Revisiting The Feminine Mystique

Just when you thought that with the interesting yet complicated angle Palin is injecting into red state feminism, we might onto something new, Christina Hoff Sommers is back fanning the flames of the mommy wars by arguing that in building her case, Betty Friedan made a fatal mistake that undermined her book's appeal at the time and permanently weakened the movement it helped create.

According to Sommers in a New York Sun article titled Reconsiderations: Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, Friedan not only attacked a postwar culture that aggressively consigned women to the domestic sphere, but she attacked the sphere itself - along with all the women who chose to live there.

I seriously can't wait for Stephanie Coontz's reconsideration of TFM (which is in the works). We need it, bad.

And while we're at it, Newsweek reports that a new study finds that children of privileged families fare worse when the mother works outside the home--but what does the research really tell us? Read it and see.

(Thanks to Steve Mintz and the Council on Contemporary Families--on whose Board I now sit!--for the links.)

Mama and Papa PhD

A quick hit on a new study: The Clayman Institute at Stanford University has produced a report exploring hiring and retention issues for dual-career academic couples, and how they differ from those issues for faculty in other kinds of relationships. The full report is available for download here.

See also: Mama PhD--the editors of which will be here in NYC next month! Deets:

Monday, October 20th , 7:00 PM at Bluestockings Bookstore
Tuesday, October 21st, 7:15 PM , KGB Bar

To Bake or Not to Bake is Not Always the Question

Two news items this afternoon on women, work, and life:

Women Have Another Who Understands
8/28/08 Denver Post: Hours before Michelle Obama's big speech, she watched the "Cosby Show" cast reunited on Oprah to discuss how their sitcom gave the country its first glimpse at an educated, career-oriented black mom. "Americans didn't believe there were black families with two professionals," Michelle Obama says. "Sometimes, I feel that people don't believe I exist." After her speech, it would be tough not to believe in the authenticity of Michelle Obama. And after talking with her the next morning, I'm struck by how far we've come since 1992 when Hillary Rodham Clinton dissed half the women in America by saying, "You know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies." Obama gets the complicated tug....Read the rest

And an odd yet slightly interesting little item on housework:

Women Might Like Being Housewives, But Not Every Day
8/28/08, Telegraph, UK: Feminists got it wrong. Women don't want to be bread-winners; they want to stay at home and bake bread. This, at least, is the view of The Yorkshire Building Society, that well known repository of expertise on gender psychology/publicity-mongering. The key element to all of this is choice. Scrubbing floors has a therapeutic value as a contrast to a week of sedentary desk-based toil; compulsion would take the shine off, in more ways than one...Read the rest

LIVE BLOGGING: Why So Slow?

NCRW Panel on Corporate and Academic Diversity - Post#2

Moderator Ana Duarte McCarthy (pictured) leads the next bit of the session by noting that less than 3% of senior management and corporate officers are people of color. The numbers for women are extremely low. What is it that isn’t working? And what can we do about it?

Melinda Wolfe responds: "Until organizations recognize that women bear children and are primarily the caretakers for them, there will continue to be barriers for women to move up. Some women might come off the track; there are times when women take the scenic route but want to get back on and make a difference, but our systems don’t allow that. There are still huge underlying unconscious bias factors that go on in these institutions, that without critical mass, will continue. In some ways we’re at a dangerous inflection point, in that there are now more people who’ve heard about diversity and think that they get it. But they don’t. Because they think that they get it, their behaviors are more insidious."

Anne Erni responds: “Several years ago, several of us worked with Sylvia Ann Hewlett on her Brain Drain study. We found that nearly 43% of women in corporations want to step off the track for a while, and 93% of them want to get back on. But less than half are successful in finding fulfilling fulltime roles. So some firms created models, like Lehman’s Encore program, to address. It’s been successful. The key is getting men to empathize. Many of these guys marry women on the Street [Wall Street, that is - GWP], so they are more likely to get it. There were also incentives: people would get paid for referring women who wanted to on-ramp.”

Ah, how money talks. Poignant conversation about race going on next. A woman from the audience comments that she's often the only African American student in the room. How do we move past that? Rosemary Cocetti shares a personal story about her son, who is an athlete, and a great writer, and who experienced straight out racism at college. His professor didn't believe that a paper he submitted was his. Ironic, given that Cocetti is the diversity officer on campus. Actually, less ironic, more telling of how far we have to go. On the corporate front, how do coworkers deal with it the first time they see a colleague wearing a head scarf? The dilemma of being the first.

Stomachs are rumbling and the panel is wrapping up. A question asked earlier by Meryl Kaynard, Lehman Brothers, who is sitting next to me, has yet to be addressed. Rats, as this was my question too. The question: What's going on in terms of Generations X and Y? And I want to know: to what extent does the comfort with a more global community--the one in which we've come of professional age--shape our expectations for inclusion here at home?

Ok, signing off now. Fear of carpel tunnel kicking in!

Got Data?

This is why I love CCF, which I blog about here a lot because they're just such darn good providers in the knowledge business. This week they're issuing a press release on the importance of a time use survey, with contemporary spin and flair--and an important message with policy application: "Save ATUS." What's ATUS you ask? Here's a sneak peak at the release, courtesy of Virginia Rutter, who just sent it to me. Feel free to pass it on!:

Making Time for Work and Family: Got Data?

For Family Social Scientists, the American Time Use Survey Provides Valuable Information on Work, Family, and How We Endure the Conflict between the Two

June 4, 2008 Chicago Il ---- Mothers do more paid work—14 hours more—than they did 40 years ago. They do less housework—exactly 14 hours fewer—too. But they do 4 hours more of childcare than in the past. How do we know? Suzanne Bianchi, University of Maryland sociologist, and her colleagues used the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), a time diary study that has been collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics since 2003.

Dads are stepping up in new ways too. Men have steadily increased their participation in housework and child care over the past 30 years. And contrary to claims of some earlier studies, dads who work less than full-time don't use their extra time just to watch TV. Part-time worker dads do more housework (about an hour more) than full-time worker dads, and about 40 minutes more childcare. We know about these changes thanks to forthcoming work from Liana Sayer (Ohio State University) and Sanjiv Gupta (University of Massachusetts at Amherst) in which they analyzed the 2003-2005 ATUS.

But if women have given up 14 hours a week of housework and taken on 14 more hours of paid work, what else have they given up to put in 4 more hours of childcare? Here the news may be less rosy. It appears that social bonding with spouse, kin, and friends is being sacrificed to the higher standards for time with children. Bianchi and colleagues' analysis of the ATUS reveals that, compared to 20 years ago, married working moms now spend less time with their spouse—while single moms spend less time with friends and family.

SCIENCE HELPS US KEEP UP WITH SOCIAL CHANGE
These facts illustrate the on-going revolution in how Americans spend their time—what they do at work, how men and women organize family schedules, and how children and teens spend their days. To understand changes in family life and to guide policy makers—and families themselves—about the best ways to adjust to new patterns of work and parenting, researchers collect such information. This in turn becomes the basis for news stories, advice columns and television programs that citizens rely on—and are hungry for.

The American Time Use Survey is one of those key resources. (For more information on ATUS visit http://www.bls.gov/tus/home.htm and www.saveatus.org.) As researcher Bianchi explains, "ATUS provides essential information about how Americans spend their time—time spent caring for children, cleaning the house, working for pay, and caring for sick adults." We all rely on these jobs being done in order to keep our society running well: but it is vital for us to know how, when, and by whom they are done in our changing social world.

"The Council on Contemporary Families uses this kind of scientific research in order to understand the complex and changing dynamics of the family," reports Evergreen State College Professor Stephanie Coontz, CCF's Director of Research and Public Education. "Many CCF briefing papers and fact sheets rely on data from the time-use studies." (A host of examples are at http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/briefpapers.php.)

"The complexity of coordinating families' work and school schedules with the need for health care, down time, cultivation of intimacy, and everyday chores presents new challenges to couples, parents, and children in the way they spend their days," explains Coontz. "Changes in time use help us understand how families cope with modern stresses--and also what happens when they cannot cope. Right now, the economy is slowing down, but many families find themselves speeding up. Unless we keep on top of these changes, we cannot analyze what kinds of practical support and information families need. Making sure that the data continue to be collected is an issue that cuts across partisan divisions, uniting family researchers from many different points of view."

For further information on the American Time Use Survey, visit http://www.bls.gov/tus/home.htm.

WELL DONE, CCF!

Calling Mama PhD

The Mama PhD gals have started their blogging over at Inside Higher Ed--and what interesting timing. Turns out two new studies suggest that academe may hinder parenthood, and that as a result many female academics may be opting not to have kids. Watch for the Mama PhD anthology in July.

New Study from Families and Work Institute

According to the Families and Work Institute's 2008 National Study of Employers, employers with more ethnic and racial minorities in top and senior level positions--and nonprofits organizations--are more likely to offer flexible workplaces, caregiving leaves, child and elder care assistance, and health care/economic security benefits.

This national study of employers with 50 or more employees is the largest and most comprehensive study of the programs, policies, and benefits designed to respond to the changing workforce. The report includes this interesting tidbit related to the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA): 22% of employers offer more than the 12 weeks of mandated maternity leave, yet 18 to 21% of all employers surveyed appear to be out of compliance with FMLA.

For more, you can download the report at www.familiesandwork.org.

Beyond "Diversity Fatigue"

Lately I've heard the term "diversity fatigue" used to describe a) the genuine frustration that diversity programs at corporations haven't made more progress, and b) the eye-rolling backlash against affirmative action.

Offering a fresher take, there's a great post over at the NYTimes blog Shifting Careers called "Diversity at Work: More than Just Numbers" in which Marci Alboher interviews Natalie Holder-Winfield, an employment lawyer turned diversity consultant and author of Recruiting and Retaining a Diverse Workforce. The book, says Marci, is "a well-researched and eye-opening account of why minority employees flee workplaces even when employers have so-called diversity programs in place."

Based on interviews with professionals from various backgrounds, Holder-Winfield seeks to provide managers, employees, and students with advice for navigating the overlay issues of cultural and generational diversity. The book looks great, but from a "making it pop" perspective, I kind of wish it had a catchier title. This one would be hard. I'm coming up dry. Which is probably why they went with the title they did?!

Read excerpts from the interview here.

Calling Working Women: Take This Survey!

The economy may be Issue No. 1, but what do working women have to say about it all?

The leading labor-rights organization, the AFL-CIO, and its community partner, Working America, are collecting data online for their Ask a Working Woman survey between now and June 20. The survey is a chance for working women to tell decision-makers what it's like to be a working woman in America in election years. It's open to all. They want to hear what working women need – health care, pension benefits, flex time? – to make the crazy juggling act that is working womanhood easier.

Findings will be announced to decision makers and released in nationwide media in order to highlight and help improve the status of the working mothers, daughters, sisters, grandmothers, aunts, cousins, nieces, you get the picture. In 2006, more than 22,000 working American women took the survey. I hope in 2008 they get even more.

There's more background information about the survey available on the AFL-CIO News Blog.

Go Ye Mama PhDs!

Caroline Grant, coeditor of the forthcoming anthology Mama, PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life, just gave me the heads up that InsideHigherEd.com is launching a new Mama PhD blog, and seven of the book's contributors -- Libby Gruner, Megan Kajitani, Susan Bassow, Dana Campbell, Liz Stockwell, Anjalee Nadkarni and Della Fenster -- will be blogging regularly for them. As Caroline notes, "This is a terrific opportunity to bring the discussion of academic work/ family life balance issues out of the book, into the blogosphere and from there into classrooms and campus administrative offices." Hells yeah.

Megan, of the very cool blog Having Enough, will be writing a weekly advice column. For more on everything, check out the book's website here. And congrats, you Mama PhD powerhouses out there! I'll be sure to blog more about the book in this space when it comes out.

Take Your Kid to Work Day - Pro or Con?

Well, today is Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, an event I've long thought a brilliant conception--especially when it used to be just for girls. But I get it, I get it, esp. when it's a case of boys seeing Mommy at Work. According to the official literature, the day is designed to be more than a career day:

For over 15 years, the program’s development of new, interactive activities and partnerships has helped us in taking girls and boys to the future they dream of.

This year's program theme, “Making Choices for a Better World,” centers on "encouraging girls and boys to consider the options they have and make choices for a better world. This means making choices to serve the community and one's family, to care for one's body and health, and to make better choices that impact our environment, as well as one's future."

Cool. And how can you argue with that. But still, I can't help but feel the language lost something in the translation from daughters to daughters and sons--and you know what an advocate I am for including boys/men in the feminist conversation.

Helaine Olen (co-author of Office Mate: The Employee Handbook for Finding and Managing Romance on the Job and a contributor to the forthcoming book The Maternal Is Political) has a different bone to pick, and I'm not sure how I feel about her critique. Helaine rails against it in a piece in Newsday, writing:

If the past is any guide, several million children nationwide will accompany their parents to work today, participating in the annual rite of spring known as Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. Moms and dads across the United States will allow their kids to play in their offices, running through cube farms and "assisting" at cash registers, all in the name of breaking down the mystique that exists between work and family.

Yet in a world of home offices, moms on the playground taking business calls by cell phone, and dads answering queries on their BlackBerries at school events, it's quite likely that children are all too aware of the importance of paid employment to their parents. What they really need is a lesson in the value of taking time to kick back and relax.

She goes on to call for an official event to teach America's children about the importance of downtime, concluding: "We can call it Let Your Daughters and Sons See Mom and Dad Do Absolutely Nothing Day. Any takers?"

Now, I'm not a parent (yet) so maybe I'm off kilter here. But I still think the event is a good idea. What do y'all think - especially you parents out there? Is it a good thing, or a pain? Did it lose something in the translation when it switched to include boys? What's been the experience of folks who've done it?

If I had a kid and I took them to work today, they'd be spending the entire day in Starbucks, watching mommy type. Thrilling, no doubt.

The Motherhood Penalty

The Guardian has a great piece up today by Polly Toynbee, "Girlification is Destroying All the Hope We Felt in 1968." By "girlification," Toynbee means pink princessification. I love neologisms on a Tuesday morning.

The article comes on the heels of an announcement from the UK's Office for National Statistics yesterday, which reported that UK women in their 40s earn 20% less per hour than their male counterparts. Explains Toynbee, "This is the motherhood penalty - and the more children a woman has, the wider the gap. Young women start out earning almost the same, deluded by beating boys at exams. Motherhood knocks most out of the running."

The piece goes on to ask, "so, what's new?," noting that 2008 is a year for reflection for her generation of women (aka second wave): "What happened in 1968? What really changed? The year of riots saw feminism ignite too, a year hazed in an illusory miasma that nothing would be the same again - but of course it was."

Depressing. But just in case you aren't depressed enough, Toynbee reminds us too that only 24% of parliamentary seats in the EU are occupied by women, 20% in the UK; and that 90% of top EU company boards are men. Women dominate primary school teaching, men run universities. The UK has the largest pay gap.

On the upside, Spain's new cabinet is 50% female. GO SPAIN! And for more on the connection between pinkification and the mommy gap, read the rest here.

Ha Ha April Fools

So here's an email I received yesterday that made me laugh--and then made me want to cry. Read it, and you'll see what I mean. (Picture sold separately.)

A BREAKTHROUGH FOR WORKING PARENTS!!!

At last, working parents can stop feeling guilty and start enjoying their family lives without giving up their jobs:

*A pregnant woman can now take leave from work six weeks before her baby is due and stay out ten weeks after the birth, all at full pay, with return to her job guaranteed.

*Fathers can take up to 11 days off after the birth of a baby, also at full pay. The parents can then share up to three years of leave time without risk of losing their jobs, and will receive a stipend if they are staying home with two or more children.

* Family-friendly policies don't stop after parents go back to work. Work hours are now set at 35 hours per week, and all workers receive twelve national holidays and five paid weeks of vacation

* A national preschool program is available to all children ages 3-5. It requires teachers have a master's degree and pays those teachers a living wage.

IS AMERICA A GREAT PLACE FOR FAMILIES OR WHAT?

APRIL FOOL! Those benefits are available to families in France, not the U.S.

-In Belgium, working women are entitled to four weeks maternity leave at 82 percent of their salary, and 11 more weeks at 74 percent. Belgian workers are entitled to 20 days paid vacation time and 10 national holidays. They also get up to 10 days of fully-paid leave each year to care for sick family members.

-Canada offers Employment Insurance for both maternity and paternity leave, allowing a couple to take up to 50 weeks leave, which can be divided between mother and father, at 55 percent of pay, up to a maximum of $435 per week. In addition, Canada's Universal Child Care Benefit pays families $100 per month for each child under age six.

BACK TO REALITY

So what's the real story about the U.S.?

* Of the 20 richest countries in the world, only Australia and the U.S. have no national law requiring paid maternity leave. Parents are eligible for only twelve weeks unpaid leave, the shortest amount of leave time of all Western industrialized countries. Furthermore, employees are not guaranteed unpaid leave unless their employer has over 50 workers within 75 miles of the parent's worksite and the employee has worked for the company for at least 12 months. Of workers eligible for leave who do not take it, 78 percent say that is because they can't afford to take time off without any pay.

*The U.S. is the only Western industrialized nation that does not mandate paid vacations. On average, we work nearly nine full weeks longer per year than our peers in Western Europe.

This funny yet sad wake up call brought to you by my friends at the Council on Contemporary Families.

Image cred

Sex, Lies, and the Gender Gap?

In case you missed it, Emily Bazelton offers a reality check in "Hormones, Genes and the Corner Office," her NYTimes review of Susan Pinker's new book, The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women, and the Real Gender Gap. Bazelton begins with the question: "Why do girls on average lead boys for all their years in the classroom, only to fall behind in the workplace? Do girls grow up and lose their edge, while boys mature and gain theirs?" She goes on to critique Pinker's answer--which, basically, sounds like a version of biological difference feminism. Some snippets from Bazelton's review:

Because of their biological makeup, [Pinker] argues, most women want to limit the amount of time they spend at work and to find “inherent meaning” there, as opposed to domination. “Both conflict with making lots of money and rising through the ranks,” she points out. Pinker is surely right to contest what she calls the “vanilla male model” of success — “that women should want what men want and be heartily encouraged to choose it 50 percent of the time.” Or that when employers say jump, employees should always say how high. Even as they work fewer hours for less status and less money, on average, more women report that they are satisfied with their careers. Maybe men might well think the same if more of them felt they could cut back. But Pinker’s difference feminism doesn’t really allow for that possibility. She is a believer: “The puzzle is why the idea of sex differences continues to be so controversial,” she writes.

Bazelton concludes that "In her zeal, Pinker veers to the onesided." To wit:

She doesn’t acknowledge that some of the research cited in her footnotes is either highly questionable as social science (Louise Story’s 2005 article in The New York Times, for instance, about her survey of Ivy League women’s aspirations)....Pinker omits the work of scientists who have shown that sex-based brain differences pale in comparison to similarities. We shouldn’t wish the role of sex differences away because they’re at odds with feminist dogma. But that doesn’t mean we should settle for the reductionist version of the relevant science, even if the complexity doesn’t make for as neat a package between hard covers.

Ah yes, that old bugaboo called EVIDENCE. Of course, since I'm a junkie for pop writing on sex and feminism, and since Pinker uses the word "Extreme Men" and I'm dying to know what she means by the term, I'll find my way to this book and will let you know if I agree with Bazelton's take, or if there's more there of interest from which we can learn. But on many levels, it sounds like one those looking for fact-based analysis might veer elsewhere.

An endorsement from Christina Hoff Sommers kind of confirms it for me. Sommers lauds the book thusly:

"Susan Pinker's The Sexual Paradox is meticulously researched, brilliantly argued and thoroughly persuasive. It moves the debate over sex differences to a new level of sophistication." -- Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism? and The War Against Boys

Oh boy.

Men Change, But Workplaces Not So Much

I find it heartening to wake up to this news bit sent to me by CCF this morning: Men have more and more stepped up to the plate in sharing housework and childcare. The longer a wife works, the more housework her husband does. Hallelujah amen.

According to a briefing paper prepared in advance of the 11th Annual Conference of the Council on Contemporary Families, April 25-26, 2008 at the University of Illinois in Chicago, ("Men's Changing Contribution to Housework and Child Care," by researchers Oriel Sullivan and Scott Coltrane):

For thirty years, researchers studying the changes in family dynamics since the rise of the women's movement have concluded that, despite gains in the world of education, work, and politics, women face a "stalled revolution" at home. According to many studies, men's family work has barely budged in response to women's increased employment. The typical punch line of many news stories has been that even though women are working longer hours on the job and cutting back their own housework, men are not picking up the slack.

But new research suggests that these studies were based on unrealistic hopes for instant transformation. Such studies, explain Sullivan and Coltrane, underestimated the amount of change going on behind the scenes and "the growing willingness of men to adapt to their wives' new behaviors and values."

In fact, it turns out, more couples are sharing family tasks than ever before. The movement toward sharing has been especially significant full-time dual-earner
couples.

Interestingly, whatever a man's original resistance to sharing, men's contributions to family work increase over time. In other words, the longer their female partners have been in paid employment, the more family work they are likely to do.

Bottom line is this: "American couples have made remarkable progress in working out mutually satisfying arrangements to share the responsibilities of breadwinning and family care. And polls continue to show increasing approval of such arrangements. So the revolution in gender aspirations and behaviors has not stalled."

But lest we we women of the second and third shift get too excited, here's where things are stalled: getting employers to accommodate workers' desires. And high earners are forced to work ever longer hours. Less affluent earners face wage or benefit cuts and layoffs that often force them to work more than one job. Aside from winning paid parental leave laws in Washington and California (with similar bills being considered in Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York), families have made little headway in getting the kind of family friendly policies that are taken for granted in most other advanced industrial countries.

So even as American couples' beliefs and desires about gender equity have grown to be among the highest in the world, America's work policies and social support systems for working parents are among the lowest. Depressing, to say the least.

All in all, the "stalled revolution" in America is not taking place in families but in the highest circles of our economic and political elites.

For more information on this report, contact:

Scott Coltrane, Professor of Sociology, University of California
Riverside, (951) 827-2443; cell: (951) 858-1831 scott.coltrane@ucr.edu

Professor Oriel Sullivan, Department of Behavioral Sciences, Ben
Gurion University sullivan@bgu.ac.il, +972 86472056

(Image cred)

Working While Knocked Up

So women these days are more likely to work during pregnancy, says the U.S. Census Bureau. As someone who grew up in a time when working while knocked up is so common, I'm tempted to say "duh." But my inner historian knows well, and appreciates, that this hasn't long been the case. And here are the facts, courtesy of the Council on Contemporary Families:

Two-thirds of women who had their first child between 2001 and 2003 worked during their pregnancy compared with just 44 percent who gave birth for the first time between 1961 and 1965, according to a report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The report, Maternity Leave and Employment Patterns: 1961–2003, analyzes trends in women's work experience before their first child, identifies their maternity leave arrangements before and after the birth and examines how rapidly they returned to work.

Women are more likely to work while pregnant than they were in the 1960s, and they are working later into their pregnancies. Eighty percent who worked while pregnant from 2001 to 2003 worked one month or less before their child's birth compared with 35 percent who did so in 1961-1965.

Women are also returning to work more rapidly after having their first child. In the early 1960s, 14 percent of all mothers with newborns were working six months later, increasing to 17 percent within a year. By 2000-2002, the corresponding percentages had risen to 55 percent and 64 percent. (The period of analysis is restricted to women who gave birth by 2002 because some who gave birth in 2003 did not have one full year of employment data by the time of the interview in 2004.)

Other highlights:

-- In 2001-2003, 49 percent of first-time mothers who worked during pregnancy used paid leave before or after their child's birth, while 39 percent used unpaid leave. Twenty-five percent quit their jobs: 17 percent while they were pregnant and another 8 percent by 12 weeks after the child's birth.

-- Forty-three percent of women in 2001-2003 used paid leave after their child's birth compared with 22 percent before their child's birth.

-- Sixty percent of mothers with a bachelor's degree or more received paid leave benefits compared with 39 percent of mothers with a high school diploma and 22 percent of those who had less than a high school education.

-- Eighty-three percent of mothers who worked during pregnancy and returned to work within a year of their child's birth returned to the same employer. Seven in 10 of these women returned to jobs at the same pay, skill level and hours worked per week.

Hmmm. Very interesting.

GUEST POST: What Does Recession Mean for Balance?

GUEST POST: Helaine Olen is the coauthor of Office Mate: The Employee Manual for Finding and Managing Romance on the Job, with Stephanie Losee. Helaine's work on parenting, families, books, feminism, politics, personal finance and career strategy has been published in numerous print and on-line publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Salon.com, AlterNet.org and The Los Angeles Times, where she wrote and edited the popular “Money Makeover” feature. Her essays have been published in Modern Love: 50 True and Extraordinary Tales of Desire, Deceit and Devotion as well as in the upcoming The Maternal is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Social and Political Change. Helaine is supersavvy, sassy, and a very welcome addition to the blogging scene. Here she is!

Wouldn't It Be Nice?

Cali Williams Yost, the work/life blogger for Fast Company, thinks a recession could be good for the cause of balance. Sure, there will be a few companies that turn to the tried and true method of firing as many people as they can get away with and forcing the survivors to work 60 hour weeks. But they are so unenlightened! As Ms. Yost posits:

In a recession, more needs to be done with fewer resources. It’s even more critical that your employees are at their most productive and your work-flow and communication management is at its most efficient. Studies show that flexibility to help employees manage their work+life fit results in increased productivity, more efficiency, and better communication.

Finally, companies that need to cutback will use flex to creatively downsize. By offering to reduce schedules or a transition people to project-based, consulting work, employees who otherwise would lose their tie to the organization can stay. When business turns around, those companies then have the option of offering those employees a return to a full-time schedule.

Methinks Ms. Yost has been drinking a wee bit too much corporate Kool-Aid. Wherever she got this delightful idea from, it’s not from working in an actual office during a recession. In my experience, they always come for the part-timers first no matter how short-sighted that approach might well be. The folks who survive the purges are expected to put in 10 to 12 hour days. And while I’ve known a few people desperate enough to work for their former employers (you know, the people who used to offer them benefits) on a contract basis, I’ve never known one who went back to them when the economy improved. Frankly, I know more who opted out of the paid workforce entirely.

Could it be different this time? Hey, anything is possible. But given that most companies are already asking their employees to give them their lives (remember, 40% of American employees work 50 hours a week and up and that’s in a good economic climate), I wouldn’t bet on it.

(Cross-posted here.)

Happy Birthday, FMLA!

Ok, nuf about candidates. Let's talk issues. Tomorrow is the 15th anniversary of signing into law of the Family and Medical Leave Act. Check out what's still at stake, courtesy Ellen Bravo.

Announcing: Work Life Conference

The Conference Board/Families and Work Institute Work Life Conference on March 5-6, 2008 in Atlanta, Georgia will explore the critical business issue of how employees work and live today, and what the impact of these changes is on employee engagement and talent management. Highlights include:

· New Research: Families and Work Institute and Catalyst will release for the first time ever findings from our 2008 study, Leaders in a Global Economy: Developing Talent in Europe, Asia, and the United States.

· Company Best Practices: Senior business executives from leading companies will discuss their approaches to talent management and promoting employee engagement.

· Individual Strategies: An expert panel will discuss the latest thinking on how individuals can develop their careers in holistic ways to thrive at work, at home, and in their communities.

Speakers include executives from Accenture, Bon Secours Richmond Health System, Bright Horizons, Deloitte & Touche, Hay Group, IBM Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, KPMG, LLP, Marriott International, MetLife, PricewaterhouseCoopers, RSM McGladrey, Singapore’s Employer Alliance and many more.

To reserve a space, call The Conference Board Customer Service Department at 212-339-0345 or click here.

Questions? Please contact Tyler Wigton, Conference Coordinator, at 212-465-2044 x224 or twigton@familiesandwork.org.

Daddy Wars at Work

I love this piece by Stephanie Armour appearing in USA Today last week, right down to its title: “Workplace Tensions Rise as Dads Seek Family Time.” A synopsis:

Todd Scott leaves his job every day at 5 p.m. to be with his family – and even then feels guilty he isn’t spending enough time with Hunter, 4, and Anna, 1. By contrast, Scott’s boss, Steve Himmelrich, who has two children and is a more traditional-style dad, spends long days, free time and some weekends at the office. Both acknowledge these differing choices have been a source of tension between them. Their situation reflects the conflicts that are becoming increasingly common in workplaces across the nation, as fathers press for more family time and something other than a traditional career path. Dads are demanding paternity leave, flexible work schedules, telecommuting and other new benefits. They’ve also prompted several Fortune 500 companies to begin pitching such family-friendly benefits to men – and inspired a new wave of workplace discrimination complaints filed by dads.

The article cites a survey by Monster that found nearly 70% of fathers surveyed reporting that they would consider being a stay-at-home parent if money were no object. And--are you sitting down?--"the survey also found that working dads are increasingly tapping into benefits that until just a few years ago were used almost exclusively by mothers: 71% of fathers with a child under age 5 took paternity leave when it was offered by their employer." This goes counter to what I've heard from researchers. Help me out here. Is this good news true?! (If it is, count me in for a happy dance.)

Analysts attribute the change to generation. Today's fathers in their 20s and 30s don't typically adhere to the philosophies or career tracks followed by previous generations. To wit:

For generations, "Fathers have defined success as big cars, big salaries, big homes. But dads now define success as a good relationship with their children and spouse," says Armin Brott of Fathers At Work, an Oakland-based business that specializes in helping men find a balance between work and family. "It's really a generational change, but it's hard," Brott says. "There's tension, and there's this sense out there that careers will suffer."

Clearly, that sense needs to be corrected with some data. My dream is that organizations like Catalyst will soon be taking this on. Sounds like Fathers at Work is already on it. Their tagline is "Transforming Job-Family Conflict into Competitive Advantage." And they offer companies workshops called "Balancing Father Stress and Professional Success." I can't wait to interview these guys for my next book.