I talk about my children a lot at work.
In part that's because, as a parenting blogger, it is, let's face it, my job. But there is a larger reason, too: I feel a responsibility to make such workplace conversations okay.
I didn't start out quite so chatty. When I entered my first newsroom, nearly three decades ago, parents (and particularly mothers) did not mention their kids. There were no photos of children on the desks. To display families was to display weakness -- to hint that you might have other things on your mind than the next scoop.
During my first pregnancy I worked in a national bureau, which meant I could keep things hidden for quite awhile. I liked it that way. No one could see me so I felt less pressure to prove that I was still exactly as focused and determined as before. (I wasn't, of course; I was differently focused and determined, but I didn't know that yet.) I snuck off to my regular OB appointments, calling them reporting "interviews" if anyone asked.
By the time I was pregnant the second time, though, the energy it took to pretend I was feeling peachy became exhausting. It was SO much easier to announce I felt like crap and that I wasn't getting nearly enough sleep. When I had a doctor's appointment I said I had a doctor's appointment. And if my then-toddler was home sick, or had a preschool class trip, or was the reason I didn't want to stay away a second night on a work trip, I started to say that out loud, too.
Then I began covering Life and Work and came to realize that silence is toxic. Our ideas of normal come from what we see and hear around us. Our permission to act, and even think, in a certain way, is obtained by noticing the boundaries being heeded by everyone else.
In her much talked about article in The Atlantic this week, Anne-Marie Slaughter explains how she goes out of her way to talk, too.
During her early years as a lawyer -- ones that coincided with my early years as a reporter -- she carefully watched "the pioneer generation of feminists" as they "walled off their personal lives from their professional personas to ensure that they could never be discriminated against for a lack of commitment to their work." A few decades later, when she became dean of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, she writes:
I decided that one of the advantages of being a woman in power was that I could help change the norms by deliberately talking about my children and my desire to have a balanced life. Thus, I would end faculty meetings at 6 p.m. by saying that I had to go home for dinner; I would also make clear to all student organizations that I would not come to dinner with them, because I needed to be home from six to eight, but that I would often be willing to come back after eight for a meeting. I also once told the Dean's Advisory Committee that the associate dean would chair the next session so I could go to a parent-teacher conference.After a few months of this, several female assistant professors showed up in my office quite agitated. "You have to stop talking about your kids," one said. "You are not showing the gravitas that people expect from a dean, which is particularly damaging precisely because you are the first woman dean of the school." I told them that I was doing it deliberately and continued my practice.
She tips her hat to others who do things in the same vein -- Secretary of State Clinton, for instance, who Slaughter worked with until recently, and who "deliberately came in around 8 a.m. and left around 7 p.m., to allow her close staff to have morning and evening time with their families (although of course she worked earlier and later, from home)." And Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who "recently acknowledged not only that she leaves work at 5:30 to have dinner with her family, but also that for many years she did not dare make this admission, even though she would of course make up the work time later in the evening."
It is a hard admission to make. But, as I learned with pregnancy, the strain that comes from pretending can be harder, still. And the more you tell, it follows that the more it becomes okay for others to hear.
Right?
During the web frenzy of conversation about Slaughter's piece yesterday, journalist Hannah Seligson, who often writes about the workplace, left this comment on New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor's Facebook page:
Anne-Marie Slaughter says women need to advocate more for balance. Be upfront, she says, about taking time off to go watch your daughter's soccer game. That's all fine and good in theory, but what about young women who are trying to work their way up the ladder in very competitive fields, where those kinds of choices are often way more complicated? My experience in the seven years I've spent writing for national newspapers and magazines is that being the gal who can do anything - and at any time - is highly rewarded. Personally, (and maybe this is where I need to step up as a foot soldier in this balance battle) I fear there will be career repercussions if I, said, "No, I can't file that story, I'm getting married later this week." In fact, I was told by an editor that it spoke to "my professionalism" that I did not tell her until the story was filed on Friday evening that I was getting married on Sunday. (FYI, I completely agree with my editor's assessment that it was the professional thing to do not to tell her.)So more broadly, what's at stake when women prioritize their personal lives over their work, particularly in this economy when there is no shortage of talented workers who need work? Also: I'm not sure I agree with Slaughter's take that women should be more transparent about the responsibilities pulling on them at home. Maybe if you've reached the apex of your career, proven yourself indispensible to your organization, or you work in a highly, highly specialized position. But for most of my peers - women born in the early 1980s - I would say we just feel lucky to have jobs and are terrified of rocking the boat.
Is it unprofessional to tell an editor that you are getting married this weekend? Not in the kind of workplace I want to be a part of. And not in the kind of workplace where morale is high and everyone understands that life happens. A workplace where you are judged by what you produce not how you produce it.
So I talk too much, and see it as a call to arms, a declaration of interdependence, a statement, as I wrote back to Seligson, that "we all do better work when we aren't scrambling to hide the whole of our lives, but are instead allowed to integrate them and fit our work around them."
So, let's talk.
How open are you about your life as a parent when you are at work?
Follow Lisa Belkin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lisabelkin
That being said, I do understand that there are other professions and work places where this type of flexibility is unheard of and the culture is completely different. Unfortunately it would be a difficult to put in place a one-size-fits-all culture. I do believe, however, that it is unhealthy from a business standpoint to deny employees of their identity. Identity is just as important to productivity, in my opinion, as good diet and exercise. :)
One of my employees was a young mother with twin toddler boys. Before the change in policy, she'd call in sick because one of the twins was ill. She never abused the policy and always made up for any unfinished work. When the policy change was announced, the twins' mother came into my office -- what would she do, how would this affect her performance reviews, etc? I explained that whenever the kids got sick, the employee was to tell me that she was sick.
That simple accommodation gave me an exceptionally loyal employee. It all comes down to trust. Do you trust your supervisor? How about when your needs conflict with his/hers? Supervisors who act as if they don't trust their employees often do not receive trust in return.
Talking about family concerns is always about trust. Who can you trust with information about your family. Will that information be used against you? The issue is bigger than work/family balance, but the internal dynamics of a particular workplace.
Are you less likely to be able to go on tough business trips or take job transfers to places the employer needs to get things done?
How much do you want a defense lawyer who is absent for a reason such as this during the last 2 days of a jury trial when final arguments are to be made.
My point is that there are now easy answers and you'd better have a spouse who can support you (whether a wife or husband) by taking care of the kids if you want a high flying, high potential and high stress career. Missing work routinely is not an option as just pointed out by Anne-Marie Slaughter in The Atlantic. One spouse has to have the lead career and the other has to be the support.
Long business trips/job transfers - I took the types of jobs that didn't generally require them. When I did need to go on a business trip, I found a way to make it happen. When I saw the dept I was in was transferring I transferred to a different department.
Companies need to stop assuming that workers with children will be less productive, it simply isn't the case. Some will be, just as some without kids are less than productive. You deal with every case as it occurs without pre-judgement and you might be surprised at what you find.
Individually, parents in two income families will do worse, on average, than, again individually, a parent who has a leading spouse career as the main wage earner simply because they cannot take all the opportunities (the tough road trip, the job transfer on short notice) that the unencumbered parent can. The unencumbered parent knows that his/her spouse will be able to stay home and take care of the sick child. But, then, they have the benefit of two incomes vs. one or a big one and a trailing spouse, and necessarily smaller, one.
More of the story: Sure. Kids are great way to connect with people, just be sure to let them share.
According to Dimitry Orlov, prior to the financial crisis there were several distinct stages of collapse, starting with a financial collapse, then a commercial collapse, then a political collapse. But thanks to the paper pushers with their fancy central planning, the timeline has been changed so that all the collapses will take place at nearly the same time. Good going paper pushers; you've changed a gradual fall that you might have been able to adjust to into a drop out of a 20 story window. You won't be getting any sympathy.
Delia Lloyd
www.realdelia.com
It doesn't work this way in the real world.
When I was pregnant with my daughter, I started looking for a new job for the exact reason that mine was not one which was very conducive to family/life balance. The need for a different job was made especially clear by my female boss who was also a new mother, yet happy to work long hours and without pumping breaks or the like. I could tell instantly that she was not going to be supportive of how I planned to parent, so I found a different, better job with more family friendly hours and lots of workplace talk about our families, which also was a step-up for me professionally so it was a win-win.
Ultimately, though I discovered that working part-time from home doing freelance work is what best supports my vision of family/work balance. Even in a highly supportive work environment, some jobs/hours aren't compatible with raising young children.
http://www.amber-hinds.com
Thank you for continuing to highlight the reflective and proactive Atlantic article by Anne-Marie Slaughter about her professional dilemmas and the conflicts between being an aspiring professional and a parent.
Dr. Slaughter reported to Hillary Rodham Clinton at the U.S. State Department, and acknowledges the Secretary's personal empathy for the challenges she faced. But why, if these two brilliant and immensely powerful women understand the challenges couldn't they together work out a solution? Why was it necessary for Dr. Slaughter to leave her position when her boss was a supportive woman who had the authority to change the workplace?
what society understands is that your personal business are usually only yours. I know people don't like to hear this, how would you like it if you are busy running a business , working 12 hours a day most times and employees are taking days off or sickies left and right ?
When you are running a company , you don't have the time to run a nursery at the same time. Girls put some of that burden on your husbands' shoulders. Stand up to him .