Hitting the "Mommy Wall"
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| Mon, 10-24-2005 - 11:19am |
I am surprised that this actually comes as a surprise to women trying to re-enter the workforce after taking time off to SAH. *Anyone* taking a not-so-brief hiatus from their career should expect the same treatment IMO . . . you're not going to be able to pick up right where you left off.
BTW - "hi" everyone! I've missed it here! :)
Women raise kids, lose careers
By TENISHA MERCER
THE DETROIT NEWS
Veronica Golubovic spent more than 20 years on the runways of Paris, Italy and New York as a designer for some of the most powerful names in fashion -- Yves Saint Laurent, Donna Karan and Perry Ellis.
But it was a three-year gap on her resume -- the hiatus she took after the births of her two children -- that garnered the most attention from prospective employers four years ago when Golubovic tried to resume her career.
She hasn't forgotten one recruiter's look of discomfort when she explained she was a stay-at-home mom. Or the way a top official at a retailer dismissed her during an interview with, "Oh, so now you don't know if you want to be a stay-at-home mommy."
"I came here thinking I've done so much, but it was very difficult," said Golubovic, 45, who eventually opened a designer clothing store in Birmingham, Mich., earlier this year. "I didn't think people would be hung up on it, but it was shocking and surprising. I couldn't believe their reactions."
Thirty years after women began joining the work force in large numbers, many are hitting the "mommy wall" when they try to return to work after having children.
They find it difficult -- if not impossible -- to return to the same positions they left, according to a recent study by the Forte Foundation in New York and the Wharton Center for Leadership and Change at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
Unprepared for the obstacles they face on their return, many opt out of traditional corporate jobs and move to smaller companies. Experts dub the trend the "female brain drain" and say the exodus is coming just as businesses need talented, experienced workers to fill the gap as baby boomers prepare to retire en masse, leaving the biggest labor shortage in history in their wake.
"This is a defining issue for women," said Monica McGrath, an assistant professor at Wharton, who spearheaded the study. "Women who leave as vice presidents are not coming back as vice presidents. Now is not the time for corporations to squander billions of dollars in talent and enthusiasm at their fingertips. This is a talent pool that organizations need. We have a voice at the table, and I would hate to see us lose that."
The study found that half of working mothers who returned to work felt discouraged by their employer. Eighty-three percent ended up accepting a comparable or lower-level position, while 61 percent changed industries. About 45 percent of the women surveyed started their own businesses, and 59 percent went to work at smaller companies. The study is based on interviews with 200 women, most of them with MBA degrees.
The results add more fuel to the debate about whether and how women can blend careers and family. Even as women are graduating from law, business and medical schools at almost the same rates as men, they find their careers shifting in very different directions from their male colleagues once they have children.
"They want to spend time with their children, and it can be very time-consuming," said New York-based Cindy Swensen, who coaches executive women on how to return to work after having children. "Volunteering at the bake sale is probably not going to help you re-enter the work force."
It's a strange phenomenon for a generation of women who were raised to break down barriers while "having it all" -- even if that meant delaying or postponing plans to have children to focus on their careers.
"We hear very few stories of people just stepping back in where they left off," said Joanne Brundage, executive director of Mothers & More, a Chicago-area support group for working women who postpone their careers to have children.
"Clearly, there is a price to be paid for not staying full-time, full-force in most professions," Brundage said. "I think women who are becoming mothers now have a different set of priorities than women did 15 to 20 years ago. Unfortunately, the message may change, but the environment stays the same."
It's a message Cynthia Aks wasn't prepared for. The first female surgeon to graduate from the residency program at Oakland General Hospital in Madison Heights, Mich., in 1990, Aks battled her share of discrimination from colleagues who didn't care to work with women surgeons, she said.
But after Aks, an emergency room surgeon, decided to have a family in her late 30s, she found it tough to regain the solid career footing she had before her triplets were born nearly 13 years ago. Forced to take seven months off for pregnancy complications, her contract was not renewed, she said, because the hospital didn't know how to deal with a female surgeon with children.
Aks resumed her career as a specialty surgeon, but at a huge cost: Her salary plummeted 60 percent.
"The perception is that you cannot juggle multiple hats effectively," said Aks, 49, who now owns a medical practice in Southgate, Mich. "I believe it's challenging, but you can. You can have high aspirations, be successful, have a family and still be involved. It's not equal for women, and I don't think it ever will be."
Southfield, Mich.-based accounting firm Plante & Moran offers tailored work arrangements such as seasonal work, telecommuting and contract employment to retain working mothers. The firm offers the options to management only.
"We want to accommodate people and their schedules," said Bill Bufe, partner and human resources director at the accounting firm. "We've had people who wanted to leave, but we wouldn't let them. We made things much more flexible for them and allowed them to continue to keep their toe in the water here and do what they needed to do in their family."
CHANGING FOCUS WHAT WOMEN CAN DO
WHAT WOMEN CAN DO
Tips for preparing to return to work:
Create a "re-entry" plan with specific goals
Foster a network for support while away from the work force
Volunteer while away and make sure that experience can be framed in business terms when you want to go back to work
Stay connected to colleagues
Maintain professional licenses and memberships and attend continuing education courses
Take classes to refresh knowledge and skills
Stay informed about the business implications of global and economic changes in your field
Secure contract work while away
Be realistic about how long it will take to re-enter the work force
Sources: Wharton Center for Leadership and Change, the Forte Foundation
CHANGING FOCUS
A survey of women returning to work after raising families found many shifted professional roles:
Accepted comparable or lower-level job: 83 percent
Changed industries: 61 percent
Changed functional role: 54 percent
Became self-employed: 45 percent

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Not mom3, but *for me* I would feel a sense of motherly obligation to take care of my sick child, but that is just how I am. Obviously it is different for every mother. Even if dh wanted to be the one to stay home, I'd still feel some compulsion to want to be the one at home, unless of course, it was a stomach bug that meant lots of puking :)
Honestly, for me, I'd want to be the one home for at least the *worst* day of the illness. I just remember how much I always wanted my mom when I was sick as a youngster (although in later years, I just wanted to be left alone....my mom was a nurse and would literally follow us around with a Lysol can to spray wherever we were possibly leaving germs). LOL
Right. So you're like most of the dual-income couples I know in terms of who does the most childcare and household stuff--the woman. Yet you claim this is exclusive to families who've had a sahp in the past.
As for adjusting to returning to work, for me it was easier with older kids than it would have been with infants or toddlers--emotionally, logistically, and overall. I did extended nursing with both kids, and I wouldn't have found it easy to pump several times a day while at work. My second dd also refused to take a bottle, so that would have been extremely difficult, probably impossible, for me to deal with while working. Like many mothers I know, I didn't get enough sleep at night when my kids were babies, which would have made it hard for me to work--I don't function well without 8-9 hrs/sleep a day. None of those things were problems by the time I went back to work, when my kids were 4 and 6.
As I explained above, I don't find the logistics of school-aged kids too difficult since I only work 30 hrs/wk and have a very flexible schedule. I do most of my work while the kids are in school, so I give up only a few hrs/wk with them. When they were babies and toddlers, I would have had to give up a lot more time with them, which I would have found harder emotionally. Now that my kids are in school 35 hrs/wk anyway, I don't feel like I'm missing much by working.
>>>I don't think so. Wen1001 doesn't believe returning sahms can be "stars." ;)
Hold up cow-poke - I never said that nor did I wish to imply it.
Basically I was responding to the insinuation that people who felt as some of the posters do aren't in management hiring/firing positions and thus don't represent the behavior of hiring managers. My basic stance is that some 65-75% of professional hiring decisions are based upon personal referrals and professional association (as opposed to cold calls, job fairs, head hunters, etc.). Hiring managers are playing a huge risk management game. Whoever they choose to fill a position means a huge investment with little pre-intelligence of the candidates. The preference is frequently going to be on people who have demonstrated "to that manager directly or indirectly" their star performance. (Directly through personal association or reputation in a professional network, indirectly through reference from co-workers, publication, etc.)
So a manager is going to tend to prefer people who have very recent work history and a strong professional reputation known to them as their first line candidates. If those aren't available, everyone else tends to be judged on a low risk/high return formula.
Recent return-to-work parents aren't not seen as stars due to their parenting status, but because of the greater 'unknown' risk factor in hiring them - it's hard to demonstrate that you're a star in the field if you've not been in the field for x number of years.
Does that mean that some hiring managers are missing out on true star potential people because they want the track record more than to take a risk - sure. And the manager lucky enough to take that risk probably has a star on their hands within weeks or months.
Nonetheless, the point of my post stands - hiring managers (myself and any number of the people I am familiar with professionally) *do* tend to treat gaps that way.
1 - A stylist (and particularly a colorist) who is truly talented is worth her or his weight in gold and I would follow them to wherever they decided to take off and beg them to do my hair from their kitchen. So, if you are gifted in that way, I admire you.
That said, given the scenario you just described, (a) how does the manager *know* that you are talented? If you aren't personally known to them, either directly or through reputation, you may know you're good, but how do they know? Wouldn't a stylist coming from a competitor across town, whom she has heard of or met and seen her work be a logical choice? And (b), I wasn't suggesting that a *known* better, more skilled returning SAH should be passed over for a less skilled candidate. But - if you're assuming similar levels of skill - on the basic 'how much risk to take' equation, wouldn't a manager be more likely to choose a currently active stylist, especially one with an established client base to bring with her, as a 'safer bet'?
I don't know enough about your business, but I know that my stylist (who I have followed for 10 years whenever she moved and now drive 65 miles to see) bases her 'marketability' on cliet-base more than anything else -she gets good positions and the schedule she wants at new salons basically because she can bring so many current clients with her. Is that the norm or an exception?
I feel you excerpted that out of context - I specifically gave examples in my (I admit lengthy) post that choices in either direction that cause more financial harm than good are not logical. So the general answer you quoted was assuming that the extremes in financial impact aren't there. I very much agree that - in the short term - working can be more expensive than staying at home, depending on your salary, your overall household income, and the cost of daycare. (Although I would argue that, even in some of those cases, the financial value of continuing to work - increased seniority, earning towards Social Security, participating in employer retirement plans, maintaining your experience base if you think you will continue to work, etc. - may outweigh the short term impacts.)
Financial considerations are of course only one context among many - I split them out to try to cover the entirety of the post I was responding to, but I don't personally consider them individually.
Actually, my point is that people who have employment gaps, regardless of whether they were SAH parents or whatever, are perceived as being out of practice.
That may be unfair. It may be short-sighted. In all likelihood, it has led to managers not hiring someone that would have made an excellent employee. But it definitely happens and I was explaining why it applies to returning to work SAHs.
FWIW, in my years as a manager, I've probably reviewed thousands of resumes and conducted well over a hundred interviews. In my memory, I have only ever encountered one SAHM who was returning to work (and to be fully up front, she was actually working part time and had been for about a year, but was looking to return to full time). I interviewed over the phone and flew her in to do an in-person interview. In the end, she did not get the job - not because of her perceived skill-base (she had made an obvious effort to stay abreast in her field - tough to do in high tech because things change so quickly), but because of her behavior and demeanor in the interview. She was both (a) too personal and (b) too imprudent. She discussed details about her divorce, her ex-H's girlfriend, and her teenager's behavior problems. She voiced great disdain for her current manager, and related stories about their 'bad management'. In the end, how can I trust the professional judgement of an employee (who has to meet with my customers on a regular basis) if she does not have the judgement on what to say and when to say it.
Actually, I recall reading a sociology study about 5 years back that calculated that the break point (based on national averages for income, cost of living, daycare, etc.) for earnings and SAH vs WOH was about $25K. Less than that, and you're losing money by working and sending to daycare. Everything more than that is above the line.
I have no idea whether they were calculating pure day-to-day expenses, or if they also took into consideration things like Social Security earnings, retirement savings, whatever. And, I assume that the number may have gone up a bit in a few years. But presumably not as high as $45K.
So my stance is not so much about earnings as it is the demands of the profession and how much recent experience plays in to the perceived value of the employee. I stand my ground that most fields - including stylist - place a high value on recent experience, involvement in trends, new product lines, new chemical processes, whatever. You can get that through study, sure, but I still think a hiring manager is going to go with the known quantity first. She may be wrong to do so, but how would she know???
>>What I said was that decisions about hiring should be made on the basis of qualifications and experience. Period.<<
Yes - and I agree. But until they invent a brain scanner that can quantitatively assess two candidates pure ability and compare the two, you're going to depend on the qualitative judgement of the hiring decision makers. And what I was stating is the likely perspective of hiring managers in general (and certainly my own), that a known factor trumps an unknown almost every time. They *might* be choosing a less qualified candidate, but how would they know that?
>>Taking time off does not automatically mean you are less qualified for a job than someone who has stayed in the field. This depends very much on the person and the job.<<
I agree, although I would argue that in most cases, recent experience outweighs less recent experience, assuming that background, education, interview performance, etc. were all largely equivalent. If you are in a field where that has less import, great. Nothing is absolute. But my opinion remains that most fields are going to place the value (right or wrong) on the perception of being 'up to date'
Another poster pointed out that in fields where there is a shortage of workers, all bets may be off. Obviously, those hiring managers have a different set of criteria is assessing risk vs. return. For them, a candidate with the right background but less current experience is worth the risk (and rightly so).
>>Bad business to hire somebody who's not as qualified or experienced or simply not as good just because they stayed in the workplace while somebody else sah with their kids for awhile. Bad business for someone who hires to let their own unfounded prejudices influence their hiring decisions.
Well, I never suggested (or at least never intended to suggest) that a manager should or would be justified in *not* hiring someone just because they had been SAH. But what I am saying - about including the value (or perceived value) of recent experience into the overall assessment of risk vs. return in hiring - is not an 'unfounded prejudice'. It's just how business works.
>>But as long as you and other wohms echo the prejudices raised in this thread about former sahms ("they're only interested in collecting a paycheck"; "they'll never work ft or have any career goals again"; "they won't stay for 5 years, so why hire them")
Where the heck did I say anything like that??? What I said is that it is hard to break back in because of employment gaps and that I understand why that is - and that I would apply the same reasoning. But all of my examples had to do with the direct effects of employment gap on the assessment of meeting the job goals --- and I'll admit that it never even occured to me to think the "they won't stay for 5 years, so why hire them" line. I guess I assumed that if a woman intended to stay out she would - why come back and then leave years later???
My point about feminism is that I do NOT disagree with the whole touting of 'choices' that we all like to discuss (I myself would in fact like to go to part time or at-home status when my kids hit middle school), I just don't think it meets or needs the banner of 'feminism'. The original feminist thrusts (late 19th/early 20th century) were about access - when entire parts of society were shut off to women purely based on gender. The seoond thrusts (60s/70s) were about the same things, only executed in more subtle ways. They also wrapped in the politics of reproduction during both, because of the overwhelming 'femaleness' of those issues.
To me, I suppose the true remaining feminist issues today are primarily in other cultures - where women are still denied 'personhood', education, etc.
>>>Do you personally think that *your* WOH status is required in order for you to be considered equal to your husband (whom I am assuming WOH)? If so, why?
Alright, I know I am violating my own pronouncement by continuing in this line of debate, but I liked this question.
Specific to my own marriage - yes and no. Inherently, I am confident about my internal 'worth' and would never have found myself married to someone who did not perceive me as his equal. So, were our lives ever changed in such a way that one of us had to stay home, I don't think that would change.
On the other hand, I am fiercely indepedent and I have never imagined myself as a SAH parent. Ever. So, while I do not think that my DH would stop seeing me as equal, I would struggle with my own self-perception. This has little (I think) about the value I place on SAH parent or how hard their job is (it scares the heck out of me - I doubt I am up to the task). But a lot of my own self-worth is tied to my accomplishments at work. And my feeling of stability and strength is tied to an extent to the financial security we have been able to establish through 2 incomes. So, I would be shaken both by losing that evironment where I was accustomed to being accomplished and by losing the feeling of financial independence I have built. Presumably, I would adapt over time, but it would be a difficult transition.
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