One Step Forward and Another One Back

When I first started this blog, I imagined creating wonderfully insightful and thought-leading posts about work-life balance issues. Turns out after spending most of my time thinking about how to cure cancer at my day job and trying to be the best mommy I can be the rest of the time, the brilliance just doesn't seem to flow like I thought it would.

But I have been a faithful email activist, keeping up with my action alerts from Momsrising.org, 9 to 5 and the National Organization of Women. I was thrilled to learn a few weeks ago that thanks to some heavy duty lobbying from Momsrising and several other organizations, New Jersey became the third state to pass a law that provides paid leave for workers to care for a sick family member or to bond with a newly born or adopted child. Three down, 47 more to go...I can't wait for this fight to come to Georgia. If you haven't signed up to receive action alerts from at least one of these organizations, you gotta go do it. Go ahead. Do it now. I'll wait till you get back.

At the same time, I was sickened to read that this past week, our federal government let families down yet again when the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved cutting a proposed eight weeks of paid parental leave for federal employees to only four weeks. The logic completely escapes me. Our government finally has a chance to prove it's not back-assward by providing American families some much needed support and it can't seem to get it together enough to support its own employees. Talent attrition alone should more than pay for this program, but apparently Committee Republicans argued that supporting this program in a spiraling economy sends a message that our lawmakers are out of touch with American citizens. So instead, they sent the message that they're out of touch with the needs of their own employees. I suppose four weeks is better than nothing, but it's hard to get excited about a program equivalent of holding out a life preserver only to pull it back and yell, "Psyche!"

Clearly the fight for family-friendly work policies is just beginning. Although I won't be leading this fight any time soon, thankfully others are on the forefront. I just stumbled across Washington Post's blog on work-life balance and they offer a super cool widget, now nestled in the sidebar of Up With Moms, so I can offer great work-life balance content even when I'm sidetracked by devotions in soccer or being (NOT) a Top Momma. Or you can read actual thought leaders like MojoMom, who like me is convinced that fixing our corporate infrastructure to support families is the next wave of feminism. Like our predecessors who fought to make it acceptable for women to achieve in the workplace, it's now up to us to make the workplace acceptable for us moms and our dads. Whether you're a thought leader or just a garden variety email activist, New Jersey is proof of the power of moms.

One Step Forward and Another One Back

A Simple (but not so easy) Resolution

This year I've set my sights on a single, yet profound new years resolution.

In 2008, I, Amy S., resolve to enjoy my life more.

Yes, that's right. I'm determined to enjoy my kids, my husband, my friends, my family, my professional life and life in general alot more than I do now. Problem is, I'm not quite sure how to go about this.

This idea came to me one hectic afternoon as I juggled a conference call for work while trying to keep my kids satisfied and occupied at home. My eight year old was blathering about something I couldn't quite keep up with, my four year old was "bored" and wanted me to help her figure out something "ta-do!" and the work call droned on and on as I prayed no one would ask me a question.

And it hit me -- what am I doing? What value am I adding to this chaos? And more importantly, what am I getting out of any of this?

My husband is the model for how one should live life. He has a great job that he loves. When he's at work, he's fully engaged, there 100% for his clients. But when he's home, he's on a mission to wind down and relax. He reads the newspaper, he veges out in front of the TV, he plays video games (he's enthralling our daughters with his latest Super Mario Wii game as I write this). He plans activities, outings and vacations -- an occasional concert or ball game, dinner with friends, a golf trip with the guys or a family trip to Disney (yes, I'm invited to most of these things). He has no qualms spending money on the things he enjoys and outsourcing the things he doesn't. He thinks about his pleasure activities almost as much as he thinks about work and, aside from an occasional golf outing with a client, he rarely mixes the two. He told me the other day that he couldn't be more content with his life.

The thing is, I'm not completely miserable. On paper, my life is great. But that moment that afternoon defined how I've been feeling this year -- on autopilot desperately trying to keep up. And while I don't hate my life, I'm not particularly enjoying it either. It could be a simple matter of allowing myself some activities I do enjoy -- an afternoon shopping at the mall, some quiet time to read a book, maybe even some time set aside to keep up with this blog. Or it could mean some more profound changes like paring down on work to be more present for the kids, connecting more with friends, or finding another kind of work that lights my fire more than what I'm doing now (another post for another day). I have a sneaking suspicion, it's a little bit of all of those things.

Just thinking about liking my life, about enjoying all or parts of my days is making me happier, more content. I hope this is one resolution I can figure out how to accomplish.

A Simple (but not so easy) Resolution

The Costs of a Family-Unfriendly America

A couple of months ago in honor of Halloween, Momsrising.org asked its members "What's really scary for American moms?" Nearly 200 struggling moms from all walks of life posted their scary stories -- middle-class moms "opting out" of their careers as the skyrocketing costs of daycare no longer made fiscal sense for their families; moms with little or no health coverage praying that they or their children never get sick; single moms struggling to make ends meet. It painted a very sad picture of a country clearly failing its most critical resource -- its mothers.

Unfortunately, the personal struggles of our nation's moms are likely to go unnoticed and unappreciated by our nation's lawmakers and corporate leaders. The picture that's more likely to move those in power is the one that's yet to be painted and is likely the scariest story of all -- the bottom line costs of failing America's families.

I'm no social economist, but consider the logical consequences of a country that demands too much of our nation's parents with little or no support:

The Health Care Burden
It's long been documented that the American worker is over-stressed due a variety of factors including loss of leisure time and extreme work demands and those that are raising families suffer the worst. Countless studies in the last two decades clearly link stress to a multitude of health ailments from cardiovascular disease to psychological and musculoskeletal disorders. One very recent Harvard study even goes so far as to suggest that women in the workforce are shortening their husbands lifespans by as much as 10 years due to stress. While this study draws ire from working moms as it lays the blame squarely at our feet, it shows a clear correlation between working moms and dads in America and negative health effects. Given the number of emotional meltdowns my husband has had to endure as I've tried to balance work and family, I really can't dispute these findings.

Shoving pistachio nuts into my mouth last night crunching to make a work deadline, I was reminded that our country's obesity epidemic goes hand in hand with stress. One only has to watch a few episodes of Oprah to know that stress-induced overeating is rampant in our country, particularly among women, and is likely a key underlying cause of our obesity problem (if my pistachio nut example wasn't scientific enough for you, here's a study from the UK with more empirical proof). Another is our lack of time to make healthy foods for our families or time to be physically active combined with the accessibility and convenience of fast and processed foods. This recent study links the number of hours a woman works to her childrens' BMI. Again, many interpret these studies as "blaming" women when the true underlying cause is an inflexible work culture that demands too much of our time. According to the CDC, obesity accounts for approximately 9% of our national medical bill or $93 billion.

Lost Productivity
Stress, obesity and its associated health effects are leading causes of workplace absences. But companies are also losing highly educated and well trained employees to the "opt-out phenomenon" -- documented by sociologist Pamela Stone, among others -- college- and professionally-educated women leaving their demanding jobs as a desperate measure to reclaim their sanity. My own microcosm bears this out as all of the mothers I know (including me) -- all college-educated career women prior to becoming mothers -- have left, downsized or sacrificed their careers in some way. There are also many mothers who simply can't make work work -- the costs of daycare exceeds their income or leaves very little of it to be worth it. These women leave their jobs not by choice but because they can't "afford" to work. Employee turnover has long been documented as a major drain on business but corporate America has yet to take a good hard look at how the loss of working mothers affects their turnover rates and their bottom line.

Failing our Youth
Research has long shown that the hours immediately after school are prime hours for juvenile crime. Our nation has tried to alleviate this problem by allocating significant funds for after-school programs that help provide supportive environments for "at-risk" kids -- those who are unsupervised after school. Federal cuts in these programs are a constant threat and states continually struggle to keep these programs sufficiently funded. Law enforcement claims that these programs are proven to cut crime rates and save at-risk youth from becoming career criminals, there is tremendous need to expand these programs. Is there another solution? How much money might we save simply by allowing for flexible work schedules? If parents were allowed to work their work schedules around their children's school schedules, how many children could be taken out of the after-school system leaving room to serve those kids who are truly "at risk" (i.e., those whose home lives are less than desirable)? Crime translates to billions of dollars for taxpayers and crime victims.

Overtaxing our Social Welfare System
Of course the greatest burden of a family-unfriendly American falls on low income families. These are families who despite doing everything right -- working diligently to support their families -- are barely getting by (much less getting ahead) and are often one misstep away from a financial crisis. These families tend to have jobs with lower wages, no benefits and little or no flexibility. Once these families fall on hard times, they must rely on our welfare system. Emory health economist Kenneth E. Thorpe has estimated that unpaid hospital bills, mostly a result of uninsured patients, cost $45 billion which increases insurance costs by 8.5%. This recent report from the Urban Institute begins to outline the support that would help low income families meet their family responsibilities while doing right by their employers and even highlights some success stories. How much could we reduce our nation's welfare costs and/or our unpaid health care bill by implementing some of these common sense supports?

I could go on, but I'm starting to depress myself. The point is that until someone with some heavy duty letters next to their name working for a credible institution takes a close and careful look through the volumes of research that already exist and does a serious cost-benefit analysis to bringing some health and sanity back into our lives, little is likely to change. The solution to supporting our nation's working moms and dads will take the combined efforts of government and employers. But we must first make the argument in dollars, not just common sense, to move their hearts and minds.

The Costs of a Family-Unfriendly America