Work and Family

This is a shout-out to Christy Meares of Wilmington, North Carolina, a woman I have never met. She’s a “mommy blogger” who writes under the moniker Frugalful, “a money-saving blog for women living the pretty life on a budget”. An article Christy wrote for TIME.com caught my attention, “How to Use Flex Time to Reduce Summer…

So often women tell me that they’ll return to work when they feel they’ve put the requisite time into what I call their first caregiving job—raising children.  But that might just be when their second caregiving job begins—helping aging parents. This fact was crystal clear when I read the New York Times article, “Women Leave Their…

Halfway through one of my presentations on how to return to the workforce after a hiatus of a decade or more, a woman in the audience added both humor and more somber reflection to the lively discussion. At the time, I was speaking about the prickly “Lean In or Lean Out” debate, and suggesting—first and…

Here’s a revolutionary thought: instead of wasting a lot of time wondering whether you can or should “have it all” (family and career), how about realizing that for most women it makes long-term sense to DO IT ALL. What am I saying, exactly? I’m saying that with few exceptions most women need to (as I…

“I’ve longed to make my mark on the world, just as I’ve longed to be a good mother…” That’s a powerful line from a wonderful article that I recommend you all read: “My Children, My Life” by Helen Hayward. Via Twitter Anne-Marie Slaughter tipped me off to this article and summed it up beautifully in less…

In many of my blog posts I’ve talked about the need for family support when you return to work after a long hiatus. As much as you may want to restart your career, it’s very difficult to blend both work and life if your spouse is not on board. When it is not driven by…

Late one night I was catching up on reading and I came upon an article in The Dartmouth about a lecture Anne-Marie Slaughter gave on campus on the topic of work-family balance. There are two women who have been responsible for many compelling discussions among other women in the past year or so. Sheryl Sandberg’s widespread…

When mothers tell me they’re thinking about a workforce hiatus, my message is always “Look Before You Leap”. Some women leave well prepared–in a position of strength–after considering this important work and life option from many different angles, planning ahead for an engaged life at home and figuring out how to stay current in advance…

If you have one foot on the off ramp, it’s likely that someone in your life (mother? sister? friend?) has you worried that your hours at work are damaging your child. Certainly there have been enough articles that point to that conclusion–making you feel that you have to hightail it home. The debate between working…

Though corporate America has a long, long way to go in shaping flexible work practices, I have often said that women haven’t stepped up to the plate. Playing the “victim” role and running out of the workforce after little more than a casual ask for flexibility does not, in my mind, constitute making a professional…