Once they were both breastfed and capable of sitting up, I realized I needed to get out of the house and into a setting where I could communicate with adults and share my skills and knowledge that I’d built up over the course of my career.  I re-entered quickly as a consultant into an office three days a week and have managed to keep up steady work over the years, working from home and company offices. The last time I went into an office was precisely 8 or 9 months. I’ve been working from home most of this year, with amazing clients and interesting work, no question.

But I’ve had a gnawing itch to return to an office and I managed to get myself back into one.  The walls in my house were starting to close in on me, and I was anxious to return to the land of the living. I just returned to a job in the city (as in NYC) two weeks ago. Here’s what is so cool about it:

1. The mornings are easier.  It may sound crazy but with me jumping out of bed at 6 or 6:30am to start my day, so are the kids, and we’re all in better moods and more focused on what we all have to do to get out of the house for the day.  There’s a synchronicity that we didn’t have before. When I first went back to work when they were very young, it wasn’t nearly this easy.  They can dress themselves, help with meal preparation, pack their own backpacks.  What a difference.

2. No more sitting around in my sweats. I used to work in my gym clothes, only sometimes I didn’t even make it to the gym because working from home gave me less time than I now get in an office.  There would be interruptions – whether they be phone calls, clothes to put in the dryer or most importantly and most often, deadlines that I had to work around school pick up time. Now I get dressed in clothes (there’s a no jeans policy in my office, I suspect) other than my sweats, and it feels really good.

3. Water cooler conversations. I missed the office chatter. I can’t wait to go to the office to talk about the Emmy’s.  Now I don’t have to do it only on Twitter. And I now love meetings. I love having to prepare for them, I love sitting in a room full of like-minded colleagues.  It’s a newly discovered pang that had to be satiated.

4. I’m back in the city, baby.  Yes, I missed the commute.  I missed having to get on a train. I missed going back and forth.  All the things people crave giving up, I wanted.  I love being back in NYC.  I work across the street from Bryant Park, two blocks from Times Square and it’s wonderful.  Too all of you who complain about commuting, stay home for a while with kids 10 and under.  You’ll want to go back. Oh, and I get to meet my working friends for lunch, many of whom work in the area which is so wonderful I can’t even describe it.

5. I no longer sweat the small stuff. At the end of the day, I am thrilled to be home. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated being home with my kids before, but the days were often long and I surrendered to a lack of patience often.  Now, after being gone all day, and replacing some of my domestic obligations with stimulation, I have my sole attention placed on my family.

There are plenty more reasons why I’m glad to be back.  This is just the beginning.

But the pull towards staying home with my daughter wouldn’t go away.  At work, sitting in the first office I’d ever had as a young adult, with my name on the door, I kept my newborn’s picture in front of me and glanced at it periodically.

Yet I leapt out of bed to go to work each day.  I still enjoyed my work, although traveling was proving difficult to be away for a week at a time.  As my husband and I talked about what to do, I felt swayed by many of the people around me telling me to leave my job and take time out.  We also decided that the cost of our babysitter and transportation (I was then traveling to another state for work) didn’t really make sense.  Now, looking back, I think perhaps money was an excuse.  Had I factored in my benefits, working was worth far more than just my salary, and you couldn’t put a price on the personal sense of satisfaction.  I had unintentionally opted out.

But having a baby changed me.  I wanted it all.  Traveling three hours a day, five days a week to work back and forth made me feel like “all” would never really be possible. Maybe I’d step out for a year and step back in? Let’s get one thing straight: going back to work after six weeks (12 weeks with Family Leave Act) was hard.  I was still breastfeeding and as an attached parent, I was attached.

I knew right away that being home and I were not a match made in heaven. While my company was looking to fill my position, I actually dreamt about contacting the head of my department to beg for my job back.  When they called me in to train my replacement,  I knew or felt immediately that I had made a mistake.  It was painful.  I was passing on work that I really didn’t want to leave.  

I was never good at staying home with the kids.  Two babies, 19 months apart. It was hard.  I realized I wasn’t really cut out for domestic life.  I started to look for a job right away, and there were interesting prospects, but the kids were young and all the jobs were full time.

But as time progressed, my confidence dropped and I felt like I was going to pull my hair out.  My husband and I both realized it, so I started to think about returning to the work force with kids ages 1 and 2.

And I did.  I was offered a full time job, which I negotiated to part-time.  It paid well and I had a nice balance of work and family life.  I went in several days a week – got my mojo back, was a part of a team. It ended three years later and led to other part-time jobs.  I’ve always had a foot in the industry, have never stopped working. Along the way, I started this blog, worked several years for a start-up, took some graduate school classes, took on a ton of volunteer work including interviewing Holocaust survivors, became a freelance travel writer, produced a few plays, took a theater producing class, took on a leadership role at my synagogue and started my own marketing consulting company. Most importantly, I took care of a special needs child who needed me in more ways than I ever anticipated. I’m actually still doing all of these things.

It’s been nearly ten years since I unintentionally opted out. Yes, I read the article in the New York Times Magazine and I remember reading the story that preceded it, written in October 2003, the year I was contemplating leaving the full time work force.  What can I say? Do I wish this piece had been written about opting back in back then so I knew the realities then that I know now? Yes. The stories are daunting, about three women who opted out and have varying difficulties getting back in.  I can’t say I can relate to all of them.  One made 500K in her peak, and when she went back to work, she was making 1/5 of her salary, but was forced to return when her marriage dissolved.  Another woman in the article really liked staying home but decided it was time to contribute to her family income and lucked into a job that evolved out of volunteer work, making her career more satisfying than ever before.  The last woman is a journalist, with an impressive resume, who has had an extremely hard time breaking back in. Like me, they’ve all dealt with financial pressures (the upcoming braces my kids both need, Bar Mitzvah’s, college tuition), lack of intellectual stimulation and desire to be more well rounded as a woman.

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about this subject and my situation. My post on whether to work or not on Scary Mommy garnered nearly 100 comments; my post called What About Me? on PHDinParenting also created an interesting conversation and I mentioned being ready to opt fully back in on The Broad Side early this summer. One of the commentators there mentioned how she had a full blown career and stepped down when her daughter hit the teenage years.  When is truly the best time to opt out? According to the article, never.

One of my closest friends had a baby last year and her job dissolved by default (relocation).  I am the first to tell her not to wait, to explore her options now, to opt back in.

The only thing I will say about the flexibility that I’ve had over the past 10 years is that I’ve done things I never would have done had I worked full time. I’ve had amazing opportunities as a result of having time to spread my wings and I’ve met some wonderful people on this side of the pond.

But to be told that I opted out after all the work I’ve done over these years – both in my home and out – and to have trouble opting back in.  That is something I wasn’t expecting back then.  I’m going to try not to let the NYT piece get to me.  I’m going to keep my chin up and march into my dream job.  All it takes is finding that one interviewer who can look at my resume and say wow, look what YOU have done.

P.S. I met that woman and she just offered me a job.

I’m honored to call myself a sometimes contributor to two sites that I personally love reading very much, Women & Hollywood and The Broad Side.  Both offer feminist perspectives on everything I care about most – film, politics, media, healthcare and human rights issues.  My latest on both deals with my latest obsession, OITNB.  I interviewed Alysia Reiner, a star of OITNB, over at Women & Hollywood, which ran today. Over at The Broad Side last week, I talked about why I think Netflix is the New Feminist Hollywood Leader.  I’d love your comments over at either post.

I’ve also been traveling. A LOT. If you follow me on Instagam (@theculturemom), you can follow my adventures.  Currently, I’m in Vail, Colorado for the Vail International Dance Festival.  I’ve also been to Cape Cod, Wildwood, NJ, Mohonk Mountain House and Buttermilk Falls Inn & Spa in the Hudson Valley.  I’ve documented my travels and you can read about them at Go Girlfriend, This Girl Travels, Family Vacation Critic and I have upcoming stories on Ciao Bambino.  My family will soon be visiting Ireland and England and I’m busy planning that trip, too.

I also met with the folks at Google recently  where I learned about how to better utilize their tools to make parenting, writing and even life easier.  I will have more details on that visit soon.

And most of all, I’ve been looking to return to work full time.  That is what has been taking up most of my time on a daily basis and that is why I haven’t been blogging quite as much here.  Getting resumes out, interviews, networking, following up..it all takes time.  I’ve come close to a few job offers but I wasn’t exactly the right fit. I’m not giving up, though, and I have a few VERY exciting consulting jobs starting up that resulted from these very interviews.  My consulting firm, Culture Mom Media, also has a lot coming up in way of new clients.  And I’ll be filling you in on them soon.

Meanwhile, I hope everyone is having a GREAT summer. Please let me know what you’re up to these days in the comments.

Now I’m on the last leg of the tour, and I can’t say that it hasn’t been challenging for my husband. He’s been quite stoic, trying not to complain, letting me do what I have needed to do, but I know it hasn’t been easy. Yesterday morning when I called, he couldn’t find any clean underwear for my son.  For other kids, they’d probably be glad to wear dirty ones.  Not mine. My son is a neat freak and hygiene is everything to him.

As a mom, you try not to feel guilty for missing things, but it’s hard.  Last week I missed my daughter’s clarinet concert.  This trip she lost a tooth. My son graduated from cub scouts.  After I left for the 2nd or 3rd time, my daughter asked my husband why I go away so much.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the the nasty article in The Wall Street Journal on the Mommy Business Trip.  It focused primarily on conferences as a way for moms to escape their daily lives but it was antagonizing enough to make any mom feel guilty about having a balanced work/family life.

But you know what?  I don’t feel guilty for being away. Dads travel for work, and moms are no less than they are.  I do miss my kids and I will be a better mom for it it when I get home. But I won’t lie, it hasn’t been easy.  I got sick for a day on a leg of my trip and wanted to lie in bed all day.  It wore me down and I had to march on despite of feeling lousy. But even then, I checked in at home to make sure all was well.

Here are a few ways I’ve made this easier on my family while I’ve been away:

- I created a schedule for my husband and sitter so nothing would be forgotten.  Did it work?  It never all goes according to plan, but you hope for the best.

- I checked in often and spoke to my kids daily.  Last night my son couldn’t sleep and we spoke for a while. When my daughter’s tooth came out, she called me immediately to let me know.  It may be tooth #14 but it’s still exciting. I really hope that the tooth fairy came, but I can’t blame anyone if she didn’t.

- I gave the babysitter extra money for ice-cream and cabs when necessary. She doesn’t drive so I wanted to make it easy for them when they ventured far from home.  I also planned play dates and made sure their week was fun in my absence.

- I’ve let go of thinking that everything can go according to plan.  How can it when my husband works as hard as he does?  Things will slip, the house will be a mess when I get home, but knowing that everyone was safe and sound and happy is all I need.

I won’t lie – there is no perfect recipe for the success of a mom being away for days at a time.  We do our best. I know there are benefits to being away, too. Being a role model and having a career, and knowing they will one day my own daughter will enter the work force and have the same decisions to make.  That’s what I know.

And now it’s time to go home.

I know I’m rather late to respond to the ridiculous article “The Mommy Business Trip: Conferences Appeal to Women with a Guilt-Free, Child-Free Reason to Leave Home” that ran in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago and you’ve probably read countless articles featuring other opinions.  But I haven’t had a chance until now to respond.

Why? I was on a business trip.

So, I read the article with great interest at the start, but by the end of the article, I was mortified. Especially when I saw the graphic accompanying the article (see above).

The author, a female, a woman with a child, a woman who has obviously traveled for work as a journalist, seems to be discounting not only the work of moms who write for a living and attend conferences to further their careers by making connections and learning new skills, but she also seems to be discrediting any woman who travels for work and happens to be a mother.  She seems to be implying that women who leave home for work should be ashamed of themselves for having any fun. As though we should just feel guilty all the bloody time about leaving home to further our careers.

I used to love traveling for work, pre-kids.  I got to travel to exotic destinations for sales conferences.  We worked hard all day and when it came to the day’s end, my company spoiled us all – men and women alike – with fancy dinners.  We were also given a spa treatment during our week away from home.  It made me feel appreciated and I loved the opportunity to bond with my colleagues after full days of workshops and meetings. Then I had my first child and I wondered how I would travel without my children.

But I learned over the years that business trips and conferences are integral to my success as a business person.  I used to work for a company based in Chicago that flew me there every month for meetings and to get to know my team.  Those few days away were not easy logistically, as I didn’t have full-time childcare, and I had to plan my trip carefully so that everyone was covered while I was away but it was well worth the while.  Of course, I enjoyed getting a full night’s sleep in the hotel room, but I never saw getting away as a chance to get away from my family, as the article implies.

If  you haven’t read the article, this is how it starts:

Katherine Stone, a 43-year-old mother and wife from Atlanta, wants to leave her husband and children.

Just for a few days. On her trip, she will listen to panels addressing issues of concern to mothers, network with other bloggers, and stay in a hotel room that someone else will keep tidy. Ms. Stone, a former marketing director for Coca-Cola Co., now stays home to raise her two young children as she operates “Postpartum Progress,” a well-read blog about mental health and parenting. “I will eat junk out of the minibar,” she says. “I will not watch ‘SpongeBob.’ “

She and other mothers who work from home —bloggers, interior decorators, crafters and the like—rarely get to travel alone to escape the daily grind. Event planners, networking organizations, travel agents and consumer-goods marketers are targeting these women by sponsoring conferences and conventions. They have figured out a simple way to make them happy: Give them a reason to go on a business trip.

Insulting? Yes. First of all, I know Katherine Stone through the blogosphere and she is not the kind of person to say that she travels to get away from her kids.  She blogs about postpartum depression.  She has helped thousands of women through her words and community and she has started a non-profit to further her cause. She is committed and dignified and the last person this reporter should have spun the words of, because she surely did. I expected nothing less than her simple apology that she published on Babble when the story hit the virtual airwaves so everyone in her community would know the truth and that the reporter had taken sound bites out of her interview to make up a very different kind of story. She said:

This morning the story comes out. Instead of being about the importance of connection, it feels more to me that it’s about how we ladies “rarely get to escape the daily grind” and how we finally get control of the remote when we are lucky enough to be in a hotel room. Oh no.

And now I’m going to apologize. To everyone.

Later she wrote:

While the main portion of my apology is directed to my own husband, I also apologize to all the husbands and partners who this article infers are uninvolved but will now get their comeuppance when they have to take the kids to the bus stop for once.

“Parents who travel frequently take for granted the simple joy of not needing to set a good nutritional example.”

I apologize to all the women who feel minimized and condescended to by the piece, in particular the graphics that accompany it. I know we all don’t lay around in our hotel rooms on the ground gorging ourselves on crap. In fact I’ve racked my brain to think if I’ve ever laid on the floor of a hotel room for any reason, and I can’t come up with a single instance.

The article talked about how she sits in her hotel room, watching TV, raiding the minibar, thinking about the fact that she doesn’t have to make meals for her kids.

You know what I have to say about that? What man doesn’t take a break during his conference or meetings for the brief five minutes he has to take advantage of staying in a hotel? It’s sexist.

But the truth is that during Mom 2.0 or another blogging conference that I’ve attended, I have never sat around my hotel room thinking about the fact that my husband gets to travel more than me and that I should milk my time alone away from the family.  And no one does.

Mom 2.0 in particular is an amazing conference for women with small businesses that evolved from blogging.  It is 3 days of solid education and networking and after attending last year, I made decisions that changed the course of my career. There are parties at night, much like there were in my corporate days, but even during the parties, you are meeting people, getting business cards and moving your relationships forward.

About Mom 2.0, the article says:

Ms. Stone’s husband travels a lot for work. But next week, she gets her turn. She will meet up with her online friends at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif., where they will attend the three-day Mom 2.0 Summit, for $250 to $450, excluding hotel and airfare costs.

Ms. Stone and other Mom 2.0 attendees will sit in on seminars like “How to Keep Blogging After It’s All Been Blogged” and “Help! My 9 Year Old Wants to Be on Instagram!”

But they also will get decked out in ornate hats as they sip mint juleps at a Kentucky Derby party and will don capri pants for a 1950s-themed barbecue on a cliff overlooking the beach. Throughout the conference, they can stroll through the expo that will be set up to let event sponsors connect with attendees. Organizers hope the expo space has the feel of a French market: chalkboard signs, fruit and flower carts, cypress trees.

“I am a serious person and seriously take care of my kids,” Ms. Stone says. “A few times a year, I get to be silly.”

First of all, who doesn’t pay for a conference?  Am I supposed to feel guilty about paying for a conference that will further my skills? Second of all, the sessions are much more intelligent than “How to Keep Blogging After It’s All Been Blogged”. Oy vey. And again, the expo and parties are set up by significant brands who understand the value of bloggers and they are only meant to strengthen the conference’s benefits to attendees.

On my business trip this past weekend, I had a tremendous amount of work to do before I went.  Grocery shopping, lists for the sitter and my husband, plans that had to be coordinated and my time away was pretty intense.  There wasn’t much time to enjoy either of the two cities that I visited, as I wanted to get home to my responsibilities at the trip’s end. Now that I am home, I’ve had to jump back into my combined home/work life which takes a village….

But do I feel guilty for leaving my family for a few days to further my own skills and career?  I don’t.  I wish I didn’t when they were wee small, as well, because at the end of the day, everyone is fine when I get home.  And if I manage to have a bit of fun while I’m away, no one cares.

Did I have time to raid the minibar and take over the remote control? No. Is that even the point of anything about anything relating to my business trips? No, it shouldn’t be. I’d like the writer of this article to write an article about dads that take business trips and dissect what they do when given the chance to have fancy dinners, drink alcohol.  That would make for a rather excellent article.

As for moms, I would appreciate more balanced reporting that supports the women’s movement and the upward hill that we’ve been climbing since The Feminine Mystique was first written about women who want more to life than domesticity and childcare.  Let’s move forward, not backward.

I expect more from the traditional establishment of journalism than this.  And you should, too.

How do you feel about intuition? Do you hear a bell go off in your head when the world wants you to go in a specific direction and do you make your decisions based on what your gut feeling is telling you?

Intuition can be very powerful, particularly when you don’t even know it’s standing right in front of you, trying to tell you something.

I’m the kind of person whose life is led with my heart. I tend to lean toward projects and jobs I am hopeful will plug into my passion.  This can be both an asset and a flaw.  I’m hoping my kids are more rational than I am.

Recently I started my own business and I’ve been able to go after passion projects.  The rewards and outcome of the work and the level of appreciation from the people I work with can run very deep and I’m choosing my projects carefully. It’s been an interesting mix of new types of clients to date, ones that fit in with the mission of my brand.

So recently, along came one of these projects that looked promising. I saw their product as a perfect blend of my skills and background.  It had elements of some of my main interests: education, art and kids.

The client and I seemed to agree on the direction and scope of our work together.  We met in person and had one last phone call to tie up loose ends and begin our work together.  It seemed like a good fit. I know I was what they needed, to be honest.

But then it happened.  Somewhere during the call, I lost focus.  My husband interrupted me and my thoughts veered away from the conversation. Didn’t I want the job?

Sure enough, my contact called me back to tell me his “intuition” was telling him not to hire me.  He couldn’t gage my level of excitement about joining his team.

My feelings were hurt but I was diplomatic, sending them an email with my best wishes for a successful launch.  I don’t like leaving things in a pile and wanted to end on good terms.

But deep down, maybe I didn’t want the role? I can choose my projects now and at the end of the day, this wasn’t a project I was truly crazy about.

The word “intuition” rang in my brain for days. I was hurt, but ultimately, I realized that the decision was a blessing. Something bigger is coming, and this job would have gotten in the way.

Oh, and also, I wasn’t really going ball busters about the project.

Why do we make decisions with no plan to get a clear destination?  It wasn’t my intention to become a permanent member of their team. Their intuition taught me a lot about myself and I’m grateful to him for it, though it was not their intention.

My intuition grounds me.  It empowers me.  But it was my intuition, no one else’s, that guided the turn of events.  Only I didn’t understand at that moment.  Now I do and as events unfold in the upcoming weeks, the reason will become even more clear.

How about you – are you led with your passion or rationality?

Source: Babble.com

As the Mommy Wars are heating up again for the umpteenth time this week with Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In movement, Marissa Mayer’s ridiculous telecommuniting policies and the NY Magazine article on the “retro feminist wife,” I know only one thing.

I do not judge or blame Kelly Makino, the young woman profiled in this article as a complacent stay-at-home mom who is being compared to Phyllis Schlafly for setting the woman’s movement back.  Schlafly is known for her opposition to modern feminism and for her campaign against the proposed Equal Rights Amendment.  Makino is a 33-year-old former social worker who chose to become a stay at home mom because she “believes that every household needs one primary caretaker, that women are, broadly speaking, better at that job than men, and that no amount of professional success could possibly console her if she felt her two young…were not being looked after the right way.” Also she argues that because girls typically grow up playing dolls, “women are raised from the get-go to raise children successfully. When we are moms, we have a better toolbox.” Makino was used as a tool by the magazine to make a point, and if I were her, I wouldn’t be bragging about my inclusion  in this grossly written article to my friends.  I wouldn’t call it a pleasant portrayal for someone who is hopefully more interesting than she is made out to be.

I wouldn’t exactly call her values “feminist”, but I’m not saying that a housewife can’t be a feminist either.  I certainly did not give back that title when I chose to stay home.  But like Betty Freidan wrote in The Feminine Mystique, I knew I had a problem.  I longingly watched my friends get on the train in the morning and leave our suburb for the city, knowing that they had something other than formula and breastfeeding to put their minds to.  My choice to leave the work force was not only economic, but it was also so I could enjoy my child without the chaos of dealing with a 3 hours a day commute.  I knew that eventually I would return to work and I was fortunate to have a choice. I don’t think that most men have to worry about juggling the two worlds quite as much as women, which is part of the problem that Friedan described and still one that we face.

Why must women continue to judge other women? We all know how tough these choices are.  None of us ever expected to “throw away” our graduate degrees and flourishing careers when we had children, but some of us didn’t quite understand the extent of the changes that we were about to experience.  I know I didn’t.

The New York Magazine article finishes by using Makino as bait: “By making domesticity her career, she and the other stay-at-home mothers she knows are standing up for values, such as patience, and kindness, and respectful attention to the needs of others, that have little currency in the world of work. Professional status is not the only sign of importance, she says, and financial independence is not the only measure of success.”

After ten years of doing this thing they call motherhood, these are MY decisions. I know not to judge any mother for the ones they have made.  Being a stay-at-home is a very honorable job.  So is going to work.  Just because a woman decides to do one thing doesn’t mean that she won’t change her mind later.  Even with the addition of flex-time and part-time jobs in the last decade, it doesn’t mean that these types of jobs are always available.  Even though men are more helpful than during the time The Feminine Mystique was written, it doesn’t mean that they are as helpful as Sandberg’s husband who apparently does 50% of the work.  It doesn’t help that maternity leave policies are less desirable in the U.S. than other countries where women are given more time to be with their newborns and jobs are held for longer periods of time and then turned into part-time jobs for the first few years of their children’s lives. We have to work with the policies that we have in place and push for better ones.

It’s all about choice.  Let’s stop judging  each other for the ones we make and do this thing called Motherhood together.

I have to admit that I’ve been mystified by all the criticism of Sheryl Sandberg new “Lean In” movement. Here we have a female who’s making every attempt to help women rise up and succeed and there is a large group of women (and men) criticizing her for what she’s trying to do.  And why is that? She wants every little girl who people perceive as bossy to know they have leadership skills and potential. I certainly want my daughter to grow up feeling that way.

I’ve been sitting on the sidelines watching the debate unfold online about her because she is not “like all the rest”, all uncannily happening at the same time as the debate around Marissa Mayer’s manifesto that none of her employees can no longer work at home. Some protected Sandberg: When’s the last time someone picked up a Jack Welch (or Warren Buffett, or even Donald Trump) bestseller and complained that it was unsympathetic to working class men who had to work multiple jobs to support their families? (The Verge).  Some did not: Maureen Dowd, writing in the Times,  called her a Powerpoint Pied Piper in Prada ankle books. Last week’s headline on the cover of TIME Magazine read: Don’t Hate Her Because She’s Successful (we all know what that line is spoofing and it really wasn’t funny and I’m quite sure Sandberg didn’t appreciate it either.

But for me, seeing her on 60 Minutes (the clip above) was an eye-opener, and was like a READ THIS BOOK moment.

The first thing she says in the piece is that men run the world and that the women’s revolution is stalled. We can’t disagree with that. We must acknowledge it to change it.  When the reporter asks if she is trying to reignite the revolution and keeps women’s progress from being stagnant and Sandberg replies: “I think so.”

It’s not that I think Sandberg felt she had to write this book because she is the only woman succeeding right now (though I wish the reporter hadn’t told her point blank that she is one of the “most powerful women in the world”), I think she is compelled because the reality she is describing is true.  The women’s movement has made great strides over the last 40 years but we have not reached the finish line.  Not yet.

Isn’t it time that someone jump-started the feminism movement?  It has been stalled.  Even Gloria Steinem agrees.

In the interview, Sandberg goes on to say that women hold themselves back.  They play it too safe at work, worry too much about being liked and turn down opportunities in s of having children one day. In the interview she says “They lean back. I want to have a child one day or I’m still learning on my current job.” Sounds like she doesn’t think women are ambitious but she does, however she says that men try harder.  I can’t fault her a statement she has found proven statistics for.  But there is more we do for ourselves to sit in board rooms and take risks.

And then she sits forward and tells the audience she knows is watching very earnestly, “Don’t lean back, lean in!” She’s not blaming women, she understands that there are issues out of our control.  She thinks women should aim high, take challenges and seek risks.

Who can disagree with her?  As a female, I agree that there are issues of out of my control that set me back.  I’ve been dealing with them since I started working in the 1990s.  I’ve made plenty of decisions because I was scared or had too many options, worked with competitive women who held me back and made decisions based around having a family and trying to do the best for everyone.  Things out of my control?  Yes, you could say that.

Sandberg knew there would be a backlash, but sometimes I wish women could just stop picking on each other and see the value of what others are trying to do for them. She has solutions. and she outlines them in her book which I plan to read.

I left my fulltime job when I had my first child out of frustration that I would never see her.  I was told I could no longer have flexible hours and my child was still less than a year old and I was breastfeeding. Perhaps I should have stuck it out and kept a job that I loved and pushed for more family-friendly practices, but it felt kind of hopeless.

Had I worked for Marissa Mayer, I know that she wouldn’t have helped me.  She went back to work when her child was two weeks old. She has recently removed all off site work arrangements, making those who want to play the life/balance card trickier than ever.  And unfortunately, more companies are falling in her footsteps.

But had I worked for Sandberg, I have a feeling it would have worked itself out and I would have been inspired to carry on and have the best of both worlds.  That’s what I hope that Sandberg will do for all young, and old (like me), women in the workforce.  I’ve been lucky ever since I made that decision to work for some very family-friendly companies, and I hope that all the other companies all take a lesson from her.

Source: WorkFlexHours.ca

I’ve written a lot about my quest for the perfect situation to enable me to both work and take care of my children often on this blog.  A few years ago, I posted over on ScaryMommy about the dilemma I faced when I went back to work fulltime after my daughter was born.  Faced with a long commute across state lines to the office and raging hormones after just having given birth a few months earlier, I made the decision to leave when my flexible schedule to ease my return to work (3 days in the office, 2 at home) went out the window.  I left a job I loved to enter the world of motherhood, and the transition was really, really hard for me.

Eventually I would realize that being at home was not for me and that I needed to get out of the house, so I found a job that allowed me to come into the office a few days a week and work the rest from home. And suddenly, my freelance career was born.  For the last nine years, I have worked in and out of the home for companies nearby and far away.  My first job was in Long Island City.  I worked in the office two days, one at home.  I relished the adult contact in the office but also appreciated my ability to be with my kids the rest of the week.

A few years later, I worked part-time for a company based in Chicago. My manager saw the value of my work and let me work from home completely, flying to town once a month.  As a mom of two young children, it was heaven on earth.  There were plenty of challenges – childcare, making sure my sitter was at the right places at the right time, feeding the kids the foods I wanted them to eat, being on time for events and meetings at school.  But I made it work.

Since then, I have had several jobs offering me the flexibility I have required to navigate the waters of motherhood and I have managed to progress my career at the same time.  I’m proof that it can work for a company.  I’ve worked just as hard, if not harder than others, to juggle my two worlds but have never wasted my time at home.  I set up a workspace, created files and systems and worked during the day and later into the middle of the night while going into the office when necessary and always being available.  I get hired to work a certain skill set, and with direction and a plan created with my managers, they have always known what I am doing. One of the last CEO’s I worked for was a wonderful, savvy man who saw the value of blogging and referred me as an interviewee for an article in Publisher’s Weekly.  He knew how hard I worked and encouraged me both in the office and from a distance.  By working from home and going contract, I was able to start my own company, which I am very proud of.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer sent a memo to Yahoo’s remote employees last week, of which there are hundreds that they have to begin working in offices. If they don’t want to, they can quit. I can imagine that many of them feel the way I did when my flexible schedule was taken away after my daughter’s birth when I did ultimately decide to walk.  It was not an easy decision for me, let me tell you, and it was one that I questioned long after the fact, but in hindsight, it was the best decision my family and me.  I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on my children’s youngest years and my skill set advanced.

Please read this post by my friend Estelle Sobel Erasmus: Why Yahoo Just Became Obsolete: CEO Marissa Mayer Bans Working from Home.  She lays it all out for you and explains that at home employees can be just as, or more, productive than employees in the office.

I hope that Marissa, who went back to work after two weeks of maternity leave, snaps out of it soon.  Before it’s 2050. These are modern times, not ancient.