{"id":907,"date":"2013-08-08T22:47:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-08T22:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/08\/parenting-opting-out-maternity-leave-and-judith-warner.html"},"modified":"2013-08-08T22:47:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T22:47:00","slug":"parenting-opting-out-maternity-leave-and-judith-warner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/08\/parenting-opting-out-maternity-leave-and-judith-warner.html","title":{"rendered":"Parenting, opting-out, maternity leave, and Judith Warner"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

(Sorry, this is a long one \u2014 bear with me!)<\/p>\n

So a week or so ago, Judith Warner had an article in the Tribune (actually reprinted from Bloomberg<\/a>) about maternity leave and limitations on women\u2019s advancement, and now there\u2019s another one, linked to by Megan McArdle<\/a>, on women who opted-out and now want back in, and are discovering that they earn a fraction of their former salary (though, since, as is the case in many articles of this genre, the topic is upper-class Manhattenites, they generally succeed in finding jobs, at any rate).<\/p>\n

And \u2014 hey \u2014 this is something I know about, both personally and professionally.<\/p>\n

Personally:\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve worked part-time ever since returning from maternity leave for my now-thirteen-year-old son.\u00a0 I had figured that after he and his younger brother reached school age, I\u2019d go back to working full-time, though, in the meantime, a third son joined the household, who only last year started kindergarten.\u00a0 And along the way, I discovered that, even with school-aged children, both parents working full-time is a tricky endeavor.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

For most of these thirteen years, I had been working three full days, with two days off (compared to a shortened day,\u00a05 days a week schedule, this saves on the commute, and daycare centers don\u2019t give you a discount for a 5-hour day, but do give lower rates for 3 days a week \u2014 plus, this provided time for Kindermusik and speech therapy in the mornings)\u00a0and my husband and I struggled every bit as much with getting dinner on the table at a reasonable time and getting the homework sorted out after pick-up from extended day care, as when both parents work full-time.\u00a0 \u00a0For several of those years, I went into the city twice a week, leaving the house at 7:30, dropping kids of at AM extended day care, then at day care, then pulling into the commuter lot at 7:50ish, to catch the last express train at 8:01, get into the city at 8:36, walk the 15 minutes to the office and be at my desk a few minutes \u2019til 9.\u00a0 Kids\u2019 activities were limited to my two days off, plus weekends, or the piano lessons offered by the school band teacher in the music room after school, across the hall from the daycare room.<\/p>\n

Last year, I started working from home, five days a week, five hours a day, giving me a precious hour or two to myself each day and allowing me to be available when the kids got home, to supervise homework, enable them to\u00a0participate in afterschool activities or invite a friend over, get dinner on the table in a fairly stress-free way, etc.<\/p>\n

Would this all be do-able if both my husband and I worked full-time?\u00a0 It\u2019s not out of the question, I suppose, if we hired a nanny or after-school babysitter as some of our colleagues do, or had relatives nearby (we don\u2019t).\u00a0 But barring those two\u00a0options,\u00a0life would be a lot less pleasant if I worked full-time.\u00a0 And, honestly, my husband\u2019s salary means it\u2019s not a big deal for me to earn only 60% of what I otherwise would.<\/p>\n

At the same time, I have no illusions that my part-time status is a \u201cbest of both worlds.\u201d\u00a0 It is<\/em> a Mommy Track, no doubt about it.\u00a0 In my particular role, working remotely isn\u2019t a big deal, because I work with colleagues from multiple offices anyway, but I\u2019ve missed a lot of career development opportunities and the major client-facing roles that move one forward in the pension consulting environment, and\u00a0I\u2019ve had a lot of back office projects on the premise that to be a Lead Actuary requires 24\/7 client availability and willingness to travel frequently.<\/p>\n

What this\u00a0means is that, even though, if you\u00a0adjust my salary upwards to what it would be if I worked full-time, it\u2019s a decent salary, it\u2019s still only a fraction of my husband\u2019s pay \u2014 since he\u2019s in the same field, but works a lot of hours, getting up at the crack of dawn, or even before, and devoting far more than a standard 40-hour workweek to his job \u2014 partly involuntarily, when projects land on his desk and he can\u2019t delegate them, but with a certain degree of voluntariness, taking on responsibilities because of the challenge and the recognition (not just monetary recognition) they offer.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

So my first observation is:\u00a0 this works for us.\u00a0 I know that I\u2019m fortunate to have a flexible employer, though I think at this point I\u2019ve proven to my colleagues and manager that I can deliver what I promise even with a 24-hour a week schedule.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

But, of course, this wouldn\u2019t be enough for Judith Warner, to get back to her comments on women being held back from career advancement that matches men\u2019s.\u00a0 She says:<\/p>\n

Focusing on women\u2019s struggles with work-family balance is a \u201csocial defense<\/a>,\u201d Ely says: a way of fixating on a safe thought (women want to be with their children) and keeping at bay a much more threatening thought (the way we work now is pathological). It also precludes workplace changes that would most effectively enhance women\u2019s advancement \u2014 notably, a rethinking of excessive hours and unrealistic productivity expectations that make living a balanced life impossible for everyone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, employers\u2019 insistence on extreme levels of overtime at the top levels of professional and managerial jobs\u00a0makes men unhappy and causes women (that is, mothers) to move to a Mommy Track or drop out entirely, which may be fine for any individual Mommy Track-er, but will not further the goal of getting women into the c-suite.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

But\u00a0Warner doesn\u2019t really share any solutions, except for certain maternity-leave provisions requiring Dad to take time off as well as Mom \u2014 which doesn\u2019t really make a difference in the day-in, day-out willingness of exempt employees to work overtime.\u00a0 Can you imagine regulations providing that employers can\u2019t use overtime measurements as a factor for advancement?\u00a0 Even outside the question of raw number of hours worked, those hours generally result in more skills gained.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Outside of micromanaging employers in this way, the only other government intervention is what is, I believe, the case in France (and probably similar countries), though I can\u2019t seem to find confirmation of this at the moment:\u00a0 France is known for its 35 hour work week, but also (again, from memory) has much tighter restrictions on who is and isn\u2019t eligible for overtime.\u00a0 In the US, in general, management and professional jobs are generally what\u2019s considered \u201cexempt\u201d \u2014 no overtime payment required \u2014 but in France, the restrictions are a lot tighter, and only the very top management of a company is exempt from overtime.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Would such a requirement in the US make employers more willing to hire more professional employees at standard workweeks, rather than fewer, at 60+ hour workweek expectations?\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m not sure I can even imagine such a system in the US!\u00a0 But this would almost have to be the solution Warner seeks, to dissuade employers from prodding or forcing employees to work overtime, if it\u2019s men\u2019s greater willingness to accept overtime that holds women back from supercharged career advancement.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Sorry, this is a long one \u2014 bear with me!) So a week or so ago, Judith Warner had an article in the Tribune (actually reprinted from Bloomberg) about maternity leave and limitations on women\u2019s advancement, and now there\u2019s another one, linked to by Megan McArdle, on women who opted-out and now want back in, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nParenting, opting-out, maternity leave, and Judith Warner<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"(Sorry, this is a long one -- bear with me!)So a week or so ago, Judith Warner had an article in the Tribune (actually reprinted from Bloomberg) about\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" 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