Wake Up, Employers: Working Moms Are Giving Up

New York Times writer Lisa Belkin's controversial October 26, 2003 article about smart, young women leaving the workforce to raise children -- dubbed the "opt out revolution" -- sparked a firestorm of debate centered around one dramatic question:

Is the most well-educated generation of women in history -- the daughters of feminism and Title IX and glass-ceiling smashing pioneers -- really choosing domesticity over career?

Books have been written in response (Get To Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World by Linda R. Hirshman), class curricula have been created (NYU's Stern Business School will offer a course on work/family balance this spring), and studies have been done.

It turns out that Belkin's "opt out revolution" was more like an opt out overreaction. Heather Boushey, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. found that the drop in women's work participation rates between 2001 and 2005 was largely due to a weak labor market, and further, men's labor rates also dropped at this time. Joan Williams, the director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings, recently reported that 86 percent of those women who did leave their jobs did so because of inflexible office policy, not Martha Stewart fantasies.

While old guard feminists have been busy pointing fingers at young, frivolous co-eds, ignorant of the legacy they have inherited, they should be placing the blame where it is most deserved: in the boardrooms where inflexible and sometimes even inhumane work/family policy is established and in the government offices where little legislation is ever written to protect working parents.

The question we should all be asking is not: why aren't more young women enthused about living lives of work rigidity? But, what can we do to change work/family policy in this country so that mothers and fathers, and those who are caring for aging parents, can live their fullest lives?

That's exactly the question that filmmakers Laura Pacheco and John de Graaf explore in their documentary film, The Motherhood Manifesto, a companion project to the book of the same name written by Joan Blades and Kristen Rowe-Finkbeiner. In both, the creators weave personal stories with expert commentary to explore what happens to working mothers and families in a country that doesn't support them.

For example, only 1 in 7 American workers get paid childcare leave -- a policy that has proven to reduce infant mortality, improve children's learning and reduce juvenile delinquency. Selena Allen, a non-profit worker and mother of two in Kent, Washington, is featured in the film and illustrates just how devastating this lack of leave can be. She and her husband both worked full time, but still money was tight.

"We rent a house," Allen explains. "We don't drive fancy new cars. We don't do anything luxurious. We're just trying to make ends meet."

When her second son was born six weeks premature and rushed to intensive care, there was no way that Allen could take time off. Her workplace only offered one month of paid maternity leave, and Allen and her family decided it would be best spent once the baby came home. She gave birth on a Wednesday and went back to work on a Monday. Allen reflects, "I felt like a piece of me got left in that hospital, and I had to pretend like I was okay."

This is not just a touchy-feely topic, but an economic watershed. The average female college graduate who becomes a mother will sacrifice about a million dollars over her lifetime. And it's not just personal financial loss that is caused by rigid work/family policy. A new study by Catalyst, a research and advisory organization on women at work, and The Community, Families & Work Program (CFWP) at Brandeis University, found that of the 1,755 working parents studied in three Fortune 100 organizations, 1 in 20 parents, experience high stress as a result of inflexible work/family policy. A staggering number when you consider that, according to American Psychologist, workplace stress costs companies an estimated $50-$300 billion in lost job productivity each year.