Bringing an Obama-like Attitude to the Mommy Wars

I don't know who did the dishes at Barack and Michelle Obama's house before he became president, and maybe I don't want to know. But I've been thinking about what President Obama has to teach us about how to negotiate who stays home when the kids are sick or tells their boss they just can't make that 6:00 PM meeting. These issues are as intractable as containing health care costs and more fraught than bailing out Wall Street, and for many of us, they're the air we breathe. No wonder so many Americans have respiratory problems.

Still, it's hard not be inspired by Obama's tenacious optimism that, by working together, we can make things better. When he says it, it doesn't even sound like a platitude but rather like a sensible idea. Optimism is in short supply in the articles and books I've read lately about women and work. We're familiar with the endless mutual bashing of the Mommy Wars: the grim statistics about how few women hold leadership positions in business or the professions, how feminism is its own worst enemy, and how the glass ceiling is as solid as ever. I'm happy to say that a new book with a more Obama-like spirit came out recently: Getting to 50/50: How Working Couples Can Have it All by Sharing it All (Bantam) by Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober.

Meers and Strober -- a former managing director at Goldman Sachs (and a product of the Obama children's school), and a managing director of a private equity firm respectively -- are well informed and clear-eyed. They've compiled the research and done a lot of their own as well, but the lessons they draw from it are refreshingly upbeat. First, though, the bad news. The authors show convincingly that women are not opting out of the workplace in large numbers (though certainly some women are genuinely happier not working) but rather being pushed out by a variety of factors. These include employer assumptions that mothers are less competent, women's own fears that working and motherhood are incompatible, the contemporary workplace's 24/7 culture, and the failure of women who are managing to juggle work and family to share their stories and strategies. That's something this book does well: share the stories of many women who have found ways to successfully (and even joyfully) combine work and children, and to offer strategies for everything from changing your boss's attitude toward your commitment to your job to getting your husband to see the house and kids as truly his responsibility as well as yours.

Meers and Strober also reassure. The first three chapters of their book are devoted to studies and statistics that show that when women work it's good for the kids and the dads as well as for the women themselves. Kids benefit from having involved fathers and happier mothers; dads benefit from sharing the stress of supporting the family and from spending time with their kids; moms benefit from using their minds and earning their own money and learning how to let go of some control and perfectionism. Much of this is common sense stuff, but the authors have the numbers to back it up.

How, then, to make work work for mothers? The key, according to Meers and Strober, is for women to stop sniping at their husbands and second-guessing the way men put on diapers or what they serve for dinner when it's their night to cook. Instead, women have to engage their partners in serious conversations about money and responsibility and how to figure out who does what. They can't unilaterally make decisions without consulting their allies; they need to issue an invitation to the table even if the other side hasn't proven trustworthy in the past: " 'I do' is not merely the response you give before the ring goes on your finger. Ongoing negotiation about what 'I do' and 'you do' often determines the fate of a marriage.' " Then -- as in America under Obama -- everyone will live happily ever after.

Okay, maybe not. But some people will live somewhat more happily (and more fairly), and surely that's worth a lot. As for the "ever after," real life doesn't have endings, but I am a novelist by profession (as well as a mother of two), and part of my job is figuring out what happens on the last page. My recent book, Lady of the Snakes, is about a woman caught between her passion for her work and her love for family. This young Russian literature professor has to deal with childcare problems and workplace pressures and sick children -- all that stuff -- and I spent a lot of time trying to decide what kind of ending to give her. Should she succeed? Too easy and romantic. Should she fail? Too depressing and cynical. What then?

After the birth of her first baby, things go badly for my protagonist. Her marriage almost collapses and a powerful competitor nearly derails her career and she struggles with a difficult child. Still, you can see she's trying. I decided to give her a second chance. Toward the end of the book she gets pregnant again and reconciles with her husband. I can only hope her experiences in the course of the novel have given her -- and her husband -- the tools to do a better job the next time around.

Maybe that's the best any of us can ask for -- the best the culture as a whole can ask for. It's true we've screwed things up pretty well till now. But with some new ideas and some new leadership, surely we'll do better this time.

Comments

[rlugbill]

I think what you are trying to say is that rather than replacing one orthodoxy with a different orthodoxy, the new paradigm is that you negotiate and work things out.

Rather than trading a traditional view of a woman's role for a feminist view of a woman's role, the concept is that you try to come to an agreement that works for all parties.

I agree with this concept but at the same time, I understand that there are drawbacks. It makes for endless negotiations over every detail of life.

In our wedding, we had to come up with every detail of what to do on our own. I almost envied a friend's wedding recently who got married by a priest and there were no decisions to make (fewer anyway). The priest had done hundreds of weddings and performed this one the same way as all the others. Simple and easy.

Some people like the win-win approach, but many couples get stuck in their negotiations and can't get unstuck. Even if both parties have great negotiation skills (which is rare), it is extremely difficult to use them in the emotionally charged situation of a marriage, so many people resort to less effective tactics such as threats, passive-aggressive behavior, tantrums, name-calling, etc.

The increase in the number of things to be negotiated may also be increasing the number of arguments. Now, everything is on the table now.

[dadw5boys]

We have 6 kids. When the first 2 came along my wife had to learn that no matter what I am still an individual and will not even try to do everything her way.

I am a grown educated and thinking individual who can make decision of what to do and when to do it.

Her emergency were not mine when it came to the kids. Yes they were fed and it might have been Pizza but if they are still hungery feed them again do not complain. Wear a man down compliaing how he does things differently and he will just stop doing anything period.

Women get rid of your rules you married the guy so he must have some smarts. Let him use them freely. He is going to make mistakes SO WILL YOU!!!!!!!!

So back off and just do what needs to be done. If your both still Teenagers than you will need that list of chores.
But if your adults then a list of chores is nothing more than a peice of paper.

GROW UP and just do what ever is in front of you that needs to be done.

[SharonMeers]

Thank you for focusing on the main point of Getting to 50/50 -- that change in how we live at home drives change we all want at work.

To get affordable childcare, better family leave and job flexibility we have to shift our mindsets about who races out of the office to do pick up or stays home with our child is sick.

The good news: Talking at colleges and companies like Google and Microsoft, we find half the audience is male and men ask more than half the questions. Men want time with their kids just as much as women do. An April briefing from the Council on Contemporary Families says that dads now spend three times more hours with their kids than a generation ago – that male attitudes have changed a lot and but policy is stuck in an era when men had smaller family roles.

With men suffering 80% of layoffs according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more families rely on working moms than ever. And work/life conflict has never been higher. Let’s get out the 50/50 vote, men and women who can work as equals (and laugh) together. Let’s support the Obamas – the first-couple who really “gets it” – to fix the workplace so moms can keep the jobs they want and dads can get home for family dinner!

[AZBunny]

I had a co-worker who used to say "if people knew what it was like to parent a teenager the human race would be extinct because nobody would do it."

I say "if women knew what having a child did to their marriage, body, sanity, time, job, and mental health the human race would be extinct...­........"

[LeeGarverick]

Thanks for a great review of a worthwhile topic. I think "Getting to 50/50" provides a nice framework for any couple considering having children as well as those who already do. There are so many unspoken assumptions that are better out on the table so that families can decide together what works for them. "Lady of the Snakes" sounds like my next read as well.

[Rachel Pastan - Huffpost Blogger]

Oh, I definitely agree! I think we need a word that means "working for pay" (though as a novelist and blogger I'm also often working NOT for pay even when my kids are at school). Anyone have any suggestions???

[inmyhumbleopinion]

In any other context the word would be "volunteer". But that doesn't quite capture it, does it? :-)

[quindy]

"(though certainly some women are genuinely happier not working)".­....

You must be kidding! Staying at home to raise children does not equate "not working" it equates "not being paid" for what you do. I worked outside home for many years before I had my children and bringing them up was the hardest work of all.

[OtayPanky]

You know very well what she meant by "not working". And it's perfectly obvious she's not denigrating the role of the full time mother.

This is the kind of non-dialogue misfire that keeps the Mommy Wars - and (as Obama said) so many of our other ideological wars) alive.

We need more light, and less heat to find a way forward.

[Rachel Pastan - Huffpost Blogger]

I think this is one of the places fiction is useful!

Novels that address social issues are sometimes able to do so with a broad, multi-faceted sympathy. What I wanted to do in my novel, Lady of the Snakes, was to make you *feel* what it's like to a be a young mother struggling with these issues.

Literature helps you put yourself in other people's shoes like nothing else. This kind of empathy can only be good for society as a whole.