Sorry for the radio -- or blog -- silence the past week or so. Baby J. caught a nasty stomach virus that is still festering, and I've been home taking care of him.

I return to the office, and this blog, conflicted – reevaluating whether E. and I made the right decision to put J. into day care, whether I should've returned to work at all, whether my decision to become a working mom is about money, independence or who I am, or a little bit of everything.

When I’m home caring for Baby J, I worry that I’m not at work doing my job. When I’m at the office, I worry that Baby J needs me and I’m not there. I worry that I’m shortchanging everyone – my baby, my family, my employer, and myself.

Before I go on, let me emphasize that I know I'm fortunate to have the choice to stay home or return to work. Many parents don't have that choice for financial or other reasons.

I know I'm fortunate to have had a job to go back to after a lengthy maternity leave. Not all moms and dads have this option, either.

I'm not complaining here. But I also know that I can't be the only one who's had these doubts.

I knew sacrifices would be necessary to make my working-mom lifestyle work. Beyond the money and the inherent independence I feel by earning a paycheck, the question seems to come down to this for me: Which sacrifices can I live with most peaceably?

I am interested in hearing your thoughts and your stories. How did you come to the decision to stay home or return to work? Was it mostly a dollars-and-cents decision? Or was it something else? Was it a combination of emotional, personal and financial factors? And, probably most importantly, are you at peace with your decision?
 

Posted by Hanah Cho at 9:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: Child Care, Work-life balance
        

Being a stay-at-home parent is hard. What is like for the breadwinner who's also the mom?

CBS' The Early Show co-host Erica Hill talks about feeling guilty, letting go of control and adjusting to what's becoming an increasingly more common arrangement.

Of course, I didn't fully factor in the inevitable pangs of guilt and the frustration. The guilt wasn't new. I think every parent (especially moms) places an unnecessary amount of guilt on themselves when it comes to raising children: not home enough, not present enough while home, too distracted by the BlackBerry, not really interested in reading "Goodnight Moon" for the 347th time, not up for schlepping to the playground, too short-tempered... the list goes on and on.

Continue reading "Working mom as breadwinner" »

Posted by Hanah Cho at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Dads, Guilty-Mom polls, Marriage, Parenting in general, Work-life balance, Workplace
        

I'm at home taking care of baby J., who is miserable and cranky with a nasty cold.

Thanks to an understanding boss, I took a sick day from work. But I can't help feel guilty about not being at the office: I just have so much work to do. I'm letting down your manager and colleagues.

Of course, if I did go into work, I would feel guilty for not staying home with J.

So either way, there's just guilt.

Why has guilt become second nature now that I've become a parent? Is that normal?

Does it get any better or worse?

Posted by Hanah Cho at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Guilty-Mom polls, Work-life balance, Workplace
        

Any time there's a snow day here, working parents stress out about having to find last-minute child care.

A new study released today found that workers with employer-sponsored dependent benefits -- such as worksite child care, elder care and back-up care -- report less stress and better health than those without such options.

Bright Horizons Family Solutions conducted the survey of 4,000 working adults: one group with access to employer-sponsored dependent care benefits and a second group without them. (Disclosure: Bright Horizons offers these benefits for employers and also operates child care centers.)

Among the survey's findings, workers with employer-sponsored dependent care benefits:

• Were 31 percent less likely to report lost productivity due to stress.
• Reported 25 percent fewer personal health concerns due to stress.

In contrast, workers without such benefits were nearly a third more likely to report being down or depressed and spend 20 percent more time dealing with childcare issues at work, among other findings.

Such benefits seem like a rarity at a time when employers are laying off workers and cutting pay. Is there any employer in the Baltimore region that offers any sort of dependent care benefit?

UPDATE: Bright Horizons tells me Johns Hopkins University, Discovery Communications in Silver Spring, the U.S. Census Bureau based in Suitland and Marriott International in Bethesda are some of the Maryland employers who offer dependent care benefits.

Posted by Hanah Cho at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Child Care, Work-life balance, Workplace
        

During maternity leave, I became hooked on the reality show Tori & Dean: Sweet Home Hollywood. (Instead of sleeping while J. was napping, I turned on the television.)

For those not aware of the show, Tori is actress Tori Spelling of "Beverly Hills 90210" fame, who along with her husband, Dean McDermott, are raising two small children. A big theme of the show is Tori trying to juggle her life as a mom, wife, actress, author and with everything else that's going on in her life.

I realize that she probably has more help and resources than the average working mom. But like most couples, Tori and Dean have arguments about their roles, similar to the discussion we're having on this blog.

In particular, they are struggling with what it means to be husband and wife when you are so focused on being good parents. You are so busy with work or trying to give your kid a bath or getting an extra few minutes of sleep that you barely have time to acknowledge your significant other except to talk about your kids.

By the end of the show's most recent season, Tori and Dean get their mojo back by reconnecting through dates and getaways without their children, and remembering what brought them together in the first place. They even renew their wedding vows.

Many couples don't have the time or the resources to go to such lengths. So how do you reconnect with your hubby wife or partner? What works for you?

Posted by Hanah Cho at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Marriage, Work-life balance
        

Do you know a working mom who is succesfully juggling work and family while also finding time to volunteer? (I'd like to meet this superwoman or superwomen.)

The annual "Spirit Women of Baltimore" event is looking to honor a Baltimore area woman who has found balance in her life, along with an up-and-coming female who's making her mark in Baltimore and a woman who has been a leader and mentor in the community.

Check out the nomination form here. Nominations are due June 30.

The event, sponsored by Morton's The Steakhouse and MyCity4Her.com, benefits the American Red Cross of Central Maryland.

Posted by Hanah Cho at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Work-life balance
        

With Father's Day just a day old, I ran across an interesting New York Times article about dads feeling just as stressed as moms in juggling family and work lives.

I know my husband, E., and other men in our generation want to be more than the breadwinner in the family. But as the article points out, dads are finding it just as difficult as moms to strike the right balance:

But several studies show that fathers are now struggling just as much — and sometimes even more — than mothers in trying to fulfill their responsibilities at home and in the office. Just last week, Boston College released a study called "The New Dad" suggesting that new fathers face a subtle bias in the workplace, which fails to recognize their stepped-up family responsibilities and presumes that they will be largely unaffected by children.

With dads taking on a larger role in childrearing, they are also contributing more to household chores and other activities. Or are they?

Although men do more vacuuming and dishwashing than their fathers did, they still lag behind women when it comes to housework. When both husband and wife work outside the home, the woman spends about 28 hours a week on housework. Her husband can claim only about 16 hours, according to the National Survey of Families and Households from the University of Wisconsin. And men and women themselves paint very different pictures of their domestic duties. In the 2008 Families and Work report, 49 percent of men said they provided most or an equal amount of child care. But only 31 percent of women gave their husbands that much credit. The perception gap continued for cooking and housecleaning — more than 50 percent of men say they do most or half the work; 70 percent of wives say they do all of it.

While I view E. as an equal partner in raising our son, I can't say the same when it comes to chores. I have a mental checklist of what he does or doesn't do around the house. Am I just not giving him enough credit?

Should dads equally share in the household duties as well as childcare responsibilities? What do you think?

Posted by Hanah Cho at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Child Care, Work-life balance
        

Working mothers with children under 18 are much more rushed (or at least they feel more rushed) than the general public, reports the Pew Research Center. Not much of a surprise to most of us in that category, but what followed was: Those working moms report the same level of happiness as stay-at-home moms, with 36 percent of those responding to a survey saying they're "very happy," and 44 percent saying they're "pretty happy."

Less happy were single mothers with children under 18. Only 27 percent were "very happy."

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Work-life balance
        

Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor Carol Greider receives her Nobel Prize in medicine today for her research into how chromosomes protect themselves as cells divide. While lauding her for her prize, I'm interested in what she and one of her fellow laureates, Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco, had to say about prospects for women in scientific research.

Despite their own wonderful achievement, the two paint a bleak picture of opportunities for women in science, according to the Associated Press. They say that the career structure is still very much geared toward men -- and that promising female researchers fall away from the work not because they can't do it, but because it isn't compatible with having a family.

Blackburn said there need to be more opportunities for part-time work.

I think frustrated mothers in many professions would say the same, but it's startling to hear these extraordinary women articulate it on the eve of accepting their prize.

How do we make things more flexible, though, when the state of the economy makes many of us feel lucky just to have any job at all?

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Work-life balance
        

Thanks so much to my friend Katherine Lewis, the About.com Guide to Working Moms, who named Charm City Moms as her site of the week this week. We appreciate the love!

And you should give her some back. Katherine's got valuable information on flexible work options; juggling a sick child and work (timely these days); and easing separation anxiety.

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Work-life balance
        

This week has been one of the most challenging in the eight years that my husband and I have been working parents. One or both of our children has been sick -- as in, sick enough to stay home and need a parent to care for them -- for the last six days. That means my husband and I have each worked from home several days this week.

We're lucky enough to work for pretty understanding employers that also have the technology to allow us to work pretty seamlessly at home. Still, this situation is scary for a number of reasons. First, we're worried about the kids, who apparently have coxsackie virus, a pretty common summer virus that seems to be making its way around the community. Because it's a virus, there's not much we can do but keep them comfortable and ride it out.

But frankly, in this recession, it's also scary to tell an employer you won't be in because your child is sick -- again. You wonder if your boss questions your work ethic or discovers he can get along without you. You try to make sure you're in touch and letting him know specifically what you've accomplished while working at home, but still.

And while you'd really rather take the day off and focus solely on the kids, you worry about that, too. If your work falls to others while you deal with the family emergency, you feel for your coworkers.

In our case, at the same time, I worry that the kids are watching too much TV and not getting enough attention as I try to work. Ideally we'd call in a family member, but the closest one is more than 1,000 miles away. And I don't feel right about asking a sitter to risk getting sick herself.

I'm curious about what others do about work during a child's prolonged illness. What are your strategies, at work and at home?

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 2:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Health, Work-life balance
        

CBS News, which has started a project called "Children and the Recession" to examine the effects of the economic meltdown on our children, has some interesting data. They report:

--In the last six months, 60 percent of about 1,000 parents polled by the network said they've had to tell their children they may not have the money to do at least some of the things the family used to do.

--About 1 in 10 of the parents said they had delayed taking their children for some type of medical treatment within the past six months because of the recession. Here's more:

Meanwhile, I'm looking at the flip side of this story. I'm looking for kids and families who have shown incredible resilience during these hard times. When told that a parent lost a job, has a child you know responded in a very positive way -- offering to get a summer job, coming up with ideas for trimming the family budget, helping the job-seeking parent get computer savvy? If so, and if that family is in Central Maryland, I'd like to interview them. Please e-mail or call me (410-332-6753) to get in touch.

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Work-life balance
        

Yesterday Michelle Obama delivered a speech on work-life balance, a topic she has said would be an important priority for her as First Lady. The Moms To Work blog has a transcript. 

Obama acknowledged that one income often can't support a family any more; that even if one parent wants to stay home, both often must work. She talked about the need, even in these times when all of us fear for our jobs, for companies to create greater flexibility to hold on to talented employees. Even if it's something as simple as helping them get out to pick up their children at school.

And she pointed out that many companies are a long way from that -- that many don't even provide their workers with paid sick days, leaving working parents with terrible choices when their children are ill.

What do you think about what she said? Are we likely to see these hopes realized any time soon?

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Work-life balance
        

I caught up yesterday with David Honick, the attorney in Salisbury whose firm is the only one in Maryland listed on the Babies in the Workplace web site as allowing employees to bring their offspring. (You'll remember this came up when we were talking about Sarah Palin bringing her infant to the governor's office.)

Honick, who specializes in civil litigation on land-use matters, said his office has formally hosted one baby so far -- but the child, now a toddler, has been around for a while. He's the son of Honick's paralegal, who works part-time. Honick started the policy to keep her happy, but he says he's been very happy with the arrangement, too.

"It's gone very well," he said. "I've actually enjoyed having her son around."

Honick said he was receptive to the idea because he has three children -- now 3, 6, and 10 -- and has struggled as well with getting the right child care. "It never crossed my mind to say no," he said. "Now if I hire new employees, and I'm looking for a secretary, if she wanted to bring her baby, I'd say that's fine."

Of course, it helps that right now he and the mom in question are the only employees in the office, so there's no one else to consult. But clients do visit. If they minded having a young one toddle around, they haven't said it, Honick said.

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Work-life balance
        

One of the many issues raised by the candidacy of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for vice president is the idea of caring for an infant while you're working in any kind of office. Palin's solution, as reported by several newspapers, has been to keep her baby, Trig, with her as much as possible, whether that's in the governor's office or while traveling to appearances, as in the picture on the left.

So I thought it might be interesting to talk about our own experiences bringing (or not) babies to work and to find out how many workplaces are truly baby-friendly.

A reader pointed me to the site Babies In the Workplace, which lists 104 companies around the country classified as "baby-friendly" and the number of "babies hosted" at each office to date.

I could find only one workplace listed there from Maryland -- the Law Offices of David Honick, P.A. (The Web site says that firm has hosted one baby so far.) I left a phone message there this morning to see if I could talk with the employees about babies at work. I'll report back if I hear from them.

Have you brought your babies to work, or worked alongside the babes of others? How did it go?

(Associated Press photo/Eric Risberg)

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: Work-life balance
        

Spirited discussions continue all over the country about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's work-family balancing act as she runs for vice-president with five children and a grandchild on the way. Here are some related links I thought might interest you:

--This ABC News piece has interesting stats on what working mothers themselves think about whether it's ideal for high-powered moms to be gone from home as much as they are.

--The Los Angeles Times' health blog examines the issue of genetic testing, highlighted by the fact that Palin's infant son, Trig, has Down Syndrome.

--Here at The Baltimore Sun, we're looking at the state of teen pregnancy.

--For lots of different views from female bloggers, here's the Palin link at BlogHer.

No matter where you stand, John McCain's choice of a running mate has definitely renewed discussion of what many of us see as a hidden, daily struggle -- how women can live up to their own expectations (let alone society's) as both mothers and individuals.

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)
Categories: Work-life balance
        

Among the many conversations about Republican presidential nominee John McCain's vice-presidential pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, is the one summed up in this New York Times piece today. Moms and dads are debating how a woman who gave birth just five months ago to a child with Down Syndrome can subject herself to the punishing rigors of this campaign.

This Washington Post story offers a clue: The baby's with her in the office, even being discreetly nursed during a meeting.

On one hand, it's a bit of a sexist argument: Would anyone ask these questions if the candidate were the father of a new baby? Palin's husband is reportedly on leave from his job and prepared, at least for the moment, to be a full-time dad.

On the other, at least one woman in the Times story says Palin's willingness to spend long hours on the trail doesn't jibe with her notion of putting a new baby first.

What do you think?

(Photo by Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (51)
Categories: Work-life balance
        

My week home with the kids (perhaps I should stop calling it 'vacation') is drawing to a close. It gave me the healthy reminder I get every so often of the organizational skills, strategic thinking and just plain tiring physical labor it takes to care full-time for two young kids.

Of course, I made it more difficult for myself (as I always do) by having too many 'goals' (work, home, and personal -- ha!) for my 'time off.' And this part of August is a weird twilight time that carries some conflicting emotions for both parents and kids -- you want to take advantage of the last free week before school, yet you want to get ready for school. Kind of a buzz kill if you're not careful.

Amid all that, I did hit on one winning strategy I'd love to share. It's called the "cooperation flower."

It's a variation on the oft-heard idea of giving points or stickers for good behavior. I've tried those before, but this seemed to work better. Each child started with a blank piece of paper. Every time I noticed a child exhibiting especially grown-up or cooperative behavior -- cleaning up a spill without being asked, giving up a chair for an older relative, not getting upset over a change in plans -- I would draw a flower on the paper. Something about having the flower drawn sparked their imaginations (and, perhaps, competitive spirits). They got to choose what color it would be, and each flower was a little different from the last.

Soon they started helping each other and drawing flowers on each others' charts. By the end of the week, they each had a whole garden.

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 6:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Work-life balance
        

If you missed it yesterday, you must catch up with Jill Rosen's story on stay-at-home moms who are trying to head back into the work force because the economy has made it very difficult to live on one income.

There's an interesting discussion below the story. These moms aren't getting much sympathy. Some of you might have a different take, and I'd love it if you'd share that here.

(Photo by Sun photographer Doug Kapustin of Jennifer Hart-Walters, mother of two, (Elizabeth Walters (5) and Zachary Walters (3) ) who has gone back to work part-time.)

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)
Categories: Work-life balance
        

My colleague Jill Rosen is investigating the notion that the rising cost of food, gas, and utilities are prompting stay-at-home parents to at least consider going back to work, part-time or full-time. Of course there aren't a lot of jobs out there, and some parents might end up doing the opposite -- staying home after cutbacks at their companies.

If the economy is changing the work-parenting balance at your house, and you'd be willing to talk about it for the story, please e-mail Jill. And please feel free to talk about it here, too.

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Work-life balance
        

How equally are the parenting duties really divided in your household? A fascinating story coming in Sunday's New York Times magazine, previewed on the web site, looks into that question. In light of our ongoing polls on fathers' jobs, I thought it was particularly timely.

I'd love to know your thoughts on the article, which really explores some unspoken assumptions about parenting roles.

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Work-life balance
        

This ABC news piece brings some discouraging news for expecting parents: Just 16 percent of employers offer fully paid, six-week maternity leaves, according to a study by the Families and Work Institute -- compared to 27 percent a decade ago.

The study also found that despite technological advances that might make more working from home and job-sharing possible, employers aren't offering more of those options. One upside: employers are becoming more accommodating to mothers who need private spaces to breastfeed (or pump, I gather).

As our economic picture gets bleaker, I imagine it will be harder for some employees to feel they can leave their jobs for long to have a baby or care for a family member. In retrospect, I feel supremely lucky to have been able to take 6 months or so with each child. Yet I would love to have been able to take more time.

How much time did you take for your maternity leaves?

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Babies and Toddlers, Expecting, Work-life balance