Marissa Mayer and the Reality of Being a Working Mom

I am a teacher in America. I get 10 days of maternity leave paid. From what I understand, that is a norm. But where are the parents clamoring for longer maternity/paternity leave? We just keep working...

I am lucky to work for a company that supports working parents, both moms and dads. It is a small firm, with 10-11 employees. New parents are allowed to bring their baby to work with them until about the 6-month point, when babies tend to get a lot more vocal. And our first coworker to do so was a dad! And we don't have private offices; it's an open floor plan! It is understood that you will not really be working full-time, and that there will be occasional interruptions. We had jolly jumpers in doorways, pack n plays, and exer-saucers in the office. I was able to nurse my son exclusively for 6 months, which was great. I had talked to my boss about working part time after the 6-month mark, and we agreed upon a 3-day-a-week schedule, which I stuck to until my son entered kindergarten. If I had a deadline, I was expected to get my work done, and I am fortunate that I had flexible daycare and could work 5 days if need be, or bring work home, or come back to the office in the evening or on weekends when my husband is home. My son is now in public school, and I still work part time, 3 1/2 days, averaging 24-30 hours per wk unless I have a deadline. I think I am a more productive and efficient worker due to my limited number of hours... more focused, less chit-chat, and fewer personal errands/internet browsing on the clock! My boss' philosophy is that an employee will be a better worker if s/he has a balanced home & work life, and that flexibility breeds a better worker. Bosses everywhere, take note! It can be done!

A lot of bigger companies have daycares in their building now. Im sure that that is an option as well as nannies or au pair's. I'm sure she will have no problem.
Other comments are right though. If your in the middle class it gets rough. nannies are expensive. Daycare is too. And it's even harder when you don't work the usual 9-5. I have days where I have to have the babysitter pick up my daughter from daycare and stay with her until 10 when I get out of work. But I do believe we can have it all, it's jist not the way we "thought it would look". But nothing thats worth it ever comes easy. My daughter's father is deployed right now, so I have to be the mom, dad, breadwinner, all of it. But you find ways to make it work. Like I said it's not easy but i've found that the things in life that are the hardest turn out to be the most rewarding

I hate to say it but I completely think she is in over her head. I am a CEO of a small company that tried to hire working moms. It doesn't work. My team worked harder than any other group of people I have managed in 20 years. However a Mom needs to be home - in the morning, during sick days, early every afternoon, during school trips, etc. etc. My team of 10 had 5 people frequently out with "mom duty" at any one time. Companies don't work this way. Women step down for a reason - we can't do it all.

I have the best care for my kids and the house keeper who comes 3 times a week to wash all my clothes and keep the house clean. I have the "easy" life of a Mom. It's not easy. It is darn near impossible.

Sorry - we can't have it all...

This message is to everyone out there who complains about the amount of "paid leave" given to women in this country. I am just about to return to work from maternity leave after being off for 20 weeks. In Oregon if your employer has more than 24 employees in the state you are by law allowed 12 weeks parental leave and 6+ weeks of pregnancy disability leave depending on how you give birth and when your doctor clears you to return to work. My employer does not provide any paid leave for maternity leave but they do require I use up any accrued sick leave and vacation days during my leave so with those two combined my first 5.5 weeks were paid. I had also purchased a short term disability policy which paid me for 5 weeks at about 67% of my normal salary. I also expect another two weeks of disability pay to be coming soon. In addition to this money I had put aside a good sized chunk of savings to help get me through this time. Oh and did I mention that my husband has not been working since my son was 2 weeks old and we have not been collecting unemployment? Here's how I did it ladies: I cut out or cut down any bills I could including putting my student loan payments on hold while on leave. My husband and I are not debt free but we are working on making that happen but while on maternity leave and shortly before so I could put money in savings we returned to making minimum payments on our debts. We have worked really hard to live way below our means over the past few years so that we could work on paying off our debt. We have tried hard to live off my husbands income and while we can't quite do so we almost can so most of my income is expendable and that gives us a lot of choices. How do we live below our means? We make sure our housing expenses are 25-35% or less of my husbands income which means we have had to be creative about living arrangements over the past year, but we found a basement we could rent in a house with a shared kitchen and laundry room. We both drive cars that we purchased used with under 100,000 miles on them - a Honda and a Subaru - that will require very little ongoing maintenance costs for at least another 100,000 miles and we paid cash for them. Driving older cars also keeps our insurance costs down. We don't own a home yet, but once our debt is paid off we will start saving for a down payment for a home. A disclaimer that if you have a huge house payment and two financed vehicles doing what I've done will be very difficult but let's face it - those are financial decisions you have made - no one else made those for you so why should someone else be responsible to pay you for your time off? I'll say one more thing and then I'll get off my soap box - that is called an entitlement mentality. If you are looking for ways to get your finances back on track I highly recommend you take Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University course. Lastly, just so you don't think we are part of the 1% or anything, my husband makes about 32-35,000 per year (take home pay is about $2,000 per month after taxes) and I make 55-60,000 per year and remember we are trying to live off that lower income so that eventually I can come home from work or work part-time. The point is ladies it can be done but it will take a bit of hard work and sacrifice - are you willing to do it? Also, upon my return to work I will be hiring a nanny to come into my home about 30 hours a week. I will be paying her $10 per hour which really eats into my income but I have decided it is worth it. The other 20 hours per week I have a combination of family members who will be watching my little guy. My goal is to eventually find work I can do from home part-time so I can cut out the childcare costs completely. My husband will return soon and once again be working full-time.

There is one glaring omission in this blogpost that I think is the BIGGEST factor of all. One of the biggest differences between men and women when it comes to babies is the biological and downright MAGNETIC pull that women have to be with their babies. Not all women, but most of us feel an undeniable longing to be with our babies. I am a working Mom and I can tell you that I have an internal radar of how much time I can tolerate being away from my kids before I feel incredibly sad and guilty. Not sad and guilty because of all the "shoulds" in this culture but sad and guilty because of the very GENUINE want and need to be with my kids. Also, no matter how much help you have, there is no one like MOM. Kids absolutely have the same bilogical longing and need for their mothers. And they are sad when they don't get the time and attention they need and deserve. I NEVER thought I would say this as a progressive thinker and huge supporter of women but I find myself having judgements of anyone who is willing to put their job ahead of the needs of their kids. The thing that Marissa cannot predict is how she will feel when she has to leave her baby and dedicate so much time to her position as CEO in order to do a great job. I hope that she will define a way to have healthy kids, healthy mom, and healthy company. I am hoping that she DOES change the culture of women in Leadership by doing some things differently: not spending as many hours on the job, bringing her infant with her to non-critical meetings, having child care centers in the same building as her office, relying on others more to take care of WORK related tasks instead of relying on others to LOVE her kids and take care of home related tasks. Why do people assume that there are replace4ments for MOM's role at home rather than focussing on all the things that a CEO does that could be delegated to someone else.

I think MM has no idea what motherhood brings in. I am happy and proud that women is chosen for this position and I am sure she will do well professionally. She will also have all the support system to take care of the baby. However, I feel bad for the baby who will not get enough care and love from Mom as he/she should be getting. Even MM will feel the guilt of neglecting baby at some point. I am also a working Mom juggling between work and home. However, it is nowhere being close to the life of CEO. I wish her all the best!

Before I had my kiddo I imagined my little bundle of joy sleeping through the day or nursing quietly while I worked away on my computer or on conference calls, etc. Boy was I surprised by how complicated breast feeding was or even just holding the baby. I eventually had to suck it up and hire a PT nanny to help out, otherwise my consulting business would go no where. Now my kiddo is 2 and my workload is in constant flux (way more hours than the nanny comes to no enough to even cover the nanny expenses). My intent is to work, while always being there for the kiddo. MM will have the luxury of round-the-clock nannies an help and not worrying about the finances. Will she have it all? No way, she probably will struggle to have a close relationship with the kiddo(s), but because she sets the terms at the company and won't worry about financing the childcare it will actually be much easier for her than the rest of us.

Tom makes a fine point that there is room for fathers to take on the role of stay at home parent. Culturally, we have even further to go with making that an acceptable proposition(to men AND women) than women in the upper echelons of the workforce!

Tom makes a very good point that fathers can be the stay at home parent. It speaks volumes for society that this is still not considered normal. Giving upo work for parenthood would be infinitely more damaging to my husbands career than mine. We have more work to do on tackling that societal restraint, I think, than we do on getting women into the upper echelons of the workforce. Meanwhile women are still put off, often, from even going for senior jobs where part-timery is unaccepted. My oh my we still have some way to go, don't we?!