.com to be that resource.

Q: Why the focus on women. Don’t men need flexibility, too?

A: I get asked this a lot and wholeheartedly support flexibility for everyone—women, men, people with and without kids. Our connected lives mean that everyone works all the time anyway, and the ability to be a person outside of work is important for everyone.

That said, we chose to focus on moms because we see a particular pain point given that they continue (statistically) to be the primary caregivers. Thirty percent of women with MBAs drop out of the workforce within 10 years of getting their graduate degree. Wouldn’t it be great if some of them could put those degrees — and big brains — to work on a project basis while they take care of their kids?

Q: Who is your typical job seeker?

A: Our typical job seeker is someone with significant previous—or current—work experience. She’s educated. And she either seeks more flexibility in her career, or is looking for some opportunities to transition back into the workforce.

Q: Who is your typical job poster?

A: Typical job posters include small business owners looking for smart, highly experienced talent that they may not be able to afford otherwise. Additionally we are seeing larger companies post with us as way to source smart women.

Q: What kinds of jobs have they found on your site?

A: We have a wide range of jobs on the site—everything from sales, marketing, and writing opportunities, to management positions with major corporations.

Q: Tell me about this concept of the “returnship”?

A: The returnship is essentially an internship for someone who has been out of the workforce for a while and needs to refresh her skills. This can be a paid or unpaid opportunity, and benefits the employer as much as the woman!

Q: The company is still very young. What are your plans to grow?

A: We are laser focused on spreading the word to employers that we are a fantastic new resource to reach talent that has been otherwise difficult to reach before—working mothers.

Q: Here’s a personal question…How much flexibility do you have in your work life? After all, don’t start up founders work a minimum 100 hours per week?

A: It’s funny because in some ways I have a ton of flexibility, even though I’m working around the clock. Debi and I sync our schedules to take meetings a couple days a week together, and each work out of our houses otherwise. Additionally, we each reserve one day of the week to be with our kids. I’m home on Thursdays with mine, and she’s home on Fridays with hers. We built this into the infrastructure of our company from the get-go. We each burn a lot of midnight oil!

Q: I often get emails and blog comments from moms who feel trapped by their full-time jobs. Do you have any advice for them?

A: Please know that there are options out there for you. We see fabulous, flexible job opportunities being added to our site everyday. Even skimming the listings should offer inspiration and give you the confidence to know that when you are ready for change, we, and all the great companies listing jobs with us, will be there for you.

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Personally I’ve found that being self-employed and doing project-based work (UX design consulting—web stuff) has been the key to happiness. I know I’ve been lucky—my work is naturally project-based, I work in a field with high demand, and I’ve had a fairly easy time (knock wood) getting projects that I like.

What about you? Are you self-employed doing project-based work? How has it worked for you?

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Unrelated question: I noticed the top keyword search that got people to my website yesterday was “crappy mother’s day.” So just wondering. . .How was your Mother’s Day?

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Sunday Night Blues

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by Katrina on April 21, 2013

I have a lot going on right now. Interesting but intense freelance work. Finishing a book and trying to figure out how to promote it. More than the usual amount of business travel. Coordinating major house repairs. Trying to ensure my children are clothed, loved, fed and not too overdue for their dentist appointments…

And so, I thought I’d share the post below. I wrote it a couple years ago, but it seems relevant to me again.

What about you? Do you get the Sunday night blues?

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I would get it every Sunday. It would start in the late afternoon, a sadness laced with dread, a weight pressing lightly on my chest. As the evening wore on, the feeling would get stronger, the weight on my chest heavier, until I tucked the kids in bed.

Only then could I fully contemplate the week ahead. I’d open my Google calendar, with its absurd overlapping red and purple boxes representing all the places I was expected at the same time.

If I’d been a Roman Catholic saint, I could have used the miracle of bilocation to appear in both 11 am meetings Tuesday, and Ruby’s 11 am dentist appointment. If I could have stopped time, it would have been possible to lead the workshop that was supposed to end at 5:30 and still manage to get back across the Bay Bridge to pick up two kids in two different places before childcare closed at 6 o’clock.

Alas, I was a mere mortal, which meant my week would be a series of mad sprints, one after another, without pause. I would eat standing up, answer email in the bathroom, and cut out everything that wasn’t necessary. And still I would be late. Still I would have to beg out of meetings, miss appointments, and disappoint people who counted on me.

Technically, I had chosen to live this way. But looking at my calendar, it didn’t feel like there was any choice involved in how I spent my days. There were so many to-dos that they were squeezing me out of my own life. The truth of this washed over me every Sunday evening.

The problem was more than busyness. There was no flow, that effortless state of being where the ego falls away and we truly enjoy the task we are engaged in, simply for the sake of doing it. Instead, I was racing through every task so I could move on to the next one. In my mind, I had already moved on to the next one.

My Sunday Night Blues ended abruptly that warm spring day when I had a nervous breakdown, quit my job, and completely changed my life.

Now Sunday nights are usually a mix of joy and relief. I’m tired from an active weekend with the kids, but I can also look forward to the coming week because I know I will have time alone to write, to talk to a friend, to look up a new recipe for dinner. No matter what else I have going on—freelance projects, housework, helping out at my kids’ schools—there is room for me. So far.

But this story is still unfolding. I’ve started working again. I’m determined not to fall into the trap of an unlived life, a life without flow, but the work I do is demanding and I’m ambitious. How do I keep from getting sucked in too far?

I’m not the only one who has sung the Sunday Night Blues. What is this phenomenon, do you think? Does it happen to you?

For more on “flow,” watch this talk by the author who wrote the book about it, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

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Why we lean back

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by Katrina on April 9, 2013

All right. I read it. The book that everyone, including my hero, Jon Stewart, has been talking about. So many reviews have been written about this book, that people have resorted to writing reviews of the reviews. The hype has been so incredibly, hyper—The Time story! The 60 Minutes piece! The banner ads! The web community!—that I was ready to harbor a deep dislike for this book. But that did not happen. At the risk of giving you Sheryl Sandberg fatigue, here are my thoughts, good and bad, on Lean In.

As you probably know from the title (Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead) the book is essentially advice for women who want to be leaders in the workplace. As with her 2010 TED talk, (which I wrote about here), Sandberg shares disheartening statistics about the lack of female leaders in business and government, and makes a case for why the world would be a better place if more women were in positions of power. Agreed.

Good advice

Much of the advice resonated with me personally: We should expect more of our husbands and partners, and learn to give up control when they take the reins at home. Absolutely. We shouldn’t let double standards and sexist stereotypes hold us back. No, of course not. Women should spend less time judging each other, and more time making common cause. Preach it, Sister Sandberg!

She devotes a chapter on “speaking our truth,” and bringing our authentic selves to work, even if that means shedding a few tears from time to time:

Maybe someday shedding tears in the workplace will no longer be viewed as embarrassing or weak, but as a simple display of authentic emotion.

I thought it was brave of her to say so.

Her message about how women are less likely than men to tout their achievements, and how, chances are, they will be perceived as less likable when they do, has provoked a lot of important discussion and soul-searching.

Not so good advice

The main problem I have with Sandberg’s book is her criticism of women who “lean back” at work, particularly when they begin to contemplate having a family.

“If my generation was too naïve, the generations that followed may have been too practical,” Sandberg writes. (p. 15) “Many of these girls watched their mothers try to ‘do it all,’and then decided that something had to give. That something was usually their careers.” She goes on to make a case for why women should reconnect to their professional ambitions, and give more to their careers.

Now I’m just a few years younger Sandberg, and the last thing the women I know need is to be chided for being too “practical” and protecting their energy and time. Women of Sandberg’s and my generation have made ourselves sick trying to manage the ridiculous demands placed on us.

A few quick stats:

What I’m trying to say is that in leaning in, many of us have given up too much. Often, those who achieve conventional success look back and wonder where their lives went.

Sandberg herself admits that although she leaves work at 5:30 PM to have dinner with her kids, she’s always on. (p. 133)

Facebook is available around the world 24/7, and for the most part, so am I. The days when I even think of unplugging for a weekend or vacation are long gone.

I can’t be the only person who finds that concept appalling. Why do we accept that reality as a given? One hundred and fifty years of research has proven that working more than 40 hours a week is bad for our health and bad for business.

The problem we should be talking about is why jobs in leadership—any job, really—require people to work such crushingly long hours, to never take any extended time off, and never ever—heaven forbid—unplug. When we frame the problem, again and again, around personal choices, we let the workplace, and society, off the hook. Anne-Marie Slaughter said it best in her very even-handed review of the book

. . .it is hard not to notice that her narrative is what corporate America wants to hear. For both the women who have made it and the men who work with them, it is cheaper and more comfortable to believe that what they need to do is simply urge younger women to be more like them, to think differently and negotiate more effectively, rather than make major changes in the way their companies work.

If the next generation is being more practical than ours, it’s because they’ve been presented with a false choice. When faced with choosing between work or life, most women (and many men) will always choose life. The point is, they shouldn’t have to choose. We need to stop pretending that long hours equals achievement. We need to stop pretending that we can work longer hours. We need to challenge the idea that to get ahead, you have to sacrifice your personal life. We need to acknowledge the health consequences to women who “lean in” in a country that expects us to work longer hours than people in any developed nation in the world.

It’s not that Sandberg wants us to be slaves. One of her main points is that the workplace would be more humane if there were more women leading it. As she says, we have a “chicken and egg” problem. But she seems to think that if we ignore the hardship involved, that the problem will magically dissipate. For example, Sandberg says that the negative images of harried working mothers “make women unnecessarily fearful by presenting life’s challenges as insurmountable.” If we could just let go of that fear, she writes, we could “freely choose” to have both a personal life and a career. (p. 24)

Passages like these made me cringe. It’s a white-washing of our experience, as if those of us who feel tyrannized by the competing demands on our time are cowards. And those of us who talk about it are Debbie Downers.

This message is particularly hard to swallow coming from a woman who has a 9,000 square foot house and an army of household help. To be clear, I don’t think Sandberg’s privilege discounts her right to take on the issue of women and work, but I think it would be a lot easier to take if she would acknowledge what a profound difference this makes. (Instead, she has told interviewers that subject is taboo.) Most of us will never be able to afford that kind of help. Moreover, even if we could, many of us wouldn’t want it.

I speak for myself here, but I know I’m not alone when I say that having my kids in full-time child care is enough. I don’t want to hire a nanny to pick them up every day from school, or take them on the weekend so I can work. For most of us—women and men—having a degree of intimacy with the details of our children’s lives is something we aren’t willing to give up. It’s the reason we became parents.

Ultimately, Lean In is a certain kind of medicine that will help a certain kind of person, most likely a very young person who has not yet had children, or may never have them. Women who need help getting their courage up to negotiate the next raise, or to ask for a promotion. But like most medicine, not everyone should take it.

In her introduction, Sandberg tells women to ask themselves: What would I do if I wasn’t afraid? For Sandberg, the answer was to write her book. If you’d asked me the same question five years ago, my answer would have been, “Quit my job.” Being told to “lean in” is the last thing I needed to hear.

Until society catches up to the changes in our homes, many of us will be better served finding way to push back.

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The lesson of Marissa Mayer

by Katrina on March 1, 2013

Cross-posted on The Huffington Post

A whole lot of people are disappointed in Marissa Mayer.

We pinned our hopes on her, ever so briefly last summer, when she was hired as the new CEO of Yahoo! while pregnant with her first child.

Maybe she would show the world that you could be a devoted parent and really, really good at your day job, too. Maybe her hire would spark a national dialog about new, innovative ways of working that make it possible to balance work and parenthood. Maybe her example would bring about a type of trickle-down feminism, and workplace discrimination against mothers would start to disappear.

Or maybe not.

While Mayer was still pregnant, some of us were dismayed to learn she planned to take only a couple weeks of maternity leave. After the baby was born, others were irritated to hear her brag about her “easy” baby. It felt like she was thumbing her nose at those of us who needed more time off, or didn’t have “easy” babies.

But to criticize her seemed petty. Aren’t the mommy wars supposed to be over?  And anyway, it’s not like Mayer was pretending to be Gloria Steinem. As you can see from the below video clip, she’s made it clear to anyone who would listen that she’s trying to run a tech company, not a women’s movement.

Sure, she happens to be a new mom, and yes, the personal is political. But sometimes, the personal is also very personal. We thought it best to give her some space…

Then, last week, after just a few months on the job, she announced Yahoo!’s new work-from-home policy, which can be summed up in four words: Don’t work from home.

According to Kara Swisher at All Things D, the ban extends not only to employees who work from home exclusively, but also to those who work from home one or two days a week. Even the random day waiting for the cable guy is potentially detrimental to the new “spirit of collaboration” that Yahoo! intends to foster, according to the company memo.

I heard this news on the radio one recent morning, while tormenting myself about my own work-from-home dilemma. My husband was out of town on business. My five-year-old, who has never been officially diagnosed with asthma, had been having asthma-like symptoms. I’d just stayed home with him for two days, administering around-the-clock inhalers. He had improved considerably, and that morning I dropped him and his sister off at school.

I headed to my contract job in San Francisco filled with doubt. Was he really ready to be back at school? What if he had a breathing attack in class? Maybe I should work from home (our house is five minutes from the school) instead of going into the office, where I would be an hour away.

The company I’m working with has been absolutely fantastic about letting me work from home as-needed. But since a lot of my work happens in meetings, I knew it would be better to be in the office. I felt torn.

Eager for a distraction, I snapped on the radio, and there was Marissa Mayer’s new ban on telecommuting.

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you probably know that telecommuting has been proven to raise productivity and improve morale. It costs employers nothing. It’s also one of the few things that makes working parenthood manageable for those of us who don’t have a stay-at-home spouse or an army of household help.

I will be the first to admit that telecommuting has its limits. There are days when I need to collaborate closely with a team, and it’s easier to do that in person. But there are other days when I’m writing or sketching, and I find I’m more effective working in the peace and quiet of my home office.

Those of us who are conscientious about doing a good job and being a good parent constantly weigh competing priorities. Every day we make decisions about where to put our time and attention, so that both our kids and our coworkers get what they need from us, while trying to keep ourselves from burning out. It’s bad enough that we torment ourselves over our work-from-home days. How much worse to be at a company where you don’t even have the option?

Ironically, the new Yahoo! rule was put in place to spark “innovation.” Apparently face time is so important that people must work exclusively at the office. But it’s hard to see how keeping your employees on a leash will lead to innovative thinking. Isn’t it more reasonable to conclude that Yahoo!’s best employees, its most innovative thinkers, will take their talents to companies that value their contribution and trust them to get their work done? And how is Yahoo! going to attract new talent in a culture where employees are treated as children that need to be babysat by their managers?

Some former Yahoo! employees have spoken out in favor of the work-from-home ban, saying employees had gotten lazy, and were abusing the system. But if that’s the case, then those employees should be managed to higher standards, or fired, not chained to a desk.

What are we to learn from all this?

We cannot pin our hopes on a few privileged women like Marissa Mayer who manage, despite the odds, to “have it all,” thinking their success will improve our lot. Their success will do nothing to change the fact that the U.S. is just about the worst place in the developed world to work and raise kids. Trickle-down economics didn’t work in the 80s, and apparently, trickle-down feminism isn’t going to work now. In fact, I am beginning to believe Mayer’s success is a setback; it creates a new double standard. It’s easy for her to say “Do all your work at the office.” After all, she recently built a private baby nursery next to her own office so that she wouldn’t have to be away from her baby. Those of us without multimillion dollar incomes don’t have that option.

My hope is that Yahoo! employees will see they deserve better. I hope they decide to find jobs at companies that value results over arbitrary measures like time in the office. Maybe some of them will get fed up and start their own companies. Leave Marissa Mayer behind in her private nursery, contemplating how to save a dying company.

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My big news

by Katrina on February 11, 2013

I’ve been keeping something from you: I’m writing a book.

I’ve been working on it, on and off, for more than three years. Frankly, it’s been lonely. I’ve wanted to talk about it on the blog—in fact, it seemed dishonest not to talk about it, since it’s related to all the things I write about here—but somewhere along the way, someone who works in publishing told me that I would ruin (positively ruin!) my chances of getting a publisher if I shared this information in such a public way.

Much later, someone else who works in publishing told me that this was not true, but by then I was spooked and decided to limit this information to my personal circle of friends and family.

Three years is a long time to work on anything. It only took nine months to make each of my kids. Many times I thought about giving up on the book. Life would be so much easier! I could have free time again. I could go for a hike, or see a movie with a friend, or organize the kids’ closets instead of toiling away in my upstairs office. But then I would get an email or a comment from a stressed out mom or dad who read my blog, and it kept me going.

Which brings me to my other, bigger piece of news: I have a publisher!

Maxed Out: A Memoir, will be published this fall with Seal Press, an imprint of Perseus Books. Here a short description from my proposal:

Every day, millions of women like me give our all at work. Then we come home and give our all to our kids. When the kids go to bed, we go back to work. We’re not just busy. We’re living beyond our physical and emotional means, spending energy that we don’t have, making ourselves sick and depressed.

I learned about the dangers of carrying too much psychic debt one sunny Saturday afternoon when I was driving to Target to buy diapers, and I broke down. Not my car. Me.

I pulled over to the side of the road, my hands shaking, barely able to breathe. I called my husband and sobbed, “I can’t do this anymore.”

Just like that, my carefully built career shuddered to an end, and my journey through depression, anxiety, and insomnia; medication, meditation, and therapy began. As I learned over the months to heal my body and my mind, I searched for answers to one question:

What the hell happened?

MAXED OUT: American Moms on the Brink is about trying to do it all, failing miserably, and what comes after.

Now my only pressing concern is making enough time to finish the manuscript.

This blog—your comments and emails—have not only given me the morale support I needed to keep writing, they’ve also educated me about how entrenched and nuanced this “problem that has no name” really is. You’ve helped me see that our individual struggles add up to a bigger, more profound collective struggle to realize our potential, to have our efforts matter and be recognized, and to not be alone in doing the important, necessary work of raising the next generation. In many places I quote from your blog comments in the book, and together, they tell a much richer story than I could have told alone.

I may post some questions to you over the next few months as I finish the manuscript. I hope you will bear with my sporadic blogging schedule (still aiming for once or twice a month), and keep reading and sharing your stories here. Although I don’t respond to every email and comment, I read them all. They matter.

Most of all, I want to say thank you.

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Who needs to “lean forward”

by Katrina on January 28, 2013

Hello! I’m still here. I’ve been working on something that I’m really excited about, and plan to share with you soon. In the meantime, check out this great column by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times:

She’s (Rarely) the Boss

It’s about the lack of women in the halls of power (for example, only 17 percent of Fortune 500 board seats and a miniscule 3 percent of board chairs are women).

Are we held back by a workplace that doesn’t fit the lives of most mothers, or are we simply not assertive enough?

As you know, most of what I write on this blog is about the first answer. (It’s the workplace, stupid!) But maybe there’s some truth in the second answer, too. I’ve seen in my own life ways that I and women I know could be more assertive in our careers. Why? What’s holding us back?

Talking about this can sound a lot like blaming the victim. It can easily turn into, “The problem is women lack confidence.”

But what if these two things related?

If we know on some level that we can’t “have it all,” (because we’re encumbered by our family obligations and lack of cultural and institutional support), it makes sense that we would be less inclined to “lean forward” in our careers. Not because we lack confidence in ourselves, but because we don’t have the emotional or psychic energy to try harder. We’re already doing too much. Leaning back is a way of protecting ourselves.

This becomes a way of thinking and being. We may do this before we even have children, as Sheryl Sandberg points out, because we can see what’s coming. Sandberg brings it up as a social critique; she wants women to lean forward. Whereas, I think the opposite. Women are smart to guard their energy. Those of us who don’t make ourselves sick. Nothing will change until everyone else decides to “lean forward” when it comes to raising families.

What do you think? Do you “lean forward” at work as much as your male coworkers?

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Girls Rule.

by Katrina on November 15, 2012

Cross-posted on The Huffington Post

Ladies, we are having a very good year.

This election, a record number of women—binders and binders full of them—ran for office, and…best of all…won.

In the new Congress, we will have 20 female Senators, up from 17. We will have the first openly gay senator, Tammy Baldwin, in Wisconsin. We will have the first Asian-American woman in the Senate, Mazie Hirono, and the first Hindu in Congress, Tulsi Gabbard. Last I checked, 81 women had been elected to the House, while a few races were still being counted. New Hampshire will have the nation’s first all-female delegation. (Feel free to express your gratitude with a donation to EMILY’s List.)

This election wasn’t just a win for women, and it wasn’t just a win for the men who love them, it might also be a win for government.

What does this all mean?

As you know, there was a lot of talk this election, particularly from Republicans, about how government should be run more like a business. Well, guess what? Having more women in leadership roles is a key sign of a company’s health. And more women in Congress may be a sign that government is growing healthier.

Here are the facts:

Companies with more women in leadership roles improve their bottom line

That’s right. The research shows that again and again that companies that consistently promote women outperform their competitors. They do better on the stock exchange, and they make higher profits.

From a 2007 Catalyst study: [1]

Fortune 500 companies with 3 or more women on the Board outperform those with the fewest by

  • + 42% return on sales
  • + 53% return on equity
  • + 66% return on invested capital

From a 2007 McKinsey study: [2]

Companies with more women in top management outperform the industry average in return on by 48% in operating results.

From a Pepperdine University study:

After several years of tracking the performance of Fortune 500 companies, researchers found “The correlation between high-level female executives and business success has been consistent and revealing.”

There are many possible reasons for this correlation between more women and healthier companies. It could be that we’re better listeners, we have a unique ability to form relationships, or the fact that we tend to be more risk-averse than men in our decision-making. Or according to a study published in Harvard Business Review this year, we’re simply better leaders. Or maybe, as Nancy Pelosi pointed out in an interview yesterday morning, the years some of us spend raising children actually give us important diplomacy and interpersonal skills.

How do these skills translate to government?

Anyone who has worked in business knows that to get anything done, you need to bring people along with you. These relationships are what make women effective in business, and could make us doubly effective in government, where nothing gets done without a consensus.

In the words of our first female secretary of state, Madeline Albright:

“I believe that societies are better off when women are politically and economically empowered…When you have more women, the tone of the conversation changes, and the goals of the conversation change.”

What do you think this election means for women? For everyone?

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Got a few minutes? Watch this inspiring interview with Madeline Albright, where she talks about her first meeting at the UN as the only woman on the Security Council.

 

[1] “The Bottom Line: Corporate Performance and Women’s Representation on Boards,” Catalyst report 2007

[2] “Women Matter” McKinsey & Company report, 2007

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It’s Time to Call a Truce to the Mommy Wars

Post image for It’s Time to Call a Truce to the Mommy Wars

by Katrina on November 5, 2012

Every mother I know has felt judged, at one time or another, about her choice to work or not work, most often by other women. Stay-at-home moms are over-coddling and wasting their education. Full-time “career” moms are cold-hearted, reptilian women who care more about money and status than their own children. When we confess that we’re having a tough time, we are accused of whining.

Oh, but the judgment doesn’t stop there. Mothers who stop at one kid are depriving their child of siblings. The ones who have more than two kids are accelerating global warming. Mothers who don’t breastfeed long enough are going to give their children asthma. Mothers who breastfeed too long are weird. Helicopter Moms are over-scheduling their children, turning them into Type A, anorexic basket cases, while the rest of us are depriving our children of important enrichment activities. Health-nut mothers judge others for putting Fritos and unnaturally flavored juice in the lunchbox. Meanwhile, everyone pities the children of health-nut mothers, who have to eat that gritty whole grain bread and the brown spotted bananas.

These are the kinds of judgments that get passed around casually in our personal lives. Then there’s the public arena. There was the furor over tiger moms with the 2011 publication of Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Should women push their children harder to be “successful” in school, music, and other pursuits?

Next we were outraged over the May 2012 Time magazine cover, which showed a mom looking defiantly into the camera while breastfeeding her toddler next to the headline “Are You Mom Enough?” Are women breastfeeding too long, or not long enough?

This happened around the same time everyone had to weigh in on the pregnancy of the new Yahoo CEO, Marissa Meyer, and her decision to take only a couple weeks of maternity leave. What’s wrong with her, anyway?

We had barely settled back in our seats when we had to rise again to join the kerfuffle over Anne-Marie Slaughter’s essay in The Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” which quickly became one of the most widely read articles in the history of the magazine. But instead of having a dialog about the structural issues that Slaughter said are holding us back, much of the reaction to her piece came back to personal choices. Should women change their definition of “having it all”? Should we learn to be content with what we have?

Why are we so obsessed with women’s personal choices? Why are we so quick to judge mothers?

Maybe we judge because we feel conflicted about the choices we’ve made. We’re afraid of screwing up what we’re constantly reminded is the most important job we’ll ever have—raising our children. We point the finger at others as a way of feeling better about ourselves.

Whatever it’s cause, all this judgment is, of course, a distraction. The real conflict, which we all feel either directly or indirectly, is between all parents and the economic policies and social institutions that don’t value the act of caregiving, that make it so damnably difficult to raise our children, stay economically viable, and keep ourselves and our relationships intact.

Politicians of all stripes extol family values, but do we really value families when we don’t offer parents paid time off after the birth of a baby? When affordable, quality childcare is out of reach for so many families? When so few women have the support they need from employers to breastfeed, and half of us lack paid sick time?

As one author pointed out in a May 2012 New York Times opinion piece, “If the conflict continues to be framed as one between women…it will continue to distract us from what we should really be doing: working together—women and men together—to change the cultural, social and economic conditions within these crucial choices are made.”

What about you? How have you felt judged by other women?

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Of course you’re planning to vote tomorrow! But in case you are confused about where to go, text  VOTE to RISING with your address (including city and state) and MomsRising will look it up for you.

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Have you registered yet?

by Katrina on October 16, 2012

I haven’t written about the upcoming election on this blog, but I think the outcome is going to affect our lives and our children’s lives in profound ways.

Here’s my (extremely) distilled view of things:

If you believe in a common good, if you believe that government’s role is to level the playing field and provide a safety net for the most vulnerable among us (the poor, the disabled, the elderly), if you believe that we need to invest in teachers, parks, police, green energy, and student aid, if you believe that you and your daughters should have the right to decide what to do with your bodies, then vote for Obama, and vote for Democrats in the House and Senate, so he can actually get something done.

If you believe government can’t or shouldn’t protect the most vulnerable among us, if you believe that job is best left to neighbors, family, and churches, if you want to see Roe v. Wade overturned, then vote for Mitt Romney and the Republicans.

Whatever you believe, register to vote here.

Why are you going to vote? read full story

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Check out my new radio interview!

Post image for Check out my new radio interview!

by Katrina on October 10, 2012

The lovely brains from Lady Brain asked me back on the show to talk about a recent HuffPo story I wrote: My Advice to Women Who Give Advice to Women.

In the interview I talk about why I think women should stop telling other women what they’re doing wrong, and save the advice for their HR departments. So I guess technically I’m one of those women giving women advice…My point is that we’re doing great! It’s the workplace that needs fixing.

Also—Steph reveals that she just quit her full-time job after what amounted to a mini-breakdown. And then I end with some shocking statistics from my own survey of 600 parents about how maxed out we all are. I’ll try to end future interviews on a more upbeat note.

Listen to the whole interview here:

Are Women In Charge Yet? Katrina Alcorn Interview on Lady Brain (AUDIO 11:38)

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