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Strollerderby
It’s Take Your Daughters And Sons To Work Day, an event that has grown out of the old-school Take Your Daughter To Work Day. It used to be that this day was a feminist action to show girls the many different kinds of work their moms do outside the house. Now it’s grown into an opportunity for all kids to see what their parents are doing when they go to work each day.
I work at home. My kids see me at work every day in my little home office. They know exactly what I do. I think this is great for them. As my colleague Meredith puts it, the kids are with me at work whether I like it or not.
My husband is a different story. He’s a scientist in a university lab. The kids see him head out the door for work each day, and eagerly anticipate him returning home each day. What he does in the hours between is a bit of a mystery.
Or it would be, if he didn’t take them to work with him.
In a 2008 report from the Families and Work Institute, fathers reported experiencing higher levels of work-life conflict than moms. The difference wasn’t huge - 59% of men compared to 45% of women – but the message is clear: Despite that fact that some dads misrepresent the amount of time they spend on childcare, they are feeling the stress of the balancing act that is parenthood. Continue reading »
Can a woman be so drop-dead gorgeous that she’s distracting to look at, even in a turtleneck? That’s what former Citibank employee Debrahlee Lorenzana thinks.
The 33-year-old single mother was recently, um, canned from Citi because – she says – her employers found her wardrobe to be unprofessional. She feels she was discriminated against for being too beautiful and is suing Citi for sexual harassment.
You know, Debrahlee, we have a lot in common. I’m also a 33-year-old single mother. In fact, I’m quite sure the only reason I’m not dating anyone right now is because I’m too hot. Men just can’t handle this. Friday night, I was hosting a show, and someone said, “You look hot tonight!” And I thought, “Does she mean sweaty?” Cuz I am that hot. HOT.
According to the Daily News, Lorenzana said higher-ups told her, “‘Oh, your pants are too tight. You cannot wear turtlenecks. You cannot wear pencil skirts because you draw too much attention.’” Now, I’m not trying to make light of what might be a serious situation, because I know how difficult it can be as a woman to conform to corporate dress, especially during the summer months. I temped at various Wall Street firms for years, and I once got in trouble for wearing well-tailored black capri pants that fell below the knee. It was one of those 98 degree days in New York and I got derided for wearing “shorts.” Meanwhile, my colleagues in their much shorter pencil skirts were considered appropriately dressed. (Another firm allowed me to wear jeans for months as an admin, until finally one of my favorite guys on the sales desk said, “You know, I don’t care if you wear jeans, but I think the other girls are getting jealous.”)
I’m just saying, Lorenzana makes it sound like she simply can’t control the ravages of her beauty and that no matter what she wore she was left feeling helpless. There are photos of her in various clingy outfits all over the Internet, and while I don’t think they’re at all unprofessional, it doesn’t seem like she went out of her way to minimize the “flounce,” as a friend of mine was once was chided for. Too much flounce in the workplace! Maybe she should have just come to work naked? Continue reading »
If you’re anything like me, you don’t get to spend anywhere near enough time with your kids and when you are with them, it seems like you’re always just shuttling them to and from piano lessons, dance classes, and so on — anything but spending quality time together. I know the rare occasions when I’ve been off from work and the kids aren’t in school, we have a wonderful time together going for a picnic or visiting a museum or just sitting and watching the waves together. It sure seems like I spend less time with my kids than my parents spent with me — but is that really the case?
In the annals of “yes, we actually still need feminism,” Jezebel reports on a new study today that shows women tend to quit their jobs if their husbands work 60 or more hours per week.
Women with husbands who work long hours are 42% more likely to leave the workforce than others. If they have kids and husbands who work that much, they are 112% more likely to leave their own jobs. The effect is strongest in households where the man works in a professional or managerial position.
Amy Graff over at the San Francisco Chronicle’s lesser parenting site, The Mommy Files, has an “embarrassing” admission: When she returned to work after her first kid, two thirds of her salary went to child care, meaning at the end of the month she brought in an additional $1,000 for the family once all costs were considered.
“You might wonder why I worked but our family needed that little bit of money to survive in San Francisco, and I loved my job. Plus, it would have been risky for me to take a break from working at a point when I was young in my career. I had been out of college for only six years.”
OK, sure, $1,000 doesn’t seem like a ton of money for all the work of a full time job, but this isn’t a surprising scenario for many, many people. Continue reading »
Yesterday, Bethany Sanders wrote about Nell Casey’s article wherein she explained that she earns more than her husband and admitted to using it, on occasion, to get out of parenting duties. Many families today need both parents to work, just to make ends meet, and yet, many women still find themselves doing the lion’s share of the work at home. But the home is not the same as it once was and marriage is not the same. These days, it falls upon both parents to both bring home the bacon and to fry it up in a pan — at least it should.
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Katherine Stone 
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