Check out my new radio interview!

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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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The things you can’t control

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by Katrina on September 10, 2012

I’ve hit one of those weird rough patches. In the last two months…

  1. The radiator hose on our car exploded in a steaming mess while driving our daughter to a camping trip.
  2. The day Car #1 got back from the shop, Car #2 blew a tire.
  3. A week later, on my way to an important meeting, I discovered the battery had died on Car #1.
  4. I broke my foot. Seriously broke it. Crutches. Fiberglass cast. The works.
  5. A couple days ago, the brand-new tire on Car #2 got a flat.

Perhaps I’m paying off a karmic debt to the Transportation Gods. We keep our cars in good condition, and I try not to trip on stairs, but sometimes, despite my best intentions, I trip, the car breaks down…

I remember a friend — single mom of a 2- and 4-year old — being distraught after her boss chastised her for accidentally dropping her keys (with fob) in a puddle. I don’t remember the specifics, but for some reason she was unable to use the car for a couple days. She asked permission to work from home. Luckily, she had the kind of job one could do at home, but unfortunately, her boss was a big believer in Face Time. He suggested she rent a car. She tried to explain that she couldn’t afford a rental car.

“Well, I guess you’ll never make that mistake again,” he said, as if all mistakes can be prevented if one just applies oneself. This was a man who had a stay-at-home wife to run his errands, tend to his sick children, and get his car repaired during work hours on his behalf. In other words, he had someone to cover for most of the unplanned events that might prevent one from coming into the office.

One thing I like about being self-employed is that I don’t have to deal with a smug, delusional boss.

*

A few years ago, when I still had a full-time job, Brian and I made an elaborate schedule in a desperate, but methodical, attempt to get control of our lives.

We divided a spreadsheet into 30-minute increments and specified in fastidious detail every child drop off and pick up, every grocery shopping trip, every weekly chore, like taking out the garbage, paying bills, and doing laundry. The spreadsheet, which we custom-made each week, included work meetings that were expected to start early or run late, occasional business trips, and professional networking events one or the other of us was obliged to attend. It included important school events—Martha’s science fair, Ruby’s kindergarten open house, Jake’s pre-school fundraiser. In an effort to stay healthy, we scheduled in time to work out, and time to see friends.

This Wonder Schedule even included time to create the next week’s schedule (two people @ 1 half-hour time slot). It was color-coded by category (work, kids, personal) and took up half the refrigerator. On paper, there was time for everything. Looking at it filled me with an odd mixture of hope (I can do it all!) and dread (Not a moment to spare!)

I know you know where this is going. The schedule, of course, did not work out. There was no way to account for sick kids, cranky clients, or flat tires. There was no give when one of us slept through the alarm, or a friend called asking for a favor. Even if we skimped on ourselves (skip the workout, stay up late re-doing the presentation) there still wasn’t enough time.

Worse than that, we weren’t enjoying our lives. Helping with the science project should have been fun, but it was just another thing we had to do. I used to enjoy cooking, now I was all about how to get nutritional calories into the mouths of my loved ones with minimal fuss. Who cared if it tasted good?

You know where this ends.

The only solution I’ve found to this dilemma is to work less. That doesn’t mean I never work long hours. But because I’m self-employed now, I space out the intense, full-time projects with lighter part-time ones. Luckily, when we hit this latest rough patch, Brian and I had both just finished an intense work sprint, and had slowed down to part time.

Here’s an idea: What if we all stopped trying to be so hyper-productive, trying to cram organized activity into every spare moment? What if we had a Rainy Day Fund of time? Several unscheduled hours each week for dealing with the inevitable unplanned stuff?

When the “rescue vehicle” arrived the other day to fix my flat, the sun was out, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I leaned back in the front seat, rested my foot (which is now in a “boot”) on the dash, and enjoyed this unexpected moment of quiet.

* * *

How do you make time for the unplanned stuff?

* * *

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Update from Sept. 11, 2012

A few hours after this post went up, my friend Lucie sent me a copy of her current “Wonder Schedule.” She said she just hired someone to help drive her boys to after school activities because it had gotten to be too much to manage by herself. She was having trouble explaining the schedule to the new babysitter, so she created this (I’ve blocked out a few names and addresses but you get the idea):

…And then my friend, Liz (two kids ages 3 and 5), sent a photo of the schedule that’s up on her fridge:

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The pregnant CEO

by Katrina on July 19, 2012

By now you’ve heard that the new CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, also happens to be six months pregnant with her first child.

I’ve been torn between two reactions:

1. Dang! That is so cool!

2. She’s only taking “a few weeks” maternity leave?

OK, I will try to suspend my disbelief. Maybe that will work for her. Maybe she’s superhuman, and she’s going to luck out with a healthy baby who sleeps through the night. Or maybe she has no idea what she’s getting into. At least, she doesn’t know any more than you or I did when we were pregnant with our first babies.

It will be interesting to see how the whole thing unfolds. I hope everything works out for Marissa Mayer. I also hope that other new moms at Yahoo won’t feel pressured by the boss’s example to cut their maternity leaves short.

I don’t envy the pressure Mayer is under. Some people are calling her a role model, while others are complaining about her taking any maternity leave at all.

Here’s one response to the announcement about her hire:

“Talk about lousy timing. She’ll be taking maternity leave when she needs to be at work. Yahoo has enough problems without a part-time CEO,” one commenter said…

[Quick aside: Last I checked a whole bunch of full-timers were steering the ship at Yahoo, and that hasn't kept the company from losing revenue, market share, and talent. Can we stop acting like doing a good job requires consistently working long hours? After all, decades of research shows that working long hours quickly leads to bad decisions and negative productivity.]

Then I read this post that my friend Laura sent (Thanks, Laura!), by the ever-controversial Penelope Trunk: Marissa Mayer becomes CEO of Yahoo, and proves women cannot have it all

I found this part refreshing, even if I don’t agree with all of it:

…I’m so sick of people saying that women like Marissa Mayer are trailblazers when they take on huge corporate responsibility instead of taking care of young kids at home. Leaving kids at home so you can do a big job at the office is old news. People have been doing it for decades.

Marissa Mayer is very Sheryl Sandberg: smart, driven, hard working, a high achiever. She represents all the things that we celebrate in our culture.

Do you know what we do not celebrate? Staying home with kids…

Trunk points out that although many are calling Mayer a “role model,” she’s an anomaly. Most mothers would prefer to work part time than full time. (Can I have an amen to that?) A true “role model” for women would be a mother who works part-time.

Sure, Mayer certainly does not represent us all, but I hold out the hope that having more women in leadership roles like Mayer can only make life better for the rest of us in the long run.

And you have to delight in the image of a CEO running a big important meeting with her hands folded across her nine-month round belly. Or ending a meeting early so she can go pump. (I guarantee she will not be pumping in a bathroom or a closet as many of us have.)

Speaking of anomalies:

If fewer than 4 out of 100 Fortune 500 CEOs are women, what are the chances of a Fortune 500 CEO being a pregnant woman?

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My advice to women who give advice to women

by Katrina on July 2, 2012

Cross-posted from The Huffington Post.

By now, you’ve probably either read or read about Anne-Marie Slaughter’s Atlantic essay in which she recounts from personal experience why she believes women cannot “have it all” and calls on all of us to recognize the conditions that must change to make it possible for women to thrive in careers and motherhood.

As someone who has been writing about this issue for three years, I read her essay with relief. Finally! Now, at last, we can have the dialogue we should have been having for the last few decades instead of all the bogus “Mommy Wars.” How can we make the workplace more friendly to women — and men — with family obligations?

But the reactions I’ve read to the essay have not gone in that direction. Instead, there has been the usual debate about what “having it all” really means, and the it’s-not-really-that-bad opinion pieces (despite so much evidence to the contrary). Then comes this essay, by Susan Chira, the assistant managing editor for news at the New York Times.

Chira talks about how much she loves her work, despite the strains that long hours and travel put on her family life. Now that her youngest child is only a year away from college she says, “all in all, I think my family would agree that I managed to juggle without depriving them.” In other words: I worked hard, and my kids are fine.

Chira admits that she had more flexibility in her job than many other women, in part because she could take advantage of modern technology so that she was not “tied to the office.” She admits many women don’t have this option, and surmises they probably never will without “federal mandates.” Then she quickly writes this off as “a pipe dream in today’s environment of austerity and the drive for smaller government.”

Chira says there’s a price to pay for high achievement and asks, “Is it realistic to expect anyone can ascend to the top without that total commitment?” She concludes with this advice for younger women: “Be patient. And relentless.”

There are so many things wrong with this response, it’s hard to know where to begin, so I will take them, as the writer Anne Lamott would say, “bird by bird.”

Bird #1: I worked hard and my kids are fine.

I, too, have worked hard. At times I’ve given every last ounce of energy I had to my work (web consulting and management) and my children (now ages 5, 9 and 11). Three years ago, I burned out at my full-time job and had to take a year to recuperate. My kids were fine. I was not.

I know I’m not alone. Studies show that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to that of men. About a year ago, I posted a survey on my own blog, asking working parents about stress and its effects on their health. Of the 560 respondents in households where all parents work, a whopping 88 percent said they experienced stress-related health problems since becoming a working parent.

Chira’s argument is a more delicate way of saying “I did it. Why can’t you?” It perpetuates the ugly idea that the answer lies in just working harder, sucking it up. There’s nothing wrong with working hard, but those of us with family obligations are often working too hard, way too hard, and it’s making us sick. We have to stop taking our own health for granted.

Bird #2: Women won’t get flexibility at work without a “federal mandate.”

Huh? There’s no way to change workplace culture without a government mandate? By now, there is an impressive body of evidence showing that progressive companies already use telecommuting, flexible schedules, and other “custom-fit work practices” to make the workplace more friendly to mothers (and fathers). What’s more, these practices cost little or nothing to implement and lead to increased productivity, decreased costs in turnover and absenteeism and a stronger bottom line.

In other words, it is in a company’s best interests to do the right thing, no government “mandates” required. But the leaders in most large companies (read: mostly guys with stay-at-home wives, full-time nannies, or both) are often ignorant of the issues their employees face, so they have little incentive to change, even if that change is in their company’s best interest. Which is why it would be really great to have more women leaders, (women like you, Susan), to help get the word out.

Bird #3. Government help is a “pipe dream”

Not so fast. Government may not be the only solution, but we can’t let government off the hook so easily.

The United States has a deplorable record when it comes to supporting working families. Human Rights Watch published a report in 2011 that declared the U.S. is “failing its families” through “weak or nonexistent laws on paid leave, breastfeeding accommodation and discrimination against workers with family responsibilities.” The very least we can do is demand some form of paid maternity (or parental) leave, something that every single developed country in the entire world enjoys, with the exception of the United States. If Zimbabwe, Honduras and Bulgaria can figure this one out, surely we can, too.

Bird #4. It’s not realistic to expect women to ascend to the top if they don’t show “total commitment.”

What does that phrase, “total commitment,” really mean? Being a workaholic, not having any family time, and giving oneself completely to one’s job? I don’t call that total commitment. I call that mental illness. How can people be truly effective leaders — in the corporate world, the non-profit world or government — if they are not grounded in the relationships that make them human? How can they understand the needs of their employees and constituents without a vehicle for compassion in their own lives? It was “total commitment” (and lack of perspective) that begat the risky, self-centered behavior by Lehman Brothers and others that ushered in the economic collapse of 2008.

We need more leaders who have a visceral recognition of the human consequences of their actions. That understanding comes from a rich and full life, including a network of respectful and loving relationships, not from pulling all-nighters at the office.

Bird #5. My advice… be patient.

Why does almost every essay on the subject of working mothers seem to end with advice for working mothers? Has it occurred to you, Susan, that we don’t need your advice?

We are working our butts off, making the best of incredibly trying circumstances, in a country with the worst work-family conflict of any developed nation in the world. The problem is not us. The problem is a society that doesn’t value the role of caregiving. A workplace that doesn’t value the well-being of its employees. A belief that you aren’t “committed” to your job if you leave at 4:30 to pick up your kids from daycare, or that a few years off to care for young children spells the ends of career advancement.

My advice to Susan Chira and women like her is this: Save your advice for the people who need it — your colleagues, your HR departments and your employers who don’t understand why the new mom needs to take a nursing pump break every three hours. Those are the people who need enlightenment.

* * *

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The Atlantic magazine story

Post image for The Atlantic magazine story

by Katrina on June 22, 2012

I’m blown away by this essay: “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” Finally, someone is saying what’s true.

The author, Anne-Marie Slaughter, was a high-powered working mom in Washington who stepped off her career fast track to be with her teenage children. Then she wrote an essay, which was published in The Atlantic, saying the thing no one wants to say out loud, but secretly we all know is true.

“The women who have managed to be both mothers and top professionals are superhuman, rich, or self-employed,” she says.

(I would like add they’ve been lucky, too. Meaning, lucky not to have children with the kind of health issues that would require them to stop. Also, some of them also have stay-at-home husbands, an extreme rarity, despite all the hype.)

She says our lot won’t change unless women in leadership positions speak out, and that having more women leaders would help solve the problem. I couldn’t agree more.

She has a critique for women like Sheryl Sandberg, who, despite the best of intentions, continue to perpetuate the myth that if women just “keep their foot on the gas pedal” everything will work out fine. (The implication is that it’s our own damn fault if we can’t do it all.)

Instead, the author says we need to take this conversation out of the realm of the personal, and look at the structural and cultural issues that are holding us back.

In this age of self-help, Republican pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps, DIY-determinism, cult of the individual, I find this idea enormously refreshing. No, it’s not about you. It’s about all of us.

“Ultimately, it is society that must change, coming to value choices to put family ahead of work just as much as those to put work ahead of family. If we really valued those choices, we would value the people who make them; if we valued the people who make them, we would do everything possible to hire and retain them; if we did everything possible to allow them to combine work and family equally over time then the choices would get a lot easier.”

So what are we supposed to do about it?

After two years of writing about the work-family crisis, this is the question I find most vexing. My former boss, a working mom herself, asked me this question about a year after I left my job.

“It’s like you’re asking how to solve global warming,” I told her. “There isn’t one simple answer.”

She gave me a funny look.

But what I meant was, everything has to change—from government policies (Have you noticed that even Zimbabwe has paid maternity leave?), to workplace policies (How much sick time have YOU used up this year?), to the way men and women divide chores at home (No way are those Chore Wars over) to the way women treat each other (Want something to whine about?).

Slaughter appears to agree. She says we need to change the “culture of face time” (yet another spin on telecommuting and flexible schedules). She says employers should evaluate a job candidate who is also a parent the way they would evaluate a job candidate who is also a marathon runner. (Personally, I think what we do is harder. Even in extreme sports, you get to lie down when it’s over. Not so when your kid is throwing up at 2 am and you have a 7 am conference call with the team in Japan.)

She also says we need to redefine the “arc of a successful career.” This is what has so many women I know stymied—after taking five years to be home with kids, their resume is toast. Employers don’t want to hear that you took time off to do unpaid work.

She also has a lot to say about the pursuit of happiness, but I need to put my kids to bed, so I think you should just read the essay and then come back here and tell me what you think.

What do you think?

* * *

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Guest Post: Mommy See, Mommy Do

by Katrina on May 24, 2012

Kristen is a Bay Area mom and writes a very funny blog about parenting, among other things. A random sampling of recent topics: hippie preschools, baby lust, and pink eye. In this guest post, Kristen talks about an attempt to move her career in a new direction, and the effect it has on her kids, (ages 4 and 6).

Guest post by Kristen McClusky

Kate and Paige’s favorite game is “Baby-Mama.” It’s what your normal kids probably call “Family.”

No two sessions of Baby-Mama are ever the same. The girls change up who they are, where they live, and the dramatic scenario at hand. For some reason though, there’s nearly always a sick baby or stuffed animal.

Anyway, here’s what I overheard the other day:

Kate: “Okay, so I’m the mom and I’m a writer.”

My Inner Voice: “Aw… that’s my girl! You won’t make a cent, honey, but it’s a noble profession.”

Kate: [as if she'd overheard my thought] “—and a doctor.”

My Inner Voice: “Nice! Always good to have options. And the doctor gig will definitely help pay for Dad and my nursing home some day.”

Paige: “Okay, I’ll be the big sister. And I’m gonna be a life coach.”

My Inner Voice: “Oh, Jesus Christ. It’s time to move out of California.”

On the heels of the Mom 2.0 Summit, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the gargantuan responsibility of raising two daughters. Not that you folks with sons have it scot-free, but it seems like with girls it’s infinitely easier to f*** things up.

I want my daughters to be happy about who they are and how they look. And I want them to know that they can be anything they want to be when they grow up.

My parents did an excellent job of instilling this notion in me. And yet I still became a writer. Go figure.

In the past few months I’ve been doing a lot of what-do-I-want-to-do-with-my-life soul searching. Specifically in the realm of career. And I was happy to realize that what I’m currently doing—working in the world of parenting media, interacting with moms every day, blogging my butt off—is where I want to stay.

But I’ve been thinking about what my blue-sky dream job in that world is. There’s not enough space on WordPress to divulge the scazillions of ideas I came up with. But one thing I kept coming back to was my love of radio.

Thankfully I sleep with an immensely brilliant being every night. My husband Mark that is, not our cat. (Okay, so we don’t even have a cat, but I couldn’t exactly pretend we sleep with our fish Karen.)

So Mark suggests, “Why don’t you do a podcast and pitch it to Mamapedia?” Mamapedia’s a community of 3.5 million—you guessed it—mamas. And where I happened to work.

So I did one of those “shoulda had a V-8″ head thumps, then kissed my smart husband. It was a great idea.

I decided to pitch the idea to my boss with a sample podcast already in the can. Make it easy for him to hear how good it’d be, and be able to unequivocally tell him (and know myself) that this was something I could continue to do.

I started developing the editorial angle, researching software, listening to other podcasts. And I lined up a high school friend  who’d just written a book on parenting to be my first guest.

All this on top of my regular workload, writing class, school volunteering, blogging, mom duties, housework, and selfish endeavors to sometimes sleep.

If you haven’t stretched like this for a while, I highly recommend it. I worked my little—okay, medium-sized—butt off planning it all out, writing a script, and practicing with the software (thanks, Dad!).

I woke up early one day to record the podcast in my basement while Mark got the girls ready for school upstairs. Then I taught myself how to edit the damn thing. I even picked out some royalty-free brand-appropriate music for the intro.

I didn’t love every part of how I sounded. I had tons of ideas about how to make the next one better. But overall it came together. For a rookie, it seemed utterly acceptable.

Any mom who ever works from home can tell you about The Hand Swat. The way you wave away your kids with one arm while staring into your Mac screen and muttering, “Just two more minutes, honey, then I’ll get you some milk. I promise.”

It’s a guilt-inducing way to roll. It’s not parenting at its finest hour.

But what happened as a result of that week of hard work and child-neglect guilt surprised me. Kate said one night at dinner, “I really hope your boss likes the podcast.”

And Paige said, “Do I hafta eat my green beans?”

The morning I was doing the big reveal to the boss man, Kate gave me a hug before trooping off to school and said, “Good luck, Mama! If he likes it, let’s celebrate tonight.”

An entrepreneur mom who presented at Mom 2.0 shared some artwork her young daughter had made. It was a sign that said, “My mom startid a com-p-n.”

When the slide with that image came up, the businesswoman presenting started to cry—a reaction she apologized for, telling the crowd it surprised even her. Her tears triggered the ballroom of hundreds of other women to well up too.

Then we all got our periods together.

But seriously, sometimes when us working mothers feel guilty that our jobs are cutting into our roles as moms, we’re too wrapped up in self-flagellation to realize that the work we’re doing may actually be making a positive impact on our kids. We’re modeling you-can-do-anything-you-want-to-do behavior.

Sometimes our kids even feel proud of us. Imagine!

My boss liked the podcast, by the way. Kate spearheaded a family-dinner party that night. Then a few weeks later I found out my job was being outsourced to a less-costly editorial service. I was going to be leaving the website.

Alas, a second podcast never aired.

But you know what? That’s totally okay. I’m already talking to other companies about other cool gigs.

At this point I have no idea what form my next job will take, but it gratifies me to think that Kate and I now know that I can make another podcast—or, hell, teach myself any number of new skills—any time I want.

And when she grows up, she can too.

Kristen lives in Oakland, CA with her two daughters and geek husband. While plotting her next career move she’s doing laundry and blogging at motherload: diary of a modern day housewife superhero. Follow her on Facebook or on Twitter at @motherloadblog.

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The question is…Are they editor enough?

by Katrina on May 17, 2012

Are you mom enough?

Are you mom enough?

By now you’ve probably seen this TIME Magazine cover of the woman breastfeeding a child who looks about four (turns out he’s 3).

It’s caused quite a sensation, in part because half this country thinks breastfeeding is disgusting (especially when the child is old enough to request seconds) and the other half thinks the first half is stupid.

As you know, I am solidly in the pro-breastfeeding camp. I, of all people, should have no problem with the media showing images of women breastfeeding. In fact, several years ago I was photographed breastfeeding my daughter for a story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Here’s the proof.

But the TIME photo struck me as simply obnoxious. The cover is such a blatant attempt to pit women against each other. There’s the photo, which is designed to provoke the squeamish (note the defiant stance, and the age of the child). But what really puts it over the top is the aggressive headline. (“Are You Mom Enough?)

Personally, I’m disgusted with the cover, not because of what it says about breastfeeding, but because of what it says about the editors. Really? You people have nothing better to do than try to start another food fight over breastfeeding? (Pun intended.)

I’ve been too irritated to write about it. Then yesterday I saw that MomsRising put out a very reasoned response, so I’d like to share an excerpt here:

What makes TIME’s decision to focus on fanning the flames of the fictional “mommy wars” so utterly shameful is the fact that there are so many real and pressing issues facing America’s mothers right now that aren’t being covered. Issues like the fact that childcare costs more than college in many states, that 80% of low wage workers don’t have a single earned sick day, that women (particularly moms) face rampant pay discrimination, and that over 176 countries have some form of paid family leave, but the U.S. doesn’t. [1, 2, 3, 4]

The question isn’t whether we’re “mom enough,” but whether our culture is prepared to value mothers and families beyond just Mother’s Day. TIME, and other media outlets’ compulsion to frame parents’ collective stress in personal terms, not only misses the reality, but also throws us all off track in working toward common-sense, real, and permanent changes for all American families.

Do you agree? If so, sign this: Tell TIME to cover the real issues that matter to mothers, women, and families.

* * *

I’m curious what you think of the photo on it’s own. If it weren’t for the headline, what would you think?

* * *

Here’s one more thing the editors could cover: the health effects of stress on working parents. Have you noticed the results of this poll I put up several months ago? Go here: What are you on?

The good news: 55% of us do not take anxiety medication. The bad news: 32% of us do.

I’ve left the poll open so if you haven’t answered it yet, please do. I’m planning to write about the results soon.

* * *

Sources from the MomsRising excerpt:

[1] ”Parents and The High Cost of Child Care: 2010 Update,” National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies.http://action.momsrising.org/go/825?akid=3286.193911.eSKB16&t=15

[2] U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (July, 2011). Employee Benefits in the United States: Selected paid leave benefits: Access, National Compensation Survey (Table 6). Retrieved 8 November 2011, from  http://action.momsrising.org/go/1831?akid=3286.193911.eSKB16&t=17

[3] US Census and NWLC Blog: State Wage Gap Shows Little or No Improvement since 2008

[4] www.RaisingtheGlobalFloor.org

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Happy Almost Mother’s Day (video)

by Katrina on May 10, 2012

The other day, I caught my kids arguing about who loves me more.

“…I love her to the moon and back.”

“Oh yeah, well I love her to the sun and back. The sun is farther than the moon.”

“Well, I love her eyeball!”

You love her eyeball? That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“Yeah. That’s the biggest number.”

“You mean google?”

“Oh, yeah. Google! I love her google times google. That’s even bigger than google!”

“I love her infinity! That’s bigger than any of the numbers, Jake.”

“I love her infinity times google, times another google!”

“That’s cheating! Infinity times google is just infinity…”

“I’m not cheating. You’re cheating!”

It was hard to break it up.

In that spirit, I hope you will enjoy the new MomsRising Mother’s Day video as much as I did. I recommend you watch it with you own name first (click on this link and you’ll see what I mean), then send it you your favorite moms.

MomsRising Mother's Day video image

* * *

Hey, guess what? I was interviewed for a story about motherhood and feminism by writer Lisen Stromberg in this month’s Diablo Magazine: We Are Women. Hear Us Roar. Again.

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40 hours, 40 years

by Katrina on March 27, 2012

The number 40 has been on my mind a lot lately.

For one thing, I’m turning 40 this week. You would think I’d have had ample time to prepare for this milestone, but somehow it snuck up on me like the Norwegian rat that once scampered across my kitchen floor at 6 o’clock in the morning. Ew! How did he get in here?

The other reason I’m thinking about 40 is this Salon story my cousin sent me (Thanks, Logan!) called “Bring Back the 40 Hour Work Week.” It describes research that proves long hours “kill profits, productivity, and employees.”

Since your boss probably hasn’t read the story, and chances are you’re still stuck, like so many Americans, working 50 or 60 hours a week, and since that leaves you very little time to read anything except this blog, I will share the highlights here:

  • Most people assume that if you increase your hours by, say, 50%, you will get 50% more work done. Not true.
  • Study after study shows that for industrial workers, productivity dramatically decreases after 8 hours a day.
  • Knowledge workers (people like me and most of my friends) have only 6 good hours of productivity a day. After that, we are cooked noodles.
  • Studies also show that when companies reduce workers’ hours back down to 40 per week, their businesses become “significantly more productive and profitable.”

Sometimes there are short-term gains when people work 60 or 70 hours a week. However, the risk of burnout begins after one week:

Without adequate rest, recreation, nutrition and time off to just be, people get dull and stupid. They can’t focus. They spend more time answering e-mail and goofing off than they do working. They make mistakes that they’d never make if they were rested; and fixing those mistakes takes longer because they’re fried…[Some software teams] descend into a negative-progress mode, where they are actually losing ground week over week because they’re so mentally exhausted that they’re making more errors than they can fix.

Despite 150 years of research proving that working long hours is bad for everyone, Americans now work some of the longest hours of any country in the industrialized world. Shouldn’t we know better?

The author blames this on a culture problem created by a bunch of geeky, anti-social, workaholic software programmers from Silicon Valley who were upheld for their “passion” and made not working on the weekend seemed terribly old-fashioned.

Personally, I found that trying to work the minimum 40 hours when I was in that sleep-deprived first year of motherhood was impossible. And now that I’m sleeping through the night again, 40 hours is manageable, but I vastly prefer 30 or less. (Of course, that goes for my age as well.)

What’s your experience with working long hours? How many “good” hours do you have, before you are (as my friend Joan would say) “working stupid”?

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The Venn diagram of parenthood

by Katrina on March 1, 2012

I’m not sure why I put this together, but I thought it might make for interesting discussion.

Notice that “good” dads and “bad” moms occupy the same part of the chart?

I used to be heavily in the blue/green circles, no yellow. Now I like to think I’m closer to the Swedish moms, in the middle, but some days it feels all green, other days are very blue.

Where are you?

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I’m not posting that often. Maybe a few times per month. (Writing belongs in the yellow circle.)

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