Editor's Note: The Parental Clock
Now that I have a baby, there's no time to waste.
by Ada Calhoun
May 24, 2007
The other day, giving a co-worker directions to the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, apartment where I live with my husband and nine-month-old son, I said, "From the office, it's about thirty minutes, door to door." What I was thinking was: "If you race down the stairs rather than wait for the slow elevator, make all the green lights walking to the subway, get off at the very back of the train and run down the stairs past the old ladies, then cross past the construction site and jog the last block, you can make it in twenty." And so far, that's my personal approach to work-home balance: efficiency bordering on O.C.D.
In this week's personal essay, "Dr. Mom: the truth about the 'mommy track'," Tara Bishop, M.D., eloquently discusses her decision to stay at home with her children in spite of degrees from M.I.T. and Cornell. Tara is the worst nightmare of suddenly-everywhere writers like Leslie Bennetts, whose new book, The Feminine Mistake, criticizes educated women for opting out of the workplace. Of course, the choice not as simple as pundits like Bennetts make it sound. Dr. Bishop writes in her Babble essay:
We are the generation that took pride in the fact that we could break the glass ceiling or devote our lives to our children; society would accept anything. But it won't. It's very difficult to work overnights when you're breastfeeding. There's always pressure to work more. So we have to give up something. And if you're an educated woman, that usually means neglecting your kids or your career, and feeling guilty either way.
The reader feedback on that piece indicates that one of the hardest things we're all doing is figuring out how to balance work and home. We can't be with our kids full-time and doing whatever else we love full-time, too. So how much of either do we sacrifice? According to this week's Babble poll, as of this writing, 81% of us are working and relying on some combination of stay-at-home spouse (9%), at-home or part-time schedule (22%) and professional help (50%).
So, why are 19% of us staying home with the kids? And why do the rest of us sometimes envy them? Babble sent Helaine Olen to interview Pamela Stone, the author of Opting Out? Why Women
Really Quit Careers and Head Home. Stone is one of the few authors asking women why they made the choices they have rather than attacking them We can't be with our kids full-time and doing whatever else we love full-time, too. So how much of either do we sacrifice?for either working too much or too little. Her conclusion: the lack of flexible work options is making it impossible, or at least extremely difficult, for women to have it all. Stone told Babble:
Bankers used to have what were called banker's hours, because they were good hours. Well, a banker's hours are horrible hours now. All these professions are going into a speed-up at the same time that you have more women with family responsibilities. So there is this head-on collision of these two trends.
The choice is never easy. For my part, I've been working 10 a.m to 7 p.m. nearly every weekday since my maternity leave ended (and quite a few hours before that; this magazine launched when my baby was three months old), but I'm lucky: I love my job. I can work at home two days a week. Most fortuitously, my husband, a performer, can be with our son during the day. The two of them run around the city together, swinging in the park or strollering around the Met. When I'm at the office, they visit me on my lunch break. We have friends, family or the occasional babysitter fill in when he's at auditions or rehearsals.
And yet, even with all this luck, I still have moments where I wonder if I'm the worst mother, or worst worker, of all time. When I started to leave for work this morning, my ever-laughing son cried. If I'm working at home and take some time away from the computer to play with him, I fully expect to come back to eighty emails, all marked, "URGENT — WHERE ARE YOU?!"
But so far, so good. My son seems secure, happy and healthy. Babble (thanks, all you wonderful readers!) is doing well. So, for now, I'm just trying to make the absolute most out of the time I have at home and at the office. I wrote this essay between 6:14 and 6:40 p.m. If I can get the rest of tomorrow's stories lined up by 6:59, I could be holding my son by 7:19, and only a little bit out of breath.
©2007 Ada Calhoun and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Ada Calhoun is Babble's founding editor-in-chief. She has worked at New York magazine, Nerve.com and Vogue, and written for The New York Times, Salon.com, AOL News, TIME and the anthology One of the Guys. She is also a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review. In past lives, she has been a Sanskrit translator, a theater critic, a farmhand and a softball scorekeeper. She lives in New York City with her husband and their young son. |
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by Tara Bishop, M.D.
An Ivy League-educated, "mommy tracked" housewife on work-home balance.
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by Helaine Olen
The author of Opting Out? on the real reason mothers stay home.
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by Odine Galsworth
What it means to have a baby at an "advanced maternal age."
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