Can we elevate the debate on working parenthood?

June 20, 2013

"Everything is about pretty, rich Marissa Mayer." - Jessica Grose

"Women without children are barred from the conversation about women. Not only do they not have a seat at the table but they can't even get into the restroom." - Lauren Sandler

Can we move the debate on working parenthood forward? That was the question posed by a panel of writers and commentators at The New America Foundation's New York offices last night. Note the use of the word 'parenthood' rather than 'motherhood'. Still, there was only a scattering of men in the audience.

The panelists are all well known for writing and speaking on what I'll have to call women's issues, although I dislike the term for reasons I can barely explain. Judith Warner wrote the book Perfect Madness - Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, Sharon Lerner is the author of The War on Moms: On Life in a Family-Unfriendly Nation, Lauren Sandler is everywhere right now discussing her new book One and Only: the Freedom of Having an Only Child, and the Joy of Being One, and I used to listen to Jessica Grose regularly on Slate's Double X podcast. She now writes about things women-related for a host of publications including Slate and The New Republic.

A few takeaways from the evening:

• The debate on working parenthood is stuck in the US for a few reasons: what Sharon Lerner called America's "rampant and deep strains of individualism" is one of them. When I moved here 17 years ago I was truly struck by how allergic to government so many people are in this country. A country that was built by individuals and has long emphasized what one person can achieve if they just work hard enough, isn't that invested in creating a uniform system of leave and childcare policy that could help everyone. Or at least it feels very ambivalent about it. 

• Another reason may be a reluctance to talk about just how hard things are. Judith Warner said Americans are more open about their sex lives than they are about money (though having just produced a show on sex, I'm not so sure). She said the cost of pre-school is killing all but the wealthiest Americans, but that few people are talking about this honestly.

• But things aren't perfect in Europe either. Scandinavia may be the envy of many because of its generous family policies, but in the UK, where I grew up, things are more of a mishmash. My friends get a year's maternity leave, but quality, affordable childcare is relatively hard to come by. Lauren Sandler pointed out that this situation is now playing itself out in British homes, as people apparently choose to have smaller families - almost half of British families now have just one child. 

• The panelists discussed the fact that in the US, the debate on - heck, let's just call it working motherhood - is all about rich women like Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg. But there are millions and millions of women in this country who have almost no control over their lives and cannot take a sick day if one of their kids is sick, or they're sick, and actually get paid for it. Why do we always focus on the rich and famous? Because, according to the panelists, there is an 'aspirational' culture here that means we're always looking up. This gets me to the evil media, of which I am a member.

• Lauren Sandler was surprised when her latest piece in the Atlantic - about female writers who had one child - was published with the headline: The Secret to Being Both a Successful Writer and a Mother: Have Just One Kid. She said readers responded mainly to the provocative headline - and the comments beneath the piece - and barely to the content of the piece itself. I was sitting next to friend and colleague Rachael Ellison of Reworking Parents and she echoed Sandler's point, saying the media has a lot to do with the so-called 'Mommy wars' or indeed the discussion around women and work in general. The whole point of a headline is to get people to read or click. I get that. But I think Rachael is right that part of the reason our debates around these issues get stuck is that editors like to focus on the things that have always riled people or always excited people because they know those articles will sell. This really needs an entire blog post to itself.

• Finally, mothers tend to dominate the conversation on working women. Lauren Sandler put it well: "Women without children are barred from the conversation about women. Not only do they not have a seat at the table but they can't even get into the restroom." This is partly why I'm dong this show. There are so many issues to do with working womanhood that are not child-related, and I want to make sure they get covered. 

Takeaways from a S.H.E Summit

June 18, 2013

I said in the last newsletter that I'd write a little more about takeaways from Claudia Chan's S.H.E Summit, which I attended on Friday and Saturday of last week. My double level of cynicism (1. raised British and 2. a journalist) means I am almost allergic to things like group hugs, 'you go girl' sentiments, over-use of the word 'empowerment', or indeed gooeyness of any kind (that said, I did recently tweet a video of a baby elephant having a dip in the sea, so there are exceptions.)

'S.H.E' stands for 'she helps empower'. But my native cynicism was forced into retreat: there was plenty of meat at the conference. Here are a few points at which I nodded vigorously and/or got a kick out of:

• Entrepreneur and investor Joanne Wilson (who blogs as Gotham Gal) said, "Women need to say, 'I'm going to my kid's sporting game. End of story.'" This point has come up a few times with my interviewees - that women think we need permission for things, particularly when it comes to work and our children colliding, while men will simply state their intentions and get on with it.

• Anita Sands of UBS (a no-nonsense Irishwoman) was part of a panel on women in leadership. As part of that discussion the topic arose of how to get what you want from your boss. She made an excellent point about the importance of framing your request: "There's what you want to say, how you say it, what he wants you to say, and how he wants to hear it." That's four different things to mull over before going into the discussion. But considering each one of them should take you that bit further toward getting what you actually want. 

• When it comes to mentorship, "lead by giving" said one of the panelists. "Think about what you can give other people – make someone want to invest in you by giving to them first." I need to get on that.

• The final panel on Saturday focused on working mothers. One of the points made was how important it is for women to say no to things. Otherwise, you get eaten up by other people and have absolutely no time for yourself - and panelist Latham Thomas made clear that you don't need to add excuses to your 'no'. "No is a complete sentence," she said. Something I particularly enjoyed hearing came from Cortney Novogratz, who owns an achingly cool design firm with her husband and is also mother to seven children. Yes, seven. 'It takes a village' is a bit of a cliché , but in her case, it really does. She said their last family holiday card had a photo not just of the immediate family but of grandparents, godparents, nannies and others who help her family stay on track (and keep her sane). I love the fact that she honored all these people who help her bring up her brood in such a public way. 

Are women's networking groups useless?

June 13, 2013

I'm a relative newcomer to networking. When I worked as a reporter for a public radio show, I was in the office almost every day, busy from 9.30 to 6ish, or 4a.m. to noon, and glad to go home at the end of the day having met my deadline and got on the air. I didn't think about networking. I was thoroughly engaged where I was, and the word had something unpleasant about it, something fake and schmooze-festy, a tinge of falseness I didn't associate with myself. 

Once I was out on my own, the word acquired a whole new meaning. Now I network whenever I can, within reason. Often, simply because of the nature of what I'm doing with this show, I'm at networking events with other women. That can be great - I think women let their hair down when they're with other women - but there have been several times when I've been at such events and wondered whether they are helping me in any way whatsoever. The whole point of networking is to meet people who can help you in some way with your career or business and who you may be able to help in return. When I interviewed an entrepreneur for a public radio story last year, she agreed that there's a tendency for a group of women to forget what they're there for:

"One of most infuriating things for me going out is when I attend certain women-in-business functions and it’s a social club." 

It turns out things may not be much better within large companies, although not because these networking groups function as social clubs. In this piece in the Harvard Business Review, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox (now there's a name for you) says most in-company women's groups are doing nothing to advance women within the company. I'll quote one of my favorite paragraphs:

"A group of men who decide (or are told by government) that they need more women in their teams turn to the few women in senior roles and task them with finding a solution. The women, delighted with this glimmer of interest in their fate, duly throw themselves (in their free time, on top of their day jobs) into launching usually unfunded corporate women's networks and draft a business case on the corporate advantages of gender balance. A senior woman is put in charge and sent to every external conference as a corporate representative. This results in a women's conference with lots of motivational speakers and a few male 'champions' to encourage the girls. Sound familiar?"

It does. I have a friend who works at a large global media company who describes her firm's efforts to advance women in just this way - she says the men at the firm see the women's networking groups, think, "The women are off doing their thing", and stay firmly in their own firmament. The result is that at the firm's conferences and events, it's still an all-white-male lineup. The men shrug, sure that they're making large efforts on their female colleagues' behalf, yet still they don't seem able to climb the ladder. I highly recommend Wittenberg-Cox's piece, in which she suggests ways this situation can be turned around, including instituting accountability for managers who are tasked with building more balanced teams, and instead of women's networks, having what she calls 'balance networks' with both sexes (if you heard the last show you'll know I can't stand the word 'gender', but here it is anyway, coming from Wittenberg-Cox).

"Their goal becomes skill- and bridge-building around gender understanding rather than segregation."

I'd love to hear from anyone in the comments who has strong views on women's networking groups - in-house or otherwise.

How to overcome guilt at work

June 12, 2013

(This post originally appeared on The Hired Guns blog.)

Recently I was at a conference for female entrepreneurs when a young business owner got up to ask one of the panelists a question: “How do you deal with Mommy guilt?” I wasn’t inspired by the answer, which consisted of the usual fudge along the lines of spending ‘quality time’ with the kids.

I wish she’d said what women need to hear, which is, essentially, “Don’t feel guilty.”

Guys don’t tend to have a problem with guilt – or if they do, they keep it to themselves. But women? We have a full-on, all consuming relationship with this wearying emotion. Most men are not constantly obsessing over something they may have said to upset someone at work, or worrying about a favor they didn’t do, and they’re certainly not tying themselves in knots over being away from their children during the working day. But because women are so geared towards relationships, we are excellent at feeling awful about anything that could harm those relationships.

I’m just as, well, guilty as any other woman on this front, but I am gradually training myself not to be. I’ve been inspired in this regard by some influential women, among them Financial Times columnist Mrs. Moneypenny, otherwise known as Heather McGregor. She runs her own headhunting business in London and is married with three sons. She’s also the author of a book called Mrs. Moneypenny’s Career Advice for Ambitious Women.

“I don’t do guilt,” McGregor told me recently. “It eats at your self-confidence and you feel terrible all the time. That drains you of energy to do anything useful, or to move forward in your life.”

And if there’s anything professional women need, it’s time, energy, and the ability to focus. Guilt eats into all three.

Guilt also comes in various flavors. Here’s how to avoid the worst of them:

‘I screwed up’ guilt
How often have you felt awful for unintentionally hurting someone’s feelings, or making a mistake at work? There’s a simple answer, according to McGregor. Accept the blame, apologize quickly, rectify things to the best of your ability, and then move on. Don’t wallow in your error, and don’t say ‘sorry’ multiple times. A female friend recently told me the story of a young man who works for her. He screwed up royally, she reprimanded him, he said sorry once, took the rap, and never referred to it again. She was half-envious, half-admiring. She knew if she’d been in the same situation, she’d have beaten herself up for days.

‘Saying no’ guilt
Women are really good at feeling bad about saying no. But if you want to achieve a lot at work, and in the rest of your life, and maintain some semblance of sanity, you’re going to have to say no to various requests, from taking on extra work to appearances at your children’s school.

Heather McGregor is pragmatic: “First, acknowledge that you can’t be everywhere. You will just be average at everything if you try to do too much…no one will get proper attention.” She’s missed plenty of parent/teacher conferences (her husband goes to those) and sports events. She points out that you can “say no in a positive way”. If a contact asks her for a favor she doesn’t consider worth her time, she always responds with a polite ‘no’, but also makes a few suggestions that could help the person with their request.

Mommy guilt
A friend of mine — an entrepreneur and mother of two — has heard comments like: “You’re probably too ambitious to have another baby” (she wasn’t). She also said that one of her young son’s friends recently mistook the family nanny for Mom, because he saw the nanny so much more often. This stuff used to bother her, but it no longer does, because she loves working. She also feels she’d be a lousy stay-at-home mom. She doesn’t feel guilty.

McGregor says one way around any creeping feelings of guilt is to communicate openly with your children (when they’re old enough to understand) about why you can’t always be there. Her honesty extends to explaining that she brings home the bacon and that if her business suffers, so will their ability to pay for their house, go on family vacations, and receive a good education. She says women need to look after themselves first, then their children, citing the airline oxygen mask example (put on your own mask first, then help your child). “If you are healthy and breathing and OK, if your career is going well, if you’re earning well and able to provide for your family, your family will be better off,” she says.

Also, remember there’s a whole industry out there to make women feel guilty. Playing on our emotions is what sells products. Don’t succumb.

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