After that last serious post, I have to bring things down a notch.
My son told me a couple weeks ago that a shrivelly blueberry he was eating for breakfast looked like a tiny blue scrotum. He wasn’t trying to be funny, just stating a fact. And you know, he was kind of right. It is safe to say that I will never look at blueberries the same again. Or scrotums, for that matter.
OK, definitely brought things down a notch.
I have a couple of things to say about this article. First, Sonia Sotomayor’s teeth are amazing. Like a force of nature. And second, this is totally depressing but not really that surprising to me. I’ve heard smart, hard working people (both men and women) say that it’s only fair that women earn less because they get to take maternity leave and don’t work as hard once they have kids. Which – AGH. I just am always dumbfounded when I hear these words come out of someone’s mouth. I mean, I get that if you don’t work as much, you don’t get paid as much, and you don’t advance as quickly — but the fact is that women disproportionately work less (or drop out altogether) and suffer the consequences. And this study pretty clearly shows that these are women who are just as qualified and skilled as their male counterparts.
As someone who recently cut back her work schedule (and paycheck) to try to find some work-life balance, I wonder if I’m part of the problem. Post-baby #1 I tried to bill just as many hours as I did pre-baby, but (1) there weren’t enough hours in the day, and (2) I ultimately decided I didn’t want to. I wonder if my choice to cut back is coloring some hiring partner’s feelings about working moms? Hope not. I’m just lucky I had the chance to try a part-time schedule. Lots of my friends didn’t have that option and felt like giving up their career was their only good option, and articles like this explain why.
Semi-related: I remember when I was in law school and beginning the hellish “fall recruitment” interviewing season, a woman attorney who I really respected told me two things that totally apalled me: one, I shouldn’t wear my engagement ring in interviews because it would be a red flag that I would be “one of those women” who gets all wedding crazy and isn’t committed to her career. And two, she told me that while guys could talk about their family plans or kids in an interview, women never could — for men, getting married and having kids is a plus and shows that you’re stable and grounded, but for women, it just shows that you have a distraction outside the office and won’t be as committed to your career. I have had that story in the back of my mind for almost a decade now, and I’ve seen more things that support those anecodotes than things that discredit them. Hello, my name is Jaded N. Cynical.
Anywho. I don’t really have any answers, but these articles just always get me fired up. I keep hoping that one day we just won’t see stuff like this anymore, about odds being stacked against talented successful women. Women who are raising kids, which society says is noble and important, blah blah blah, but doesn’t do much to back it up. I agree with Leonhardt’s optimism — things are bound to change, especially with incredible numbers of women coming out of college and grad school these days and employers beginning to see the benefits of flexible work arrangements. Here’s hoping it’s sooner rather than later.
Do you know what has always been so depressing to me? Abandoned blogs. Like you google “knitting needles” and come across a cute little website with nice pictures and funny anecdotes and instructions on knitting and perling or whatever, and then you realize that you’re reading something from October 2007. So someone took all that time to put their intense feelings about knitting on the internets, and then life took over, and evidence of their complete lack of follow-through is just sitting out there, waiting for google to point it out and the whole world to see.
Mamaesq was dangerously close to becoming a depressing abandoned blog. I haven’t even logged on since April, back when I lived in the city and didn’t have a commute or two sinks in my bathroom (my bathroom is bigger than a closet now!). But now that we’ve unpacked a little bit, and gotten used to mini-vans and commuting etiquette and not getting mugged (kidding) (a little), I have time to try to figure out what the hell I’m doing with my life. Which is where this blog comes in. Because, really, I have no freaking clue what I’m doing, but writing here feels like I’m doing something semi-productive. Even if my only audience is my mom. Hi mom.
So many of my peers — sadly, mostly lawyers — have told me they feel stuck in their jobs. In their lawyer-ly way they’re quick to note that they feel lucky to have a job at all, and very lucky to have a nice paycheck, but just feel totally uninspired and unsatisfied with their career. I don’t think I’m alone in that. And most of my peers say that doing something, anything, that makes them feel like they have options helps them deal. Like I have a friend who is constantly updating her resume, but has zero intention of actually looking for another job right now because of financial constraints. But just knowing that one more call from an a-hole supervisor and she could unleash her perfectly edited resume on the world makes her feel better.
I thought dropping back to part-time and moving to the ‘burbs might change that feeling a bit for me. But no luck. So today I’m blogging about nothing in particular, and tomorrow night I’m starting a writing class. I’m excited and totally intimidated, mainly because the class apparently involves a lot of reading, which I can only do for like 10 minutes at a stretch before passing out cold, and because I haven’t written fiction since law school. And I’m secretly afraid that law school destroyed the creative writing part of my brain and replaced it with bluebooking rules and latin phrases. So we’ll see how it goes. But it feels nice to be doing something a little creative again that’s not about the kids, and is just for me. It’s been a while.
Also, living in the ‘burbs kind of rocks so far. The transition was really no big deal. So far the hardest part has been getting used to not locking the doors and not setting the house alarm every time I’m inside. That, and figuring out which of the four thousand kid-friendly activities and restaurants we want to go to on the weekend. Pretty good. Oh, and getting used to suburban drivers. I think when you drive in the city, there’s an aggression level that everyone has, and it all works beautifully – you just assume the dude next to you wants your parking spot and is going to blow past you and screw you out of getting through the next light, so you just respond accordingly. But where we live now, people seem to be TIMID and FRIENDLY when they drive. IT IS BIZARRE. It’s like people aren’t in an insane hurry and aren’t trying to screw you out of a primo parking spot. And honestly, it bugs the crap out of me. Clearly my issue. I’m sure it’s a matter of time before I’m driving slowly and smiling and wondering why some lady with DC plates is giving me the finger.
Anywho, hello again.
I thought this article and the thoughtful chat were worth a read. So honest and interesting. Props to Amy Beckett for supporting her family in so many different ways and working hard to get back into the legal field when the time was right for her. I particularly love Arlington, VA’s comments about how vital “off-the-books flexibility” is to be a successful working parent.
So to celebrate the mommy track’s birthday (check it!), I talked with my boss about needing to reduce my hours. Plenty of my co-workers (female, natch) work reduced schedules, and my boss is extremely understanding, but this was still a conversation I was totally dreading. Not because it felt like a failing or because of the salary cut (although that SUCKS), but because if he said no I wasn’t really sure how I was going to maintain my sanity.
I’ve been REALLY lucky during my time in big law firm world. After my son was born I came back full-time, fully expecting to reduce my hours at some point, but I got staffed on a huge case with some good responsibility and a safety net to support me. So I stayed on full-time, got preggers again, and had another lovely maternity leave. Returning to work full-time with two, though, has been a whole different ball game. (Parents of 2+ kids, you hear me!) There just are not enough hours in the day to be the mom I want to be and the laywer I should be to justify my rates (and, um, employment). And on top of the normal day-to-day craziness, we’re moving in 2 weeks (MOVING), every family member we’ve ever heard of is coming to visit, and I’m lucky if my husband and I can have a 10 minute conversation that’s not interrupted by a crazy kid or by me falling asleep.
And once again, I got lucky. My boss said cool. Just like that. He expressed some totally valid concerns (that billing less makes me less valuable on paper, and maybe a better target for layoffs, and that I’ll need to have some flexibility in my schedule to really make it work) but also said he’d support whatever I decided on.
So I guess I’m jumping on the mommy track now. Is that what this means? Who freaking knows. But I do know that I’m super tired of every conversation about motherhood being so loaded. Can moms do anything without being judged? I’ve heard it all (and sadly bought in to some of it before I knew better): that full-time working moms value their career over their kids, that they’re cold and distant, that they think a big paycheck is more important than spending time with their kids; that SAHMs are dull and baby-obsessed, that they wasted time and money going to school, that they’re putting themselves at financial risk, that they don’t set a good example for their kids. And apparently part-time working moms are “mommy tracked,” just kind of pretend-working, bringing home a dinky paycheck, and being semi-involved in their kids’ lives. It’s like there is no path a mom can take that doesn’t involve some judgment by society.
But I guess that’s just how it goes being a parent. A mom and dad scolded me at a park a few weeks ago for letting my daughter crawl around while kids were running near her. Really? It’s bad to let a baby crawl in a park with her mom two feet away? Sigh.
Anyways. I am determined to really give this part-time thing a shot, and to cut out the mommy guilt that plagues me every once in a while, and to enjoy all the SAHMs and working moms and whatever moms in my life with no judgment, and hope that they can do the same with me.
And that is not an April Fool’s joke. Speaking of: I apologize to my son’s preschool teachers for his “OH NO I pooped my pants!” joke. It was all his dad.
Mama, Esq. 