The YP Mom and Work-Life Balance

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Work-life balance.
 
It’s the goal of many young professional moms who are seeking harmony between quality family time and their career aspirations. But juggling the two is difficult, especially during a recession when flexible work arrangements may not be possible.
 
While the exact count of how many YP moms are out there is fuzzy, data from recent reports suggest that the number of women who are balancing work and family is not a small minority. A fall 2009 report from the Pew Research Center found that 66 percent of women with children under the age of 17 work full or part time. And according to a Pew report from last month, 75 percent of all babies born in 2008 were born to mothers between the ages of 20-34. Moms over the age of 35 accounted for 14 percent of 2008 newborns.
 
So just what are some young mothers doing to maintain their career trajectories while still spending enough time with their families?
 
Christine Koh, now 36, of West Medford, Mass., telecommuted when she went back to work part-time after she had a daughter and was dealing with her father’s serious illness in 2005.
 
And then in the fall of 2006, Koh, who was working on her post-doctoral research on music and brain science at the time, left the academic world to focus full-time on freelance writing and editing, her own design business and Boston Mamas, the parenting website she founded in July 2006.
 
Through Boston Mamas, Koh said she’s come into contact with many women she calls “mamapreneurs”; women who left traditional career trajectories to create their own businesses because they wanted creative and flexible work in order to spend more time with their kids.
 
Brenda Noel, 38 of Brookline, Mass., worked as a federal grants manager for the state before having twin girls, now 6, and began taking on non-profit consulting projects about three years ago. “I liked the flexibility it afforded me,” she said. The projects eventually led to her business.
 

Her career move might not have been possible 20 years ago. Noel thinks her consulting business would not have happened if it weren't for technology. She can communicate and exchange documents with clients via e-mail, as well as virtually access clients’ networks.
 
Technology and communication tools such as e-mail, Skype, Webcams and virtual access to company intranet and servers make working from home or during off-hours a reality for many moms looking to spend all or part of the workday with their children instead of at the office.
 
Even if working moms are returning to traditional workplaces, Koh has seen more women taking advantage of flex-time and working off-hours. “I’m definitely seeing moms trying to carve things out in a different way for themselves,” she said.
 
Flex-time may be available at some companies today, but these benefits are far from the norm and the recession has impacted workplace flexibility. Working Mother magazine compiles an annual list of the 100 best companies in the United States for working moms. According to the magazine's Web site, companies apply for the list and are assessed in areas such as benefits, childcare, flexible work and parental leave.
 
The companies honored by Working Mother in 2009 continued to offer family-friendly benefits despite the recession, but the magazine acknowledged that benefits nationwide have suffered. Only 16 percent of companies in the U.S. offered job-sharing in 2009 and the number of companies nationwide offering flexible work arrangements dropped by five percentage points, the magazine stated in a press release.
 
Even if a company does offer flexibility benefits, working parents are more likely to be afraid to take advantage of these options because of the recession, Rosanna Hertz, PhD., a professor of sociology and women’s and gender studies at Wellesley College, said.
 
“I think women are caught right now,” she said. Under normal circumstances, Hertz would suggest that workers take advantage of flexible benefits, but now may not be a great time to ask even if the benefits are established and offered.
 
Hertz, a working mom of one daughter, said the recession has put work-family balance progress on hold. She’d like to “remain hopeful” that workplace flexibility and alternative schedules for working parents may be the norm in the future, but she’s not sure how things will shake out with the recession.
 
Hertz strongly believes that workplace flexibility “has to be for everyone — working fathers and working mothers.” If flexibility is only offered to working mothers, there won’t be gender equity in the workplace, she said.
 
And although the recession complicates workplace flexibility, both Koh and Noel believe that working remotely can be done in many different industries and positions. “[You] just need to have the creativity and the vision to pitch it” and not get yourself into a financial pickle, Noel said. 
 
Koh echoed this, saying that a working mom looking to telecommute should create a plan with her supervisor, outline deliverables and let the company know that there will be accountability and the plan can be re-evaluated after a trial period.
 
Koh suggests that working moms should set their intentions for an ideal work arrangement and then try to make it happen. Work shouldn’t be torture, Koh said, there "should be joy in it.”
 
Read more from YPNation on women in the workplace.
 
(Photo: Google images/C.C. 3.0)