Hitting the "Mommy Wall"

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-19-2003
Hitting the "Mommy Wall"
1585
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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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 11-01-2005 - 6:08am

What you said was:

"Unfortunately I would never hire a military spouse in that situation unless it was for a temp role. I could never justify the costs and time involved only to have them move / leave in a short period of time. The uncertainty alone would be a deal killer for me."

Which I read to mean that you would not hire a military spouse because their chance of moving before you got your money out of them was too great. Just because a military spouse has not moved in the last ten years it does not mean that they will not be moving in the near future. You would be taking the same risk with a military spouse who has moved 5 times in the last ten years as in the one who has not moved at all in the last ten years. The uncertainty would be the same.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-16-2005
Tue, 11-01-2005 - 6:20am

Because there's still a glass ceiling and huge disparity in wages in some fields. While men and women can be equally catty and backstabbing in the workplace, for some reason a man in a position of power can forgive that kind of thing in a man and bring along another man with him instead of bringing a woman with him. But IMO and in my experience, women are not helping each other out.

What if you had to be a sahm for a year or 2 due to family illness? Certainly, there are plenty of wohms out there, maybe some with whom you work, who could not afford to sah due to family illness. When you eventually return to your job, I guess it's OK for those wohms to shut you out too?

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-16-2005
Tue, 11-01-2005 - 6:25am

Well said. Maybe sahms don't need wohms to be supportive of them. But sahms do need wohms not to affirmatively act to hold sahms back simply because they stayed home for a few years. Maybe then women can be on par with men in the workplace.

Edited to add: We (wohms and returning-to-work sahms) don't all have to be friends. But we shouldn't all be enemies either.




Edited 11/1/2005 7:32 am ET by tinderbox3
Avatar for laurenmom2boys
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Tue, 11-01-2005 - 6:39am

I understand what you're saying Kristi. But that's not what she originally said. When asked if she would ever join the "workforce" again in case of divorce or widowhood, she brought up the subject of writing. This is what she said: "Life insurance, alimony, child support, SS, in addition to finding alternative means of making an income that don't include returning to the workforce. For instance, I plan to self publish a book I'm writing in the next year or so, and of course I could always be a "starving" artist or musician both of which are very appealing to me."

So when someone says "finding alternative means of making and income" and then in the next breath "I plan to self publish a book I'm writing," it's not a huge leap for one to assume that means she plans on making money off of it.

Avatar for laurenmom2boys
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Tue, 11-01-2005 - 6:41am

You work? You just said several posts earlier that you don't ever plan on returning to the workforce. So which is it? You either work or you don't (we're talking paid employment in this thread).

You're the funny one.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-28-2003
Tue, 11-01-2005 - 6:54am

"The fact that you spent a lot of time arguing in favor of subsistence farming as a valid life choice says a lot." First, I don't think I spent a lot of time in favor of subsistence farming. I mentioned raising a steer, I mentioned people I knew who live on a goat ranch--all in the name of debating the line "Money isn't the only way to provide children with food and roof." I didn't continue debating down that line for several different reasons. One was because I ran out of time. (I do have four kids here and plenty of responsibilities.) Another is because I believe I proved my point, about money not being the only way to provide food and roof. (I'll understand if others don't think I did, at least not to their satisfaction.) You wanted to take the debate in a different direction, showing how raising a steer and running a goat ranch isn't a _____(insert your word here, practical? reasonable?) way to care for a family. I didn't want to take the debate there. I only gave the steer and goat mentions to prove that the statement about money was false. I didn't have anything else to say about the matter, including how those choices were going to provide health insurance. (You'll notice the sentence I was debating said nothing about health insurance.)

The fact that I didn't debate the issue to death does not contribute to my being a militant SAHM. In fact, I would say that NOT extrapolating my ideas about how to provide food and roof to children shows that I am not a militant SAHM. A militant SAHM would have no qualms with telling you exactly how she would manage without health insurance and medical care and she would go on to say that her being home was more important than providing those things. You don't see me saying that.

I have a kid to drive to school now so lest you think I am bailing again, I need to leave this debate to do so. It doesn't have anything to do with my militancy as a SAHM. But you could try and figure out how to spin it that way.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Tue, 11-01-2005 - 8:06am

"I guess it depends on the placement of the words NONE and MAJORITY, not to mention the subject of discussion."

I agree. So, did you really mean to say that NONE of the SAHM's you know have any intention of ever returning to the workforce? How many SAHM's are we talking about here? You honestly don't know ANY SAHM's who do plan to return to the workforce at some point? BTW, How exactly are you privy to this information in the first place?

"In my post, no, it doesn't tend to set up things in the certain way you read them because I wasn't speaking about a broad group of women, but specifically the women I know and I didn't imply that my experience applied universally to all women, let alone all sahm."

Which is exactly the point I was trying to make here. Clearly your statement wasn't based on a broad representation of women. This is precisely why I found it to be fairly limited in scope as well as perspective.

" realize that there are a lot of different reasons to sahm"

And this is precisely what I was getting at. Indeed, "there ARE a lot of different reasons to sahm."

"I also realize that I was speaking about a finite group of women in a small personal experience in a period of time in my life...."

Thanks for the acknowledgement. Actually, I don't think there's any real debate fodder here. In other words, generally I think we're basically on the same page here.

"and this would be the second time that I have told you I wasn't speculating about anything...."

I apologize. I think we both seemingly tend to take the offense/defense at times without really intending to. Sorry about that. I'll definately try to proof my posts a little more dilgently in the future :)

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 11-01-2005 - 8:15am
I don't disagree with anything in your post.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 11-01-2005 - 8:16am

Right, I meant unpaid.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 11-01-2005 - 8:18am

"I disagree that placing a six-week, or 12-week baby in daycare 10 hours per day is a good move, for mom, dad and baby."


My kids were in childcare almost 10 hours a day from the age of 13 or 14 weeks.

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