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
Mon, 11-07-2005 - 11:46am

No, it's not the same thing at all (the way I'm using ambition, but we may be disagreeing only about semantics).

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Avatar for mom34101
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Mon, 11-07-2005 - 11:52am
Where did she say that? She said anyone who sah is out of practice, unless they were an automaton. Therefore, she views them as a liability.
Avatar for mom34101
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Mon, 11-07-2005 - 12:27pm

Where did anyone in this thread say that a former sahm should be able to "step back in where she left off" in terms of advancement, salary, or even the elusive "star quality"? What I said was that decisions about hiring should be made on the basis of qualifications and experience. Period. If, as you assume, a sahm's experience doesn't stack up next to a wohm's because her skills are stale, then she will not have the same qualifications and experience as the wohm, and the wohm should get the job. OTOH, if the former sahm has better qualifications and experience than the wohm who has stayed in the workforce, the sahm should get the job.

"SAHMs returning to work WOULD be seen by me as being less valuable a commodity to hire 'out of the chute' than other candidates, male or female, parents or not. A gap in the resume means you are OUT OF PRACTICE. In whatever field you specialize in. Unless you are literally an automaton, the nuances of the field (be it office politics, emerging new technologies, new techniques in treatment, new research developments, or the freakin' new shades of lip gloss that are in) are the intangibles that discriminate between basic employees (the utility players as we call them in my office) and the stars."

You are simply wrong about this. 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. In some jobs, things move so quickly that taking time off would really hurt your job prospects. In others, it doesn't. Even there, it sometimes depends how long you take off--a year or two in many fields is not that critical. You also have to consider the individuals involved. For example, in my current job (legal writing teacher), it didn't matter that I sah for 6 years. I was still better qualified than many of the people I was competing against, even though they didn't have the resume gap you consider fatal. OTOH, if I had wanted to go back to private practice, I would have been at a significant disadvantage, mainly because I did not keep my skills and CLE credits up during the years I sah, and law is a rapidly changing field. But if I had stayed at home only a year or two, that wouldn't have been that big a deal.

And of course it's business. 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.

As for access: access is a great thing, but many women today have found that access to the same old choices men have had in the past is not all it's cracked up to be. They want something more, and many men want something more too. Personally, that's what I'd like to see--a more fluid workplace, where women could move in and out of the career track (and even the workplace) at different times in their lives without automatically being written off. 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"), you're doing as much to set things back as the militant sahm who thinks that you would sah if only you loved your kids more.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Mon, 11-07-2005 - 12:44pm

"What I said was that decisions about hiring should be made on the basis of qualifications and experience."


I agree.


"As for access: access is a great thing, but many women today have found that access to the same old choices men have had in the past is not all it's cracked up to be. They want something more, and many men want something more too. Personally, that's what I'd like to see--a more fluid workplace, where women could move in and out of the career track (and even the workplace) at different times in their lives without automatically being written off."


What's wrong with the "same old choices"?

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Avatar for mom34101
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Mon, 11-07-2005 - 12:44pm

But you left private practice before you had kids. So perhaps you're really saying you never had the level of ambition to be a partner in a law firm or to be general counsel of a company. I can certainly understand that--but why, then, did you keep implying that if I were really ambitious, I would have become a partner in my firm?

But maybe we're getting somewhere. An ambitious person doesn't lose all ambition just because she sah for awhile. She just modifies her ambition for a while, to use your terms.

Howver, I believe that people who are ambitious lose or sometimes *lessen* their ambition for lots of reasons--sometimes because of family circumstances; sometimes because they get older and can't keep up the pace anymore; sometimes because they find that the goal wasn't all it was cracked up to be. (I know plenty of unhappy partners in law firms; don't you?) The people who make a change tend to channel their ambition into other things in their lives.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Mon, 11-07-2005 - 12:58pm

"So perhaps you're really saying you never had the level of ambition to be a partner in a law firm or to be general counsel of a company."


You don't think aspiring to a position where I can make much more per hour (in house dept head) than I could as an equity partner in all but the most profitable law firms is the same "level of ambition"?


What would a person who was never really ambitious in the first place do after leaving private practice, IYO?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Mon, 11-07-2005 - 1:00pm

"I don't know pumpkinangel at all,"

Nor do I :)

"bu I have to enjoy from afar either your stubborn intent to pretend to be obtuse, or actual inability to concede that the same subjects have been addressed at length in this thread -"

Glad to see that you are enjoying yourself. I have to admit that I find this particular debate quite enjoyable myself.

<>

"It is all about context."

Indeed it is all about context. BTW, I purposely left out the specific details of the context so that each poster could identify/establish/speculate on the particulars themselves. Why? Because the context is clearly dependent upon the individual/perceiver. Furthermore, how the context is perceived is precisely the subject matter I am interested in getting at, as I think this is ultimately where the basis of prejudice, personal bias, anti-feminist views, discrimination, etc. if any, reside.

"Equal to whom?"

Equal to one another.

"Within the marriage/family arrangement,"

Yes, within the marriage/family arrangement.

"if the family has chosen a dynamic of SAHM/WOHD (or vice versa) because it fits their family, and their temperments, and their marriage structure, then yes, I expect that they are equal,"

Thank you. BTW, I agree that they are equal/equivalent as well.

"If we're talking about comparing two moms - one who SAH and another who works for pay - are they equally moms? Hell yes! Are they equally contributing to their families -- well, no, but I'll assume that they are EQUIVALENTLY contributing (throwing out the extremes of either case) and that each family did the calculus of financial, emotional, and physical needs in deciding their set up."

I agree with you on this point too.

"FInancially - nope - they are not equal. They may be extremely valuable to their families, but bottom line, the WOH parents represent greater financial significance to the family."

Ah, but surely you would agree that SAHM's are EQUIVALENTLY contributing, right, (in much the same way that WOHM's are EQUIVALENTLY contributing as moms)? Hmm, Am I detecting a slight slant/bias against SAHP's here? Surely not, as that would clearly be interpretted as prejudice, personal bias, discrimination, anti-feminism, etc. in some form or fashion, would it not?

"As a glib example, I assume you'd find that the WOH parent typically has a much larger life insurance policy value than the SAH parent."

Again, Am I detecting a slant/bias against SAHP's here? Surely not, as that would clearly be interpretted as prejudice, personal bias, discrimination, anti-feminist, etc. would it not? Maybe with regard to your individual subjective perception this might be true, but that isn't to say that it would necessarily be true objectively speaking, right?

<>

"Again, in what context? Within the family?"

Again, I am particularly interested in how *you* perceive the context as well as how *you* identify/establish/speculate on the particulars of that context. CLearly, one's individual perception as well as their speculation on the particulars of that context is very telling. In fact, I'd say that it speaks volumes about where they stand with regard to this particular debate.

"Not unless one partner wants something very different than the other and someone is being forced into this scenario (either a mom staying at home because DH wants it or DH being forced into primary income earner since mom refuses to work...) In pure financial terms - yes."

Your statement demonstrates my point regarding context and perception perfectly. For instance, why does your individually perceived context revolve around one partner "being forced" into a particular scenerio, rather than both partners having equal say and equal ability to "choose freely"? Likewise, why does your statement/context/perception focus only on "purely financial terms", rather than a combination of financial, social, emotional, physical, and spiritual needs? Again, very telling indeed.

Again, I purposely left out the specific details of the context so that each poster could identify/establish/speculate on the particulars themselves. Furthermore, how the context is perceived is precisely the subject matter I am interested in getting at, as I think this is ultimately where the basis of prejudice, personal bias, anti-feminist values, discrimination, etc. if any, resides. BTW, I will address the rest of you post in an additional post (as this one is getting far too long) :)

Avatar for mom34101
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Mon, 11-07-2005 - 1:01pm

That's fine for you if you were satified with the same old choices. Not everyone is. What if your dil or granddaugher someday wants something else? Would that be so wrong?

I'd like to see people be able to take sabbaticals to take care of small children or elderly parents without commiting career suicide. I'd like to see more options to work pt or reduced hours *without* the employer automatically assuming the employee will never want anything more. In law firms, I'd like to see women (and men) being able to leave partnership track for a few years and get back on when the kids are older. I'd like to see more non-partnership track positions. I would have liked to have been able to work pt or job-share at my old firm. I know women who would love to take a couple of years off to sah, but they're afraid they'll never get back to where they were again. Threads like these make me understand their fear better.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-28-2003
Mon, 11-07-2005 - 1:07pm

PJM, you need to get out more. I know SAHMs who SAH by choice who appear to be far more ambitious than you are. Easily.

(I'm sure you'll be disagreeing as I can see your definition of ambition is heavily tied to earning money.)

Avatar for mom34101
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Mon, 11-07-2005 - 1:13pm

I don't think aspiring to be a dept head is just as ambitious as aspiring to become an equity partner in a big law firm or general counsel of that same company, no. And I'm certainly not criticizing you for it. I don't think those aspirations are "better" than your own. I'm just trying to make the point that people's ambitions are different. It's not like an ambitious person always shoots for the top thing, and an unambitious person doesn't. There's lot of variation, and ambition means different things to different people.

You really can't make these generalizations about people who choose to sah. Someone can think taking care of her own kids is more important for a few years than her career without thinking her career is unimportant. Just as someone can think continuing in her career is important without thinking her kids are unimportant. I don't know why you have such a blind spot about this.

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