CurrentMom

On the Cusp - Rethinking Work-Life Balance

Truth Thursday

About 11 years ago, I was working at a job where the boss really thought he wanted to offer up a family friendly environment, but in reality, he couldn’t bear to break the traditional office maxims – face time in the office all day, every day, and almost zero flexibility with schedules. I had taken the job for two reasons – to make a move to a more senior position, and to work a more flexible schedule, because in the beginning, that’s what I was offered as an enticement.

The job was a disaster. Not only was it a challenging organization for which to raise money, but I was clearly moving into a different place in balancing my work and family life, and although I had been left to believe that this would be a good place to put those needs into play, it was pretty much a bait and switch. I was on the cusp of needing to be more available for my family, and yet I couldn’t figure out how to do it in this situation. This job suffered the brunt of that discovery process. 

It wound up being a bad fit for both me and the organization. 

I got pregnant with my third child about nine months into my tenure there. I wasn’t terribly happy in my job, but I also was in no position to start looking for a new job with two young kids at home and now another on the way. I fully planned to return after a standard three-month maternity leave (and for those of you who are under the mistaken impression that non-profits, despite lower salaries, offer better benefits, think again. Under my nose, the paid parental leave was lowered from six weeks to two weeks – two weeks!! – while I was pregnant. Appalling.) 

Doonesbury's Decades Of Support for Women (and Working Moms)

Work Wednesday

I've been so busy for the past few weeks, at home and at work, that I've barely read the newspaper, listened to NPR or grabbed my Daily Show fix. But I've been riveted by cartoonist Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury strips skewering laws on the books (in places like Texas, and shortly, Idaho) mandating invasive (and medically unnecessary) forced trans-vaginal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions. Despite the fact that about 50+ of the 1,400 newspapers that carry Doonesbuy daily have censored the strips, Trudeau's satire's gone viral. You can find the week's worth of strips here, here, here, here, here and here. If you haven't seen them, please go take a look.

Trudeau, predictably, has received some pretty nasty criticism from anti-choice activists and conservatives for his depiction of the 10-inch hard plastic ultrasound "shaming wand" as an instrument of rape. He's also received tons of support. I, for one, am grateful to Gary for taking on these harsh, demeaning and degrading laws in a graphic, uncut, and sometimes, very funny way. (The line about Rick Perry on March 16 was amusing!)

While I'm disgusted by the latest attacks on women's reproductive rights by state legislators, there is a small upside to the Trudeau strips. They've made me remember why I love Trudeau and Doonesbury so much. Trudeau has always been a strong advocate for women, tackling everything from entrenched institutional sexism to reproductive rights  to "command rape" in the military through memorable women characters such as Lacey Davenport, Joanie Caucus, Ginny Slade and J.J. Caucus (and through their male partners, bosses, colleagues and friends). As Alyssa Rosenberg at ThinkProgress pointed out last week, Trudeau's "amazing work" with women characters over the years gives him real credibility now on the forced ultrasound issue.

Trudeau's also been an advocate for working moms. Who can forget Joanie Caucus' struggle to find high-quality daycare for her son for less than $400 per day? Or her husband, Rick Redfern's bumbling attempts at "hands on" parenting while he chronicles his caregiving for The Washington Post. And, of course, Trudeau's been married to journalist Jane Pauley, who anchored NBC's morning shows in the 1970s and 1980s, for more than 30 years. He clearly has some real credibility on working mom issues, too!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need go find out what Trudeau's taking on in Doonesbury this morning.

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As a bonus, here's a wonderful piece about working moms in the comics, including Doonesbury, from the January 1993 (yes, 1993!) issue of Working Mother magazine by one of my favorite authors, Anita Diamant. (It's indexed by GoogleBooks and starts on p. 24 of the issue.) It's eye-opening and truly funny!

Crepes: The Most Versatile Insta-Meal

Meal Monday 

On a wonderful family trip to Paris a few years ago, we ate crepes filled with bananas and Nutella from street vendors. Today, I bought my son a hot dog from a street vendor in Washington, D.C. Not even close.

Since I don't have the wherewithal to open my own crepe cart, I figure the next best thing is to produce great crèpes at home. The fact that they're the world's most versatile ingredient and can be the basis for many a main course or dessert, is simply an added bonus. 

Even my son, he of little dietary variety, will eat crepes with something very plain inside (grilled chicken strips, for example).  The other night I grilled some boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sliced them up and used them as a filling for crepes I'd made a few hours earlier. I made a little chicken gravy (roux, chicken broth, a little white wine and salt) to top it all off. A little side salad and voilà -- dinner. 

Pockets of Mystery

Truth Thursday

In the left pocket of my well-worn and beloved leather jacket, there is a small, smooth, silver object. It is my oldest son’s first iPod shuffle, from back when they were still rectangular. He ordered it after his bar mitzvah and had it engraved with his secret moniker at the time, “Agent 0.2”, in honor of his then-hero, Washington Wizards player Gilbert Arenas. 

He had ordered the Shuffle online, and watched its slow and painful progression on the FedEx website as it made its way to our house in Maryland.  The day it was delivered, we weren’t home and we received a note saying that we could either pick it up at a FedEx station about 30 minutes from our house, or we could call the next day for another pickup. My son was so desperate to get his iPod, I threw all three kids in the car and drove in Friday afternoon rush hour traffic to the depot so that we could pick it up.

He was overjoyed, and I felt that I had gone above and beyond the call of mom duty. It was good. 

About two months later, in the middle of working at home and doing laundry in between client emails, I suddenly heard something clanking in the dryer. When I went down to take the clothes out of the dryer, my son’s Shuffle fell out of the machine. 

Building a Better Workplace

Work Wednesday

My last couple of posts on CurrentMom have been about mistakes to avoid as a manager and the little things that can make or break employee morale. Useful tactics, perhaps, but these also feel like stopgap measures to me—triage for the manager who is losing control or the business owner who is already losing employees to low morale. Most of the time, I think we find ourselves in stopgap mode, especially when the economy is bad. Foundering in a sea of deadlines and short on staff, we cast about for anything that will keep us afloat a little longer, until we get a chance to make real change. 

But once we do get ahead of the work or land that next big contract, what is the grand idea that we are going to set in motion? What are the fundamental problems, and how can we solve them creatively? How do we build a workplace that makes people want to stick around and do their best work?