CurrentMom

Women Entrepreneurs and Maternity Leave

Startup Sunday

Photo by deanj via Flickr.

So often, women become entrepreneurs for the freedom it gives to control your own schedule and the time you spend with your children. But ironically, many women entrepreneurs find maternity leave the toughest piece of the puzzle to solve.

Do you tell your clients or customers you're pregnant? How long can you take off without risking the business you've built? What if clients start using another company and never come back to you? If you refer the work or hire a sub-contractor, are you giving away the core of your business? How can you afford to lose months of pay during maternity leave?

These are all questions that bedevil women entrepreneurs considering maternity leave. My answer to each is the same: don't worry.

Whistle As We Walk

Sharing Saturday 

Last weekend, in New York City, I strapped on a pair of funky high heels and strutted downtown to a party for a friend's birthday. I don’t often have the opportunity to get dressed up and attend an event in a cool loft without husband or children. I was in black, I had on makeup, my hair was cooperating. I felt sensational. And some middle age man walked by me, eyed me up and down, and whistled.

All the traumatic moments in my life when I was ogled, whistled at, catcalled, eyed up and down or commented upon – vanished. All the upset about being big-chested as a young adolescent – gone.  All my feminist rants – poof, up in thin smoke. For I am a 47-year-old suburban mother with a carpool schedule, and, generally speaking, no one whistles at me anymore. And I have to admit, it felt good.

Potty Training: Carrots, Sticks, and...Tinkle Targets?

Family Friday

Although other children reportedly approach potty-training with gusto, some from a very early age, my two older kids never displayed a warm and instantaneous rapport with the toilet.  So understandably, my husband and I have not rushed gladly into the third and final round of potty-training we now face.

To add another layer of angst, my environmentally-conscious husband has agonized about the Pampers we have consumed over the years.  So when our third child was born, he ordered some diaper-like product with a flushable component, a reusable vinyl liner, and an adorable cloth outer layer.  On my first day home from the hospital, my mother and I watched as my husband demonstrated its correct use.

Standing over the toilet, he tossed in the yucky part, then, like an Arctic seal hunter, began to poke it with a specially designed stick:

"OK, now you (stab, stab) just have to put it in there like this (stab, stab), then use this (stab, stab), break it apart (stab, stab), then make sure you've got all the pieces separated (stab, stab), then what you do…"

By avoiding eye contact, my mom and I managed to get through this without giggles.  Nevertheless, the procedure did not catch on, and our youngest child ended up as Pampered as the other two. 

Now, with our carbon footprints deepening each day, my husband and I (and even the older two!) have repeatedly approached our little guy, armed with Thomas the Tank Engine underwear and an enormous bag of M&Ms, and talked up the joys of toilet mastery.  All conversations, however, have deviated little from the following:

iPad Booga Booga

Technology Thursday

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Apple has finally announced their long-awaited and well-hyped tablet computer product. They called it the iPad. And with that, dozens upon dozens of women technologists, mom bloggers, and women Mac fans all began to wonder if there was a woman in the room when the Apple bigshots decided on that name. This is amusing on a level, of course. But it does highlight what many women technologists have to point out over and over and over -- insufficient diversity of perspective is not only bad for individuals (who are consciously or subconsciously excluded for not being or looking like the majority in a given field), but it is just plain bad for business. Moxie tweeted that at least it would give the marketing textbooks a new example of oblivious naming to use to replace the Chevy Nova ("no go"). NPR and the New York Times covered various reactions to the name. The Society for Menstrual Cycle Research weighed in as well. Many people pointed to an old Mad TV bit about "iPads" that I think has now been pulled. All of this streamed on over Twitter--increasingly my go to place to maintain some ambient awareness about what's going on in the world. And if you follow my own Twitter stream you already know my 140-character length reactions to the iPad. But here a few more thoughts.

Setting aside the unfortunate name, the new Apple iPad has potential. However as with just about every Apple project, you pretty much know that unless you're obsessed, you probably don't want to buy the first generation.

Working Moms and Marriage: More Joy, Less Divorce

Work Wednesday

I got an early Valentine this weekend. Not from any of the usual suspects - husband, kids, or mother. (Yes, my parents still send me a Valentine's Day card every year!) And, well, it wasn't really a Valentine. But it did feel like something to savor. It's a New York Times article about working women and their happy marriages. Happier (or at least more stable) than those of women who don't work.

In She Works. They're Happy., the Times' "Well" columnist, Tara Parker-Pope, reviews a number of studies on modern marriage (and cites some anecdotal examples) to conclude: "Over all, the evidence shows that the shifts within marriages — men taking on more housework and women earning more outside the home — have had a positive effect, contributing to lower divorce rates and happier unions." One reason: without the pressure to choose a husband solely on the basis of his "provider" capabilities, women marry men who are more likely to share in childrearing and domestic life.

What a relief! Most of the time the news about working women - and working moms especially - is dismal. Or at the very least, fraught. So, it feels good to read a positive piece.

And it makes sense to me. (Even though the happiness level in my own marriage has been challenged in the past few weeks by sickness and sleep deprivation.) I've long thought - in my limited eight years of marital bliss (well, mostly) - that some rough level of equality in education, social status, and income between partners helps a marriage prosper. That a more or less "marriage of equals"  - if not in the Shakespearean but in the professional sense - produces a happy couple.