Infographic: Women, Work, and Burn Out

by Katrina on July 22, 2013

I thought this was an interesting visual depiction of today’s modern day Problem That Has No Name. What do you think?

A Woman's Paradox

I found the bit at the bottom especially interesting, about how half of working moms want to stay home, and half of stay-at-home moms want to work. Obama’s early learning initiative, which would provide high quality preschool for all children, would be an obvious solution to the dilemma of women on both sides.

That reminds me of this really interesting story I just read, “Home Economics: The Link Between Work-Life Balance and Inequality,” by a dad who was able to restart his career because he moved to Canada where his family had access to affordable, high-quality child care. (The article is actually about so much more, but I’m running off to take my kid to a doctor’s appointment!)

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Letter from South Carolina: “Every Day Is Father’s Day”

by Katrina on July 3, 2013

I get a lot of emails from women who are frustrated with their husbands. These emails are almost always prefaced with a disclaimer about how great their husbands are. Then they go on to say all the ways their husbands let them down.

We are living a cultural double standard, and it’s a recipe for frustration. Even if both parents work, we (men and women) expect moms to do more for the kids than dads. Even if dad works less than mom, we expect the moms to be the behind-the-scenes organizer, setting up dentist appointments, organizing birthday parties, and clipping the nails. (If you haven’t seen it yet, please read the fascinating responses to the survey I posted in 2010 called Who Clips the Nails?)

So I thought y’all would relate to this email I received last week from a blog reader who asked that I refer to her as AMR in Charleston, South Carolina. With her permission, I’m sharing it with you here:

I am a working mom. I am exhausted. I have an amazing husband and he is a great father.

My husband came home yesterday after work and stated that he was exhausted because our newly turned 4 year old never listens………………. aww poor baby.
My problem with this statement:
1. You shower alone
2. You get only yourself dressed every day
3.  You feed only yourself breakfast and you eat it in silence
4.  You go to work
5.  You go to the gym
6.  You come home to a very clean house
7.  You come home to clean folded clothes
8   You come home to a fed child (sometimes bathed as well)
9.  You come home to  a clean, well made bed
10. You come home to a hot wife (that manages to sweat enough during the week to stay fit)
11. You come home to home cooked dinners 5-6 days a week
AND YOU’RE EXHAUSTED??? Give me a break. Every day is Father’s Day. I need a drink.
How about you? Is every day Father’s Day at your house? And if so, why? Is it because he doesn’t see what needs to be done, because he thinks you’ll do it better, or some other reason?

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Green Apples and Other Things I’m Chewing On

by Katrina on June 27, 2013

Photo of green apples

It’s done. The book is done. I don’t mean kind-of-done-except-for-the-copyedit, I mean DONE-done.

I wrote it and then rewrote it. I edited it more times than I can count, and other people did, too. It’s been developmentally edited, line-edited, copyedited, and proofed. It’s been designed and the front cover is done and the back cover has been edited a dozen times because it kept being too long and now it’s done.

It’s not perfect. Sometimes, as I continue to witness women around me grinding out their working motherhood conflicts, I think—oh, I should have said more about ‘X’ or less about ‘X.’ Yesterday, I noticed a missing comma. There are probably other typos we missed. But if I change another word I will give my editor, and possibly myself, a heart attack, so I’m letting it go.

I’ve never worked so hard on something. The official release data is September 3rd. If you order on Amazon you’ll get it a little sooner. I hope you like it.

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Here’s the thing about writing a book: Even when you’re done, you’re not really done.

Once you finish the book, you’re expected to market it. This is the blessing and the curse of the Internet. It’s given us more possibilities but also, more things to do. There’s a video book trailer to finish (coming soon!) and a YouTube channel to set up, and I’ve been told I really should do something with Pinterest. There’s the GoodReads giveaway (2 days left to enter!), and I’m figuring out how to make myself available to book clubs on Togather.

Next week, I’m going to begin recording the audiobook. Fifteen hours of reading out loud. I’m trying not to be intimidated.

I asked the sound engineer, James, how to prepare. He said the biggest thing to look out for is “mouth noises” — the weird clicks your mouth makes when it’s too dry or too wet. Just thinking about mouth noises makes my mouth dry.

He said to nibble green apples, and when the going gets really rough, gargle with olive oil. This is how a famous actress he worked with recently got through her audiobook narration.

Wish me luck.

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Did you see the news about this new Gallup report (“State of American Workplace”)?

Highlights:

  • 70% of American workers hate their jobs or are mentally checked out.
  • Only 30% are engaged and inspired to work.
  • The No. 1 cause of workplace discontent: “Managers from hell.”
  • The cost: $450-550 billion in lost productivity and higher health care costs.
  • The human cost: A whole lot of unhappiness.

From the report:

When leaders in the United States of America — or any country for that matter — wake up one morning and say collectively, “Let’s get rid of managers from hell, double the number of great managers and engaged employees, and have those managers lead based on what actually matters,” everything will change. The country’s employees will be twice as effective, they’ll create far more customers, companies will grow, spiraling healthcare costs will decrease, and desperately needed GDP will boom like never before.

How about you? Are you in the 70% or the 30%?

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The Secret to Eliminating Work Stress? Rethink Time.

by Katrina on June 11, 2013

Cross-posted on The Huffington Post

Imagine a job where you could work when and how you please. Where you could decide, on a daily basis, whether to show up at meetings or show up at the office at all? A job with unlimited sick time and vacation time? Where you could leave work at 3 p.m. to pick up your kids and none of your coworkers would give you the stink eye.

I know. It sounds too good to be true. But that job exists, according to Cali Ressler, one of the co-founders of the management strategy called Result-Only Work Environment (ROWE). I discovered her excellent book Why Work Sucks and the sequel, Why Managing Sucks, a few months ago when I was doing research for my own book.

Cali and her business partner, Jody Thompson, believe employees should be evaluated on how effective they are, rather than on traditional measures like the amount of time spent in the office. And they are teaching businesses like Gap Inc. to put this idea into practice.

Cali Ressler

Recently I interviewed Cali by phone to find out how ROWE could benefit exhausted, overworked parents like us. Here’s what she said:

Question: In Why Work Sucks you say “we have time all wrong.” Explain what you mean by this.

Answer: Back in the industrial age, we didn’t have the technology we have today. You had to be in a factory and punch in a clock. Now we have voicemail, email, cell phones — all this new technology — but we’re still operating under the time constructs of the industrial age.

People are available 24/7. If you don’t take control of this technology, it will completely overtake your life. In a ROWE, people are living 24/7. Time is Monday through Sunday. Every day, you get to make the decision about what is the most productive thing to do for your life.

Q: It’s great to get to choose when you’re in an office, but for people like me who do creative work, spontaneous interactions with coworkers can be really valuable. How do you make room for that in a ROWE?

A: We call those spontaneous interactions “drive bys.” What we often hear is yes, there can be comfort in knowing someone is right there, but the other side — what it feels like to be driven upon — it feels like an interruption. It doesn’t make us productive. The key is to set clear goals and measures.

Q: How do you set clear goals with creative work, when the outcome can be somewhat subjective?

A: Even creative teams can and need to set clear goals and measures. Chances are if you don’t have them, you’re wasting a lot of people’s time. It’s a cop out to say we can’t have clear goals.

In your case, if you’re working in a consulting agency, you have to get very, very clear with the client. Too often we get wrapped up in politics of creative agencies when the focus should be on what the client is expecting.

By the way, in a ROWE we don’t say you’re never in the office. We think the office should be a tool that people use when they need to.

Q: I hear what you’re saying. In my work, I’ve lived the nightmare of not having clear goals (and then working until 2 a.m. to meet a deadline). But it’s really tough working with people who don’t have kids, who don’t mind working until 2 a.m. How do you change culture?

A: It’s true that having kids can give you a sense of urgency and efficiency at work. What we do with ROWE is we say you have to start with a “vertical slice,” meaning you need everyone at all levels of the reporting structure, from company leaders and managers on down to participate. That way, you’re rewiring a subculture.

Everyone needs to u
nderstand that efficiency will be rewarded. It’s not about time, it’s about results. In a ROWE, you are completely focused on outcomes, so there’s no point in staying until 2 a.m. just to show you’re busy.

Q: In a ROWE, all meetings are optional. But for some of us, a lot of our work actually gets done in meetings. What if I need people in a meeting, and they don’t show up?

A: Yes, that’s a common fear.

Most often, when people get a meeting invite, they blindly hit ‘accept.’ But when we ask people how much of their time is spent in unproductive meetings, people usually say it’s between 30-80 percent. We want people to start making those meetings add to their outcomes. If they’re clear about the goals and expectations, they will be in the right meetings, and the meetings will be more productive.

Q: One of the themes in my book is the resentment that builds up at work between people who have kids and those who don’t. Is that something you’ve observed in your work?

A: Absolutely. Yes. We do a whole session on “sludge” with teams. Sludge is judgment about how others spend their time. For example, “Long lunch again?”, “Must be nice to show up at 10 a.m. Wish I had your job!”, “Sick kid again? Wish I had a kid.”

In these sessions, you can feel the jealousy of the non-parents. People who don’t have kids sometimes think parents have a built-in excuse. They think the parents are getting something that they’re not getting. They think, ‘well I’d love to do things outside of work with my friends, but that’s not a socially acceptable excuse to go home early.’

Q: What can ROWE do to address this?

A: It all goes back to autonomy. In a ROWE, you get to make your own decisions about everything you do. It’s suddenly acceptable to go to that book reading at 3 p.m. on a Wednesday as long as you’re still getting results. I think it becomes liberating when people see that they can do what they want to do and not have to worry about thinking of a socially acceptable excuse for it.

Q: I like the idea that you don’t have to have kids to have a life. That said, having kids puts a non-negotiable constraint on our time. The research shows more than half of working moms would prefer to work part-time if they could. How does ROWE deal with the need for some of us to work part-time?

A: Often we meet people who negotiated a part-time schedule because that was the only way they could carve out the time they needed for their lives. But then they tell us, “I basically do the same work I did before, but now I have a pay cut.” So in a ROWE, they go back to full-time pay, knowing that they can work things out in their lives.

We need to stop talking about full-time versus part-time and instead, talk about outcomes. If we need to, we can cut back on outcomes, and take a commensurate pay cut.

Q: OK, I know we’re not supposed to talk about time, but I’m going to ask this anyway. Do you think one can work 30 hours a week and be an effective leader in a company? Can you be an effective leader and unplug once in a while?

A: Yes. You can. And I would argue you need to unplug sometimes–whether it’s for an afternoon or a vacation to Mexico.

I did an experiment a couple years ago. People kept asking me how many hours I worked and I really had no idea. So I tried to count my hours. This was after my last child was born (I have four kids). I was literally changing my daughter’s diaper when I suddenly realized the solution to a problem one of my clients was having. I thought, “Can I count this as work time? How do I count this?”

You can’t count. Your brain is your brain. It’s working no matter what. So I say, yes, you can be a leader in 30 hours a week. The key is to move in and out of your life and your work the way you need to.

Q: I get emails practically every week from stressed out parents who are going nuts with all the demands on their time. Do you have any advice for them?

A: I have two pieces of advice.

Number 1: Make sure you’re really clear about your goals and expectations at work. If your goals aren’t clear, that’s a good place to start. Those goals become an anchor, a source of confidence. You can look in the mirror and say, “I know I’m tracking toward success.”

Number 2 is about sludge. Sludge, as I mentioned earlier, is all the ways people make judgments about you. The next time someone questions how you’re spending your time, don’t come back with an excuse. Instead, say, “Is there something you need?” or “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Those phrases have a way of shutting down other people’s judgments. This is especially important for moms and dads who feel they have to justify how they spend their time. Justifying your time zaps your energy. By answering this way, you show that you are focused on results.

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Interested in ROWE? Check out Why Work Sucks and Why Managing Sucks. Or contact ROWE to get a free culture assessment for your workplace.

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Psst! Guess what? Goodreads is doing a free June giveaway of an advanced copy of Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink. Enter to win here.

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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

Post image for Sunday Night Blues

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

Post image for Why we lean back

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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