Working Mother

Archive for August, 2009

This summer my daughter was fortunate to apprentice with a friend of mine, an interior designer and architect. When she came home at the end of her first day, I found her prostrate on my bed.

“How did it go?” I asked.

“Manual labor,” she moaned. “Manual labor.”

My 15-year-old daughter, who my architect friend said carried a drill as though it were a purse, had spent the day staple-gunning fabric to chairs, hot-glueing fringes to ottomans, and pulling out with pliers crooked upholstery tacks off a sofa.

In the days that followed, she went on to install curtains, make lamp shades, and help create light fixtures—an experience that probably taught her more about problem solving than those supposedly college-resume enhancing summer internships my fellow blogger Catherine Arnst wrote about and for which parents paid fees of up to $9,500. My daughter’s two weeks as an apprentice helped make this “the best summer of my life,” she said.

I remembered this as I read “Deskbound, Romancing the Brick,” the recent article on The New York Times about “recession-pummeled Americans indulging in a romance with blue-collar trades, while also questioning the hollowness of white-collar work.”

I don’t know whether the current nostalgia for working with one’s hands will result in a lasting shift in how people value blue-collar vs. white-collar jobs. But this I can say: Working in a trade benefits teens far more than an office job does.

Just think about it. Manual labor uses up all that energy teens seem to have in abundance. And the kids immediately can see the fruits of their labor—be it a well-swept garden or a lamp that actually lights up—so there isn’t the problem of delayed gratification. For both those reasons, manual labor is a great mood enhancer for teens.

My daughter’s experience was made richer by the fact that she found herself in a true apprenticeship situation: She not only worked at the elbows of more experienced workers but she also helped prepare and ate meals with them. The effect was magical. It didn’t take more than a few days before she began referring to “our clients” and “our billings.”

I know that summer jobs for teens, already scarce, have become scarcer in this recession—which is a shame, because their benefits are manifold. Next year, as I help my daughter find summer work, I’ll make sure that it again will involve a lot of elbow grease.

What summer jobs do you think are best for teens?

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In honor of Women’s Equality Day, this post was written by Lisa Gilford (pictured here), who is the president of the National Association of Women Lawyers and a litigation partner in the Los Angeles office of Alston & Bird LLP focusing her practice on toxic torts and product law. She is also a mother of a daughter and son, ages 6 and 4.

There has been a great deal of media attention devoted to the notion that the recession is having a greater impact on men than women. Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicates that since the recession began, 78% of all the jobs lost were held by men. The male unemployment rate is now almost 3 percentage points higher than that for women, a gap larger than any other time since immediately after WWII. The coverage of the “He-cession” is geared toward the idea that there has been a dramatic shift in economic opportunities in favor of women, and this shift is hitting men particularly hard, especially on an emotional level.

The raw numbers, however, don’t tell the full story, and therefore don’t lead me to conclude that women are the unintended beneficiaries of these financial hard times. I certainly don’t see my female colleagues whistling their way to work every morning, safe and secure in the knowledge of their continued employment. I am employed in the legal profession, and while comprehensive data will not be available until the National Association of Women Lawyers releases it annual survey of the top 200 law firms in the fall, anecdotal evidence suggests that women lawyers are bearing the brunt of the rash of layoffs that hit the profession this year.

One report from a large national law firm, for example, revealed that 22 out of the 30 lawyers it recently laid off were women. The explanation given for this disparity was telling. Women associates, it seems, were greater represented at the junior levels of the corporate and real estate practice groups most impacted by the crisis, and were therefore the first to be let go when the work slowed down. The more traditionally male litigation practice was less affected.

While it is the case that the recession is impacting the traditionally male sectors of manufacturing and construction in terms of a greater number of jobs lost, what we are seeing is the flip side of a situation borne of a problem women have been complaining about for years–men have historically held more of the heretofore secure, high-paying jobs in construction and manufacturing.

The only conclusion to be drawn? Where gender segregation exists in a particular field, one gender will inevitably fare worse when hard times hit the industry. This news is hardly a revelation, and it shouldn’t leave anyone, male or female, feeling particularly comfortable.

Truth be told, this is not a male economic crisis. While there is a new unemployment gap that favors women, there is a very old earnings gap that favors men. Women continue to earn just 78 cents for every dollar earned by a man doing the same job, with the same education and level of experience. The industries least impacted by the recession thus far, education and health care, employ a larger number of women, but let’s face it: teachers and nurses generally don’t earn as much as unionized workers in manufacturing and construction. So just because the numbers show men losing ground, it doesn’t necessarily mean that women are gaining. The recent media reports on the disparate impact of the recession on the sexes should only serve as a reminder that occupational segregation along gender lines is a bad thing–for everyone.

And as the number of households where women are the primary earners increases exponentially, let us be reminded of the need to make sure that jobs held by women pay better and have better benefits than they have in the past.

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This guest post was written by Erin Kane (pictured here), who is a work-life balance contributor for BusinessBalance.com

As any parent who travels regularly for business knows, we’re all just one canceled flight (or sudden high fever) away from complete mayhem back at home. Juggling work and family takes on a whole new dimension when one parent travels (never mind when both do!).

Over the years, I’ve had to travel to visit clients, attend professional development conferences, set up booths at trade shows and oversee special events. When I was in my twenties, this was deemed a valuable perk of the job. Now that I’m older—and have young children at home—it’s no longer as simple as packing a bag and heading to the airport.

While I trust that my husband is perfectly capable of feeding the kids (frozen pizza) and getting them to day care (it’s pick-up I worry about), I just feel better about my business trips when I’ve set everything in its proper place at home before I’m thousands of miles away.

For me, it all starts with an organized and well-stocked kitchen. With the economy being what it is—and our household budgets feeling the squeeze—it’s even more important to plan ahead, because making mealtimes easy also cuts down on the takeout bill. Try to buy only what the family will eat, like plenty of pre-assembled or frozen meals from the grocery store instead of food that might spoil from neglect. To facilitate an easy kitchen clean up, I stock up on inexpensive paper plates and plastic utensils from the dollar store.

Once the kitchen is stocked, it’s time to get organized. For me, this means:

* Preparing a daily schedule to share with a caregiver, babysitter and/or spouse. Be sure to include important times for the bus, day care pick-up and emergency contact numbers

* Organizing diaper bags, backpacks and signing permission slips and school paperwork in advance

* Washing the kids’ clothes to ensure the all-important T-ball shirt is clean come game time

* Swapping carpool schedules and confirming with other parents via e-mail

* Using Google calendar (or another online calendar) to lock in travel dates, log the kids’ extracurricular activities and share with others who need to be “in the know”

Once I have arrived at my destination, I use technology to connect with my kids back home. Skype and Google video chat allow me to see my kids and talk to them in real time (and it’s free!) So, even though I have complete confidence in my husband, it is so nice to see that the kids left the house that morning somewhat presentable to the public and that they have actually combed their hair.

So what do you do to prepare for business travel? How do you keep things running smoothly back home?

Erin Martin Kane is a professional freelance publicist who makes a living promoting media projects out of her home office. She specializes in public television programs and Web sites. When she’s not working, blogging or podcasting she’s chasing around her two little boys in a suburb of Boston. Erin blogs for the work/life section of BusinessBalance.com, a web site designed by Embassy Suites Hotels specifically with an eye for how to help business travelers on the road. She also produces the weekly podcast “Manic Mommies,” which she co-hosts with her neighbor, Kristin Brandt. It was through podcasting that Erin developed a genuine interest in technology, and today she’s constantly on the hunt for products and platforms that simplify her work and help her manage her household.

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David L. Marcus just wrote a book that I quite enjoyed. It’s called Acceptance: A Legendary Guidance Counselor Helps Seven Kids find the Right Colleges – and Find Themselves (Penguin Press). I asked him to write a few guest blogs on the subject of helping kids through the application process. Here’s his first entry. Feel free to weigh in with questions.

End-of-Summer Salvation for High School Seniors

PRO-

If you’ve watched friends agonizing during the college application process with a son or daughter, you probably know the dreaded 15-letter word I’m writing.

CRAS-

Think of those last-minute essays!

TINATION…

I spent the past three years researching a book on kids applying to college. I watched so many pulling unnecessary all-nighters – and making mistakes – in order to tap the “submit” button on time.

So, here’s a suggestion for anyone who has a high school senior in the house. Encourage that potential procrastinator to set aside a few hours during the waning days of vacation. In that time, he or she can polish off the three tasks, including most of the drudge work that goes into applying.

What drudge work? Two things come to mind. Late summer is a good time to fill out the Common Application, as well as the names-and-facts sections that some admissions offices require. It’s also a good time to register for the SAT, ACT, or other standardized tests.

Now these next sentences are for the applicant: Get that boring stuff out of the way by Labor Day and you’ll already be far ahead of most twelfth graders I know.

The third and final task is less drudgery and more daunting. Late August and early September is the time to start roughing out essays. Read the prompts on the Common App and look up the information about any essays that your school requires. You can often count on a “Why do you want to go to Tufts?” kind of essay. But some schools, like the University of Chicago, like curve balls, and ask you to compare the campus to a painting or some such thing.

Start brainstorming. Take a pad and paper, or a keyboard, and jot down a bunch of ideas. If you are asked to write about a particular campus, don’t worry if you haven’t visited. You can find out the basics and more online. Anyway, the essay is really an excuse to tease them with information about what makes YOU special, and to show why you’d add something to the mix of students.

Other essays allow you to talk about a book you read, a trip you took, a service project you undertook, a person who influenced your life, and so on. Again, start by brainstorming. You don’t need to write the essay before the first day of school, but you should make notes about a couple of favorite topics, and a plan of attack.

As you rough out the essay, remember that blurry-eyed admissions gatekeepers like clear, concise writing. They do not like bragging, exaggeration or pity-me essays. They’re often overloaded with first-person accounts of heroics on the playing field, and they grow tired of sports-as-a-metaphor-for-life essays. Humor is fine, but not if it’s humor that impugns an ethnic group, or tries to hard, or underscores the writer’s immaturity.

Now, flash forward to mid-September. You’re meeting with your guidance counselor, who asks what you’ve done to get started. You don’t hesitate to respond.

“My Common Apps paperwork is ready. I signed up for the ACT. I’ve started my essays…”

And this: “I did it all before the end of summer, then took time to go to the beach.”

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We spend a lot to raise a child in this country. The US Dept of Agriculture just announced that the average two parent family will spend a total of $221,190 over the next 17 years on a child born this year. That doesn’t include four years of college, and who knows how much that will cost by then? And now there is yet another expense-some parents are buying an internship for their bred-for-success offspring.

Yes, proving that no parenting worry will go unexploited, a fast growing niche has developed for companies likeUniversity of Dreams; they will guarantee placement of your child in a resume-enhancing internship for a fee of anywhere from $5000 to $9500. These are unpaid internships, by the way.

Here’s one families experience, from a New York Times article on buying internships:

Francois Goffinet entered the University of Dreams program in 2007 as a student at the College of William & Mary, he said, because he wanted an internship at a top bank but those banks did not recruit at colleges like his. The University of Dreams advisers polished Francois’s résumé. They coached him on interviews and then helped him secure an internship at UBS, which he then converted into a job offer.
“We wanted the biggest and the best,” Francois’s mother, Lynn Andrews, recalled. “No one had the direct route.”

As someone who struggled to find an unpaid internship on her own while in college, for an arts newsletter that lost ifs funding after one issue (thus preparing me for the current state of print journalism), I’m appalled. And angry at the companies that “hire” these interns, who pay for the right to work for nothing. Is the economy really so bad that a company can’t shell out a few thousand dollars over the summer to a college kid? And what about all the tens of thousands of kids who can’t afford to buy an internship, not to mention work for free. Are they somehow less worthy of that UBS job than the candidate whose parent has deep pockets?

John Dodge, who writes the Thinking Tech blog for the website Smart Planet, has this to say about the practice:

Companies that accept this free help while enriching a middleman should be ashamed. Companies big and small should initiate there own intern programs based solely on merit and relationships with colleges which educate the individuals they need. Internships should be an integral function of the human resources department. If a company can’t find good interns, I wonder how they stay in business.
– Whatever happened to individual initiative? Whatever happened to the kid who banged on doors and used his or her dynamism and guile to land an internship? Kids should not have the door slammed because someone bought their way in.

Are John and I living in the past? Is this just the way the world works these days? Should it be? What do you think?

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Today’s (recycled) Link: Work It previous Back To School links Why: Because I may be in denial about the back-to-school phenomenon. I’ve been going through the motions, but I think my subconscious can’t believe it’s the end of summer already,…
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This guest post was written Kristin Sundin Brandt, who is a work-life balance contributor for BusinessBalance.com

I don’t know about you, but I am exhausted. After another year of working, traveling, shuttling kids, housework, home improvements and other commitments, I am pooped, and so is the rest of my family. Which is probably why, when my husband starts talking about our vacation plans, I just want to run upstairs and hide under my bed.

This year, in light of my need to slow down, and my husband’s desire to save some money, we have decided to spend our two-week vacation (mostly) at home. While the idea of limiting our time in the car does sound lovely, there is one major challenge – ensuring we actually vacation, and don’t just spend two weeks at home doing laundry and yelling at our incredibly bored children.

With that in mind, here is what I have planned for our staycation:

• Play tourist for the day – How many of us live near landmarks (natural or manmade) visited by tourists, but never by us? A visit to my state’s office of travel and tourism web site has provided me with a list of fun daytrips including the Butterfly Place in Westford, Old Sturbridge Village (which I haven’t been to since I was a kid) and the Brockton Rox (a minor league baseball team).

• Explore new rail trails – We love riding our bikes on local rail trails, but they are packed with people during the weekend. Our vacation is the perfect opportunity to discover new trails, using TrailLink.com as our guide, while everyone else is at work!

• Take in a movie –There are very few things better than taking in a double-feature at the local drive-in, snuggled up with the kids and my husband on a big blanket. And, since we can sleep in the next morning, we don’t have to wait for the weekend. Visit DriveInMovie.com to find a theater near you.

• Hook up with friends – As much as I enjoy hanging out with my family, there can be too much of a good thing. Fortunately, we have friends who will be on “staycation” during the same weeks as my family, meaning we can work together to have fun and keep everyone amused. It also gives us the opportunity to share childcare so both families can get things done around the house.

• Hit the road – We are planning a three-day trip to a local amusement park, including a stay at a local hotel where we plan on swimming in the pool, renting movies in the room and taking advantage of the available spa services (okay, that last one is for me). We used tripadvisor.com to find a family friendly hotel that was near the park.

• Make a photo album – At the end of each vacation I always make a photo album of our adventures. It’s a fun way to relive each trip, and easier if I do it right away. I’m already working on this year’s book in iPhoto.

Are you taking a staycation this year? If so, what have you got planned?

In addition to co-hosting “ManicMommies,” Kristin Brandt is a full-time account executive and project supervisor with a marketing and advertising agency outside Boston. Kristin blogs for the work/life section of BusinessBalance.com, a web site designed by Embassy Suites Hotels specifically with an eye for how to help business travelers on the road. She is credited with coming up with the name “Manic Mommies,” a term many American moms now use to describe themselves! The mother of two small children, Kristin is the more “computer-savvy” of the Manic Mommies and is responsible for editing the podcast and maintaining the Web site. Kristin is fascinated by any new, shiny gadget and often jokes that her daughter is doomed to inherit a pile of junk jewelry and old technology.

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The health care reform debate seems to have been hijacked in recent days by misinformed people claiming that President Obama and Democratic congressmen want to establish death panels that will kill granny. This is completely false (the New York Times today has an article investigating the genesis of this lie). The anti-reformists base their charges on section 1233 of the House reform bill, which in turn is based on language first proposed by a Republican, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) (although Isakson, who voted against the Senate health reform bill, has since tried to distance himself from said language).

At any rate, what the bill actually proposes is that doctors be reimbursed for counseling dying patients and their families on their different end-of-life options. Medicare doesn’t compensate for such counseling now; as a result, far too many patients are subjected to intrusive, painful and fruitless treatments that may or may not prolong life a few weeks or even days, at considerable physical, emotional and financial cost. The bill also calls on doctors to advise patients on how, if they so choose, to prepare advance directives, often called living wills, that would inform doctors and relatives on how they would like to die.

It would be a good thing if all this ranting about death panels led to more thoughtful family discussions about living wills and the end of life. Most of us likely have stories about needless interventions taken as a loved one lay dying (my stories can be found in a recent Working Parents post, How Would You Ration Health Care?). Doctors are often opposed to such unnecessary treatment–which is why the American Medical Association supports the House provision, as does the AARP. However, physicians often feel forced to do everything possible, whether medically recommended or not, by family members who want to go the extra mile out of guilt or an inability to let go. Some of that guilt might be alleviated if we all had living wills.

One way to start the discussion is to visit Engage with Grace, a web site started by a woman whose sister-in-law suffered an extremely painful death from breast cancer. The site has a one-panel slide you can download that contains questions every family should discuss about how they would like to be treated in the event of a calamitous illness.

There are certainly many people who would want every extraordinary measure possible taken at the end of life. There are others who want to end it all quickly once they learn they have a fatal disease. For example, I read recently that Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent who killed John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd, shot himself at age 57 shortly after learning he had brain cancer. Most of us, though, lie somewhere in between these two extremes, but does anyone in our family know it?

End of life is a huge issue, both for each individual and family, and for the nation as a whole, which spends enormous amounts on the dying, far more than on wellness or prenatal care. As a Wall St Journal article recently pointed out:

About 5% of Medicare beneficiaries die each year, according to a 2001 study published in Health Affairs. But spending during the last year of life accounted for 27.4% of total Medicare spending, the report found…The Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research center, found that the government could save $90.8 billion over 10 years by better managing end-of-life care. The savings would result from training aimed at discouraging doctors from providing care simply because they would get paid for it, and from having teams at hospitals help terminally ill patients manage their pain once they chose to stop treatment, among other things. The institute’s report, issued last month, concluded that much end-of-life spending isn’t sought by patients and goes against their families’ expressed preferences.

What do you think? Have you discussed your end of life wishes with your family? Do you have a living will? And would you appreciate counseling from a physician on these issues?

If you’d like to prepare an advance directive, this site provides state-specific downloadable forms, and the AMA web site contains more information on directives.

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Even before I brushed my teeth today, I logged on to my computer around 7:30 a.m. First I checked email, then Facebook, and then I looked at my Twitter account.

When I saw fellow Working Parents blogger Mauro Vaisman’s Facebook status (posted from Twitter), it seemed utterly apropos.

New morning routine: check Twitter, FB, email–all before breakfast

I didn’t realize until later that Mauro was referring to today’s New York Times front-page article about the new morning routines of families: “Coffee Can Wait. Day’s First Stop Is Online.” (I save reading the actual paper versions of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal for my morning subway commute.)

While the article is light on actual statistics and academic studies about the impact of social media on family time, it says “Internet companies that used to watch traffic levels rise only when people booted up at work now see the uptick much earlier.”

Arbor Networks, a Boston company that analyzes Internet use, says that Web traffic in the United States gradually declines from midnight to around 6 a.m. on the East Coast and then gets a huge morning caffeine jolt. “It’s a rocket ship that takes off at 7 a.m,” said Craig Labovitz, Arbor’s chief scientist. Akamai, which helps sites like Facebook and Amazon keep up with visitor demand, says traffic takes off even earlier, at around 6 a.m. on the East Coast. Verizon Wireless reported the number of text messages sent between 7 and 10 a.m. jumped by 50 percent in July, compared with a year earlier.

Indeed, I too have fallen victim to the morning social networking time suck. This morning, for example, I planned to spend just a few minutes in front of the computer in our home office. Ha. When I checked the time again, it was almost 8 a.m. My son was still sleeping, but, had he been awake, I may or may not have continued my morning social media “workout” as he watched television in the other room.

What does the constant barrage of email, texting, Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of social media mean for work-life balance? In today’s Wall Street Journal, another article examines whether or not emailing and returning work calls by cellphone during non-work hours counts as “work.”

To cope with technology infringing on family time, some families are banning laptops and cellphones at meals. What’s happening in your household? Has technology been eating into your family gatherings? Have you set any new media rules for your family?

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Stay-at-home moms have more to worry about than the potential loss of their husbands’ income during this recession. Over 1.4 million women have lost their health insurance since the economic downturn started in December 2007, and 71% of them lost coverage because their husbands lost their jobs, and their family benefits. Those numbers come for a new study issued by the Democratic members of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee (JEC).

The weak job market has been particularly rough on single mothers, according to the survey. The number of unemployed female heads of household has increased 53% over the past twelve months, and 121,000 of their children lost health insurance as a result.

Then there are the women between the ages of 55 and 64 who lost their health insurance benefits because of their older husbands’ transition from employer-sponsored coverage to Medicare. The JEC said 75% of these women reported delaying filling prescriptions or taking fewer medications than prescribed because of cost.

On top of all that, the health consequences of inadequate insurance coverage are more severe for women than for men. The committee reports that 27% of women had health problems requiring medical attention but were not able to see a doctor, compared to 21% of men.

The report was released as part of the Democratic campaign to rally the public behind comprehensive health care reform. As JEC member Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) said:

Our current health system—the most expensive in the world—needs urgent surgery to insure women, especially those most grievously affected by the recession, receive equal care. For far too many women and their families, quality, affordable health care is out of reach. More than two out of every five low income women today lack health care insurance. With urgent warnings about a renewal of swine flu this fall and steep declines threatening even deeper cuts in state Medicaid funding, it is critical for us to act.

What would happen to your family’s insurance coverage if one spouse lost their job, or worse yet, both? How would you cope?

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