With all that’s at stake in each state, you may be startled to learn that most legislatures remain boys’ clubs, with women so severely underrepresented that the political process suffers.  (No need to single anyone out, but let’s just say that at 9%, South Carolina is a great place to be when you can’t wait long for the ladies’ room!)

Guest blogger Laurie Kretchmar, media director for The 2012 Project, delivers an impassioned plea for women to seize the opportunities open in this year’s election below.  Read the original post via Care2 here, and heed her call to consider running for state office.  There’s still time to jump into a race…and there’s clearly still a deep need for informed, engaged, experienced women (why not you?) to shape the policies that affect your family every day. 

Almost a year ago, The New York Times published an editorial entitled “The War on Women” which began:

Republicans in the House of Representatives are mounting an assault on women’s health and freedom that would deny millions of women access to affordable contraception and life-saving cancer screenings and cut nutritional support for millions of newborn babies in struggling families. And this is just the beginning.

That issue rose to the top in budget negotiations and nearly caused a shutdown of the federal government.  The congressional investigation into the operation of Planned Parenthood and its allocation of federal funds became the focus of much news this week when the Susan G. Komen foundation explained, at least initially, that was the reason it was pulling its grants from Planned Parenthood.  After a veritable frenzy of reaction occurring in the wide open spaces of the world wide web, Komen finds its brand  badly battered and Planned Parenthood is unexpectedly holding millions of dollars it didn’t expect.  The Sunday talking heads and columnists are all over the map in their reactions.  What conclusions ought we to draw?  Are women really facing a violent and calculated assault?  Or is using the word “war” in this context another attempt to fan the flames of an already overheated round-the-clock media machine?

First, a recap.  In the year just ended, states passed 92 new laws placing restrictions on access to abortion, such as waiting periods of 24 hours or more, compulsory ultrasounds, or prohibiting private insurers from covering pregnancy termination for private individuals paying with private funds.  Congress debated ending federal funding for family planning. i.e. contraception, and cutting off all funds for Planned Parenthood, where they are dedicated only to routine care,  cancer screening, and contraceptive services.  For the moment, funding continues for the non-abortion related services, however 9 states have passed laws which prevent all federal funding for providers who also perform abortions in those states, even though the money was and always had been used for non-abortion related services.  So, women and girls without health insurance, dependent on not-for-profit clinics, find abortions more difficult to obtain, and even access to contraceptives dwindling, which defies all logic.   Is this movement to restrict access to contraception and abortion equivalent to a “war”?

It’s remarkable that our elected representatives (and those who hope to be so), who claim that jobs and the economy consume all their working hours,  can manage to do so much about a “women’s issue”.  Historically, “women’s issues” don’t get all that much attention.  Equal pay for equal work stubbornly remains a hope rather than a reality.  Paid sick days as a basic labor standard, like safe workplaces or a 40 hour workweek, exists in California, New Jersey, and a couple of cities.  Family leave under FMLA is available to about half the private sector workforce, but it’s not paid.  Paid time off when a baby is born or a child adopted might be available at the employer’s discretion, and professionals may have this option, but it’s no guarantee, and very rare for shift or hourly wage workers.  There is no child care system, no standard for early education.  Elder care increasingly puts the squeeze on families, and whatever time is devoted to care at the cost of paid work will decrease retirement benefits under Social Security.

These issues, belonging to the daily logistics of family, lack the headline-grabbing potential of abortion rights.  However, not having such policies certainly impacts the economic security, health, and well-being of the mother for her lifetime, as well as the education, development, and well-being of her children.  Perhaps the persistent inaction of Congress, when all other industrialized nations have long since implemented programs promoting maternal employment and softening the economic peril of the family caregiver, could be called a “stealth war” on moms.  Is it part of a larger, concerted effort to curtail the economic mobility of women with children?  If so, does that make it a “war”?

One of the most repeated criticisms of the Komen/Planned Parenthood kerfuffle was the outrage that something as pure and wholesome as the mission to eradicate an indiscriminate killer of women should have become caught up in abortion politics.   Really, this is a naive view.  Women’s bodies, and women’s lives, have always been treated as a public good, the subject of the most impassioned debate, and fought over relentlessly like the “no man’s land” of the western front.  Who decides whether or not we should bear children?  Who decides whether or not we can control our fertility?  Who decides what medical procedures are included in the health care insurance we can buy?  Who decides if we work, where and for how much? When we work for money outside the home, who decides how and where and by whom our children are cared for?  Who decides if we can slip the leash of work and home to be at the bedside of a dying parent?  Do you decide, or do other people, through laws, social pressure, cultural values, and economic realities, decide for you?

Wikipedia says that:

War is an organized, armed, and often a prolonged conflict that is carried on between states, nations, or other parties[1][2] typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality.  War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political communities, and therefore is defined as a form of political violence.

Political violence – that seems to me to be a less inflammatory and more helpful notion.  A war on women?  I’m not so sure.  But political violence?  One could certainly make a case there.  What do you think?

‘Til next time,

Your (Wo)Man in Washington

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This was about a year after I went home sick from my job and then never went back. The whole experience still felt painfully raw. I was filled with shame for letting people down, for abandoning the career I’d worked so hard at. I didn’t know how to explain the fact that I was so completely burned out that it wasn’t a choice to stop working, it was a physical necessity. Like most professional women, I had always taken great pains to appear confident, together, in control, and I didn’t know where to begin with the truth. Instead I told people that I was “just really exhausted,” as if I needed a lot of sleep, not a year of medication and intense therapy.

During that year, in between the meds and the therapy, I did a lot of writing and reading and thinking. It became increasingly important, for reasons I will explain, that I share what I was writing about with others.

I thought about starting a blog, but realized all those people I worked with would probably find it. (Of course they would. They’re web consultants. They spend most of their time on the Internet.) They would lose any remaining respect for me. Or maybe even get angry, thinking my experience somehow reflected negatively on them.

And what about when I did start working again? What if potential new clients and coworkers read things I’d written and decided they didn’t want to work with me? I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to get freelance work when I needed it.

By that time, I had realized that my nervous breakdown was not some isolated incident, or simply a flaw in my character. Trying to work full-time and raise three very young kids is terrifically hard for most people. The struggle to support a family and still have time to see them was the central angst of most of the women I knew.
I also knew, by then, that it doesn’t have to be this way. There are plenty of countries where women are guaranteed paid parental leave (actually, make that all developed countries except for the U.S.), and generous sick pay. There are many places where people are not expected to work punishingly long hours, where it’s the norm to take a month vacation in the summer, and where part time work is more abundant and less frowned upon than it is here.

But the biggest reason I decided to write about my experience is because I don’t think we can truly solve our problems until we understand them. What discussions of “work-life balance” usually leave out are the throbbing, chaotic, emotional realities of what life is like when you don’t have it.

I launched my blog in March 2010 and held my breath.

A few days later I got my first email from a former coworker. He thanked me for being so honest. He said that even though he didn’t have kids, he, too, was in an ongoing battle to keep work from kidnapping his life. Then I got a similar email from another former coworker. And then, one from a former client who told me he’d quit his job for the same reasons I had described.

Flash forward two years …

So far, 17 former coworkers or clients have contacted me through email, phone calls and blog comments to show their support for what I’m writing about. I can’t tell you how gratifying that is.

And so far, (knock on wood!), I’ve had a steady stream of freelance work coming in, which in this economy is something to be grateful for. If anyone has decided they don’t want to work with me because of the things I write about, well, I’ve been too busy to notice.

In fact, some of my more interesting job leads have come, not in spite of my blog, but because of it. One entrepreneur who runs a local agency practically stalked me with job offers after reading this Mother’s Day post. He, too, was struggling with how to keep work from swamping his life. Just the other day, I mentioned in a blog post that I was in between freelance contracts. Almost immediately, I got a Twitter message from someone I haven’t talked to in years. “I LOVE your blog!” she said. “I’m looking for freelancers. Interested?”

Career “experts” would tell you to never be as frank as I’ve been. They’d advise you to transform your nervous breakdown into a ‘sabbatical,’ or perhaps an ‘ethnographic study of the behavioral health care system’ — anything to hide the fact that you were not in complete control of your life at all times. But I didn’t follow that advice, and here’s what I’ve learned instead: When you speak open-heartedly, when you are authentic about your own experience, when you are honest about what went wrong, a lot of people will like you and want to work with you, even more than if you pretend to be floating sublimely above the messiness of your life.

I’ve worked at places that spent ridiculous sums on company retreats and internal “messaging campaigns” to get people to work together better. But imagine how workplace culture would be transformed if everyone decided to stop posturing, playing stupid turf wars, and desperately trying to look like flawless mannequins and instead inhabited their own humanity and the truth of their experience.

Last week I got a call from a recruiter. I frequently get calls from recruiters, so this one struck me as unusual. Instead of launching straight into his project pitch, he said something about being a new dad.

That’s odd, I thought, Recruiters never do that. But then he brought it up again a minute later.

It dawned on me that he’d been reading my blog. Rather than scaring him away, he was eager to find a way to work together. Soon we were deep in conversation about the sacrifices you make to be home with your kids.

You know what? That’s really cool. It’s really cool to be yourself in a job interview.

This is my career advice:

• Stop pretending to be bulletproof, invincible, and perfect.
• Stop pretending your personal time doesn’t matter.
• Know your limits, and be honest about them.
• Inhabit your own humanity at work, warts and all.

It will feel weird at first, but you will be giving permission for others to do the same. You might find that work becomes a healthier place to be.

* * *

Cross-posted from Working Moms Break and the Huffington Post

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My sister Americans:

The state of our union is strong.  Electing women to fully 51% of public offices has ushered in a new era in our great experiment in democracy. Legislators now put the common good ahead of their personal power and individual gain.  We, men and women together, make better policy decisions and make them faster than in any prior administration.  As a result, the cost of government has decreased dramatically and we have more funds available to put to good use in making our country smarter, healthier, more competitive, and happier than ever before.

In the past year, the U.S. Congress has passed legislation to make all of our lives easier, more meaningful and more fulfilling.  First, every U.S. worker is guaranteed seven days per year of paid sick leave. If you wake up with the flu, you can stay home and still pay the bills.  If your child comes home with strep throat, you can take her to the doctor and not risk your job.  You can count on getting your annual physical and lab tests, your dental checkups and your children’s vaccines without running the risk of losing your income, or putting off necessary medical care.

Second, paid family leave has become the law of the land. Your members of Congress know that people are born, people die, people get sick and recover, or get injured and get well.  The people who show up every day in our factories and our offices are the self-same people who are having babies, adopting children, caring for their chronically ill parents, their injured spouses, or disabled family members.  We have created a caring economy.  We can attend to the business of America while giving those who need it the care they require because we know that, throughout our lives, there is a time to work, and a time to care, a time to be born, and a time to die.  One day we are the caregiver, the next day we are the family member who needs help.  By accepting this reality and crafting public laws in harmony with it, we share in both the effort and the benefit, in covering for the absent worker, rocking the new baby, or holding the hand of a dying loved one.  We can’t do it all alone.  But from now on, we can do it all together.  Every American will have access to six months of family leave, and receive two-thirds of their wages until they can return to work.

If mothers or fathers wish to spend more time with a young child, they can count on earning Social Security credits for the period they spend with children younger than five for a maximum of six years across their lifetime. Until now, this critical period of personal investment eroded financial security after retirement.  Attributing half the median annual income to a stay-at-home parent will ensure that retirement benefits are not totally inadequate for those who contributed their care work rather than their compensated work to our collective well-being.  At long last, we have instilled family values into policies which actually value the family.

As if that weren’t enough to induce whiplash across this great country of ours, starting now, employed women will make as much money as employed men. Gender will no longer be an excuse for income inequality.  Fair pay puts more money into the economy pushing up job growth, and effectively ending our recession.  Fairness increases opportunity for women and for everyone.  Also, banks and financial institutions, until now directed primarily by men, are prohibited from taking excessive risks with other people’s money.  Therefore, invested savings will no longer be the private casino of a few.  Thoughtful and prudent administration by the most talented men and women will finally end the seesaw effect of market volatility.  When you save for retirement or your child’s education, the money you are counting on will be there.

Finally, workplace flexibility, alternative schedules and tele-work will become the rule rather than the exception. All parents who wish may enroll their pre-school children into accessible, affordable, high-quality childcare, whether it’s for standard business hours, a few days a week, or during a night shift or weekend.  Families will have both the support and the freedom they need to devise a routine that works for them, and to modify it as children get older or circumstances change.   Parents can pursue professional goals while being the mothers and fathers they want to be.  You will always be able to find clean and private places to breastfeed a baby, and other clean and private places to change a diaper.

And from this day forward, the number of women’s restrooms will be doubled in all public buildings, so that no woman ever, ever, has to stand in line again.

Thank you, citizens, for electing men and women in equal measure with a passion for public service and long range vision. Their commitment to our mutual well-being has made this possible.  We can look forward with confidence to generation upon generation of the greatest prosperity and the greatest opportunity possible.

God bless you and God bless the United States of America.  Good night.

Click here to read more posts from Your (Wo)manInWashington blog.

And we need your ears too! Tweet with us @MomsRising in conversation on Twitter starting at 9:00 PM EST tonight.

If you don’t tweet, please join the conversation right here on the blog! Leave your comments under this blogpost during and after the speech. Let us know what you heard and what you think of the speech. We’ll be reading every comment–we want to know what you care about, what you think about the President’s remarks and what our national priorities should be for families in 2012.

Mothers have a genius for on-the-spot problem solving.  Sizing up a looming crisis in a nanosecond, we flip through our mental list of optional responses, then implement, discard, and substitute possible solutions until the crisis is resolved and order restored.  Every single day mothers meet multiple opportunities for this kind of “rapid response” engagement head on.  As the days multiply and the children get older, our maternal management skills get honed and polished.   Soon we can anticipate trouble and head it off at the pass with such skill that our “below the radar” scrambling goes all but undetected.  If everyone is happy, productively engaged, and more or less quiet, it’s because we are terrific at what we do.  Mothers have that ability to see just over the horizon, identify threats, and turn the situation around to best advantage.

When I look to the horizon now, I see serious challenges ahead.  Economic security appears to move further away.  Jobs are scarce, wages are flat, and health costs climbing.  Planning and saving may not deliver the hoped-for retirement if the market takes another dive or continues to reflect the volatility of recent months.   Upheaval has taken up residence in many families, with formerly employed parents out of work and at home, and stay at home parents now going to work,  surprised to find themselves the only or the primary wage earner.  We’ve had to adapt, react, improvise, and generally find a workable solution in unforeseen circumstances.  Growing income inequality, deeper poverty, and more barriers on the socioeconomic ladder mean less prosperity and fewer opportunities.  It’s been widely reported that it is harder to move up from one class to another in the US than in Canada and many parts of Europe.  Social mobility, the essence of the American Dream, may have just moved offshore.

But in addition to the stress and anxiety this big shake-up brings, I wonder if a few cracks in the foundation might make it easier to bring about some positive changes.  More men and women than ever will soon be providing family care as they age but remain connected to paid employment.   Longer lifespans mean working adults will be caring for their elderly parents, often in addition to holding down a job.  These grown children will be delaying retirement due to smaller savings and fewer benefits, and will themselves periodically need time off to care for their own health, or for that of a spouse or partner.  Working people in great numbers will have family obligations similar to those of parents of young children.   Just as putting food on the table is a task all parents share, adult sons and daughters will be caring for parents, partners, and children.  Never before will so many people simultaneously be working and caregiving.  For them, workplace policies will have to provide for family obligations, regardless of gender, industry, or income.

Events also seem to be heading towards a crescendo in leadership in both business and politics.  In spite of women’s breath-taking educational achievement,  very few of us direct financial institutions, sit on corporate boards, run Fortune 500 companies, or hold elected office.  The results of male leadership are apparent.  The status quo has delivered manipulation of both profits and politics to the interests of a very few high earners, mostly men.  The disastrous results of aggressively risk-seeking behavior were buffered by public funds.  Now restored to financial solvency, financial institutions direct their pay-offs into private pockets, lengthening and deepening the recession and prolonging high unemployment.  Under the dome of the Capitol, the US Congress (83% male) perpetuates its infantile race to the bottom of legislative productivity and professional civility.  Approval rates are in the low single digits.  (Well, that’s not actually true, but it’s close!)  With no lack of major and very serious issues to be addressed, it’s astonishing so much time (and public money) is devoted to checking the opposition rather than governing.

Some may wonder if women would do a better job.  I believe so, but the bar has been set so low, clearly they could not do any worse.  Putting women into policy-making positions at all levels of society is an approach we have simply never tried.  Only the US Supreme Court, and there only very recently, has women’s representation risen to the 30% necessary to have an impact in the decision-making process.  Now that we stand in the barren wasteland of legislative paralysis, the argument that men possess inherent leadership abilities, or are somehow better suited to positions of power and authority, can hardly be stated with a straight face.  Whatever it takes to get women off the sidelines and into the game, that is what we must do now, and quickly.  Vote, run, lead.  Insist, argue, persuade, push, demand.  We just may pull this nation back from the brink…and put dinner on the table, pick the kids up from soccer, and throw in a load of laundry.  It only looks easy because we are so good at what we do.

‘Til next time,

Your (Wo)Man in Washington

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The Work and Family Researchers Network (formerly the Sloan Network) is the premier peer community for multidisciplinary work and family scholars seeking to share their work and to meet each other both on and offline.  While membership is geared toward the global community of work and family academics and scholars—including faculty, staff, students, teachers, and researchers—policy makers, practitioners, journalists and interested others are encouraged to get involved. The WFRN facilitates virtual and face-to-face interaction among work and family researchers from a broad range of fields and engages the next generation of work and family scholars.

WFRN provide opportunities for information sharing and networking via our website with a News Feed and Calendar.  Archived materials from the Sloan Network are available. Coming soon is the Work and Family Commons, the first open access work and family subject matter repository.

We invite you to become a member and join the global hub for work and family research.  Feel free to contact us with any questions.

Why ease in to 2012 when we can take a flying leap directly into the epicenter of the maternal conflict?

Sister blogger ButIDoHaveALawDegree graciously permits me to run her latest post here, in full, and I’m certain it will strike a major chord with you.  I’ve not read a better expression of the  maternal angst resulting from the false choice foisted upon us to either raise our children or provide for them financially.  As parents, as people, as mothers, we can do both, and should we wish to, we ought to be able to without impediment from out of date attitudes about gender, and employment practices designed for workers with no other competing obligation.   Families don’t look or function the way they used to, and in most US communities, paid employment is an economic imperative.  It is totally possible to bring the realms of family care and making a living closer together – already many parents run the house, raise the children, and go to work.  It ought to be easier to move between these two worlds within a day, throughout a child’s first months, and over an adult’s entire worklife as the caregiving needs shift and change.

The frustration, joy, love, ability and sheer grit revealed below show what we have to gain by removing obsolete ways of doing things,  and the cost of failing to remove them now.  This is what Law Degree has to say:

The Answer

I am happy staying at home, you know. Really. Notwithstanding all my recent posts on my devilish toddler, my guilt over splurging on a pair of boots, judgmental attorneys who hate women, and the monotony of my daily life, I actually am happy with my current job.

I am the first to admit I’ve been a bit of a Debbie Downer recently. I have a couple of excuses: First, it’s cold and dark outside. As I’ve mentioned before, this tends to bring on a funk each year, no matter my employment status. Second, this blog is my place to vent. For some reason, I have more of an urge to vent when I am sad than when I am happy. So the “wah wah wah,” “I’m bored,” “feel bad for me posts” tend to outweigh the “what an awesome day,” “my kids are the joy of my life,” “you know you want to be me posts.” When I’m happy, I don’t always want to write about it. I’d rather just live in the moment.

My last post was a particularly depressing one, in large part because I’d just gotten back from vacation. (Isn’t everyone depressed when they get back from vacation?). In any event, I suppose I can see why, to an outsider, it may seem like I am a miserable stay at home mom who regrets and laments walking away from my career. In fact, a commenter asked me this very question: “Why do you choose to stay at home? It seems as if you don’t enjoy it. Every single thing you typed is the exact reason I work outside of the home (the need for something other than monotony, the need to be intellectually stimulated, etc.). I have great admiration for SAHMs, and I’m not at all trying to judge, I promise. But, it seems that so many SAHMs are not happy…”

I thought this was an interesting, genuine question. So here’s the answer:

************

This job is hard.

Really hard.

It’s harder than my biglaw job for sure.

It’s all consuming and exhausting and there are no sick days.

It can be boring.

It can be isolating.

It can be demoralizing.

It can be completely unrewarding.

It can make you question who you are and who you have become and who you are supposed to be.

************

BUT And this is a big but.

Someone has to do this job.

And if someone has to do it, I want that person to be me.

I want to be here in the morning to wake the kids up.

I want to pick Braden up at school, even when he throws a tantrum and hits me and causes a scene, because I want to see him in his element and know his teachers and know his friends and make sure he is wearing his gloves.

I want to make sure that Casey’s food is cut up in teeny tiny pieces so that he doesn’t choke. I know that no one, not even my husband, will cut it up as small as me.

I want to be there for the tantrums.

I want to give the time outs.

I want to hug them when the time outs are over.

I want to witness the tender, most unexpected moments when Braden decides to make Casey laugh.

I want to volunteer at school events and host playdates. I want to take them to the park when it’s sunny out.

I want to take them to doctor’s appointments.

I want to take their temperature and make sure that they get all 1.8 mls of Motrin, and not a drop more.

I want to kiss their faces whenever I want to.

I want to kiss their boo-boos when they fall.

I want to cuddle with them both as much as they will allow me to.

I want to document this time in their lives – in my memory, in photos, in this blog.

I want to live and appreciate every single moment.

************

And here’s the thing: I could probably still do all of the above things if I was working outside of the home.

But, NOT working means that I can do all of the above things without added stress.

Without outside responsibilities.

Without the pull of billable hours or clients or bosses.

Without having to take vacation days.

Without having to monitor a blackberry.

Without distractions.

Without having to think of anything of real importance outside of the two most important people in the world to me.

And that is a gift.

A gift that makes all the tantrums and boredom and hard days worth it.

SO worth it.

************

Every night when I put Braden to bed we “talk about today.” We go through all of the day’s activities ad nauseam, and the narrative always ends with, “It was a wonderful day.” And you know what? I mean it. Every time. And as I tuck him in and leave his room, I silently mourn the day that has passed and know that it’s one less day I’ll have with him as a little boy.

The fact is, I have the best job in the world.

Thanks, LawDegree, for tellin’ it like it is.  Girls, let’s “mom up” , take care of ourselves and each other, and keep pushing for a world which cherishes us as much as we cherish our children.

“Til next time,

Your (Wo)Man in Washington

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I’m on the board of a small, parenting-related nonprofit organization, a board comprised of smart, thoughtful women who are mostly mothers of small children (and one dad, though our father pool is growing). In addition to our full-time parenting jobs, pretty much all of us have professional jobs, or are students. We’re all juggling a lot of balls, and we all take on this additional volunteer job as board members because we believe that the work of this organization is world-changing.

Photo credit garryknight/Flickr

Recently, we’ve endured a spate of board resignations. Each ex-member articulated a variant on the same theme, something to the effect of:

“I just can’t take the guilt anymore. I feel guilty in all parts of my life for not giving enough. I care so much about this organization, and I just can’t face caring about something so much and not do it well. I’d rather just not do it at all than do it poorly. I’ll let someone else step in who can give it her all.”

The trouble is that there’s no one who can give it her all. Smart, capable women who care about our organization? They abound. Guilt-free women with boundless energy who will consistently give all that they’re capable of? Uh, yeah. At last count, I knew exactly zero of them.

My suspicion is this: The future leaders of our organization are out there, consumed by a state of guilt paralysis. They’re out there examining their inboxes crammed with un-responded-to messages. Eyeing a pile of unwritten thank you notes. Trying not to glance at the choc-a-block family calendar. Perhaps reading this article. Writing this piece. All of us out there, relentlessly measuring and grading the attention we’re giving to the many things we care about. And failing to measure up. As a friend of mine once said, “feeling less like we rock, and more like we suck.”

(Disclaimer: If you’re thinking, “Is the writer some kind of guilt expert?” The answer is no. I’m no psychologist, evolutionary biologist, or anthropologist. Guilty as charged. Still, I’m going to engage in some pop versions of all three, to try to explore this jagged terrain called guilt.)

Guilt in our culture is a particularly feminine affliction. Its paralyzing effect on women is something I suspect we’re all familiar with—whether from first-person experience or from loving a guilty mother, sister, friend, or partner. For many of us, becoming a mother only exacerbates the guilt. As a parent, you’re now responsible for something particularly fragile, precious and dependent, and the buck couldn’t stop anywhere closer than right here.

As a guilt-ridden gal and mama, I’ve got a small library of books about women, motherhood, and guilt. Motherhood in the Age of Madness, by Judith Warner. This is Not How I Thought It Would Be, by Kristin Maschka. The Motherhood Manifesto, by Joan Blades. They all describe the phenomenon by which American women are stuck with outdated cultural expectations and support systems, while being served an ever-increasing helping of responsibilities in the name of opportunity and equal access. The contemporary expectation is that we’ll be both breadwinners and cookie bakers; professionally successful at meaningful jobs, with excellent, infallible childcare; ever-present parents who have endless patience; and also modern women who take care of our partners’ needs and our own, too. And that’s the short list.

While the division of household labor has radically shifted in the past 50 years, the emotional caretaking and relationship work is harder to redistribute than the obvious tasks, like who washes the dishes or puts the kids to bed. To the degree that emotional caretaking is still, in many cases, the purview of women, guilt about not giving enough to others is still a particularly feminine legacy.

The different relationships that men and women have with guilt have been explored ad nauseum, usually to the tune of “why are women so guilty and men aren’t guilty enough?” A number of studies suggest that men are “guilt deficient,” while women suffer from “destructive guilt.” Most studies come to the unfortunate conclusion that guilt is biologically based, and take the analysis no further. Others ask the cultural question, “How do we get men to be more guilty, and women less so?” Which also doesn’t seem like the right question to me.

I don’t know about the value of more guilt for men. That’s a topic for another day. Instead, I want to address what women do with their guilt. If guilt can be paralyzing, what antidotes actually give us momentum to be the sorts of women and mothers we want to be?

After three months of maternity leave, I remember dragging myself to work intensely sleep deprived, struggling to focus my brain and get through each day. I kept waiting for someone to give the lie to my less-than-stellar performance. But months went by, and it became apparent that: 1) All the other new parents were doing exactly the same thing; and 2) More amazingly, no one even seemed to notice. It turned out that the implied expectation of consistent, top-notch performance at all times isn’t possible—for anyone—and also that giving whatever you’ve got, however much that is, is sometimes just plenty.

Back to the nonprofit board: When our organization would be so much better off with even a fraction of what these amazing women are capable of giving, why is it so hard for women to imagine that we might give less than we want to, but less might still be good enough?

To date, I’m aware of only one practical, momentum-giving answer to feminine guilt: the “good enough” approach. Good enough means striving not to reach our maximum potential in all things, but instead to be a “good enough” partner, worker, citizen, mother, and self, and to be honest with ourselves about how little is really needed to make a difference sometimes.

It’s exceptionally hard to do. We are calibrated to measure ourselves against the scale of perfect performance—not the “good enough” scale. Recalibration goes against the grain of culture and the world around us. The terms we have for talking about good-enough-ism are all about mediocrity, or lowering our standards.

But I’d say that good-enough is about realism. It’s about allowing us to unevenly distribute our personal resources, and to find a way to feel good about that. To continue showing up for the things we care about, and to consistently make peace with the mismatch between our personal potential and what energy, time, and attention we really have to give. Because just working through the guilt paralysis in order to show up is sometimes—maybe even most of the time—good enough.

Misty McLaughlin is a parent by vocation, a nonprofit web consultant by trade, and a writer and seamstress by fits and starts. Among other topics, she’s passionate about exploring issues of gender and generation, helping other households to find cultural loopholes that allow them to make their own models, and promoting institutional support for rebooting our roles. Follower her on Twitter @mistymclaughlin.

Photo credit garryknight/Flickr

I don’t, in fact, have a good time shopping. Maybe I’m the only woman in America who thinks this, but the only thing worse than going shopping is going shopping in a mall. Still, my Black Friday blitz got a lot of the torture out of the way all in one day, and I didn’t have to haul the kids from store to miserably packed store.

One year, when my kids were five and three, I decided I was sick of buying all the Christmas presents for everyone. So I made a deal with my husband: I would buy the presents for his mother, his father, his brother, his sister-in-law, his

Managing checklists during the holidays. Photo by XtremeXhibits on flickr.com.

nephew, our kids, our kids’ four teachers, our babysitter, my parents, and my three siblings’ seven kids. He would buy the present for Sister Marjorie, his mother’s cousin.

Well, I bought my twenty-six presents. He didn’t buy his one. Shortly after Christmas, I got a phone call from my mother-in-law: Sister’s feelings were really hurt that we had not gotten her something, just some little thing. And I thought: when it comes to husbands, what’s scary is what the nice ones do.

Do things get tense with your husband or partner around the holidays? If so, there’s a reason – and a solution.

The holidays are a perfect storm of three trends. The first is that women are expected to do what anthropologists call “kin work,” or the conceiving, organizing, and executing of holiday celebrations, as Micaela di Leonardo details in her brilliant 1987 “The Female World of Cards and Holidays.” Maintaining a sense of family “takes time, intention, and skill,” she notes – “and men in the aggregate don’t do it.” Even women with full-time jobs were defensive about cutting back on “Christmas card lists, organized holiday gathering, multifamily dinners…” and all the rest of it.

The second reason that many women still feel overworked and overstressed during the holidays is that they still do 80% of the household management, which during the holidays expands to include everything from RSVP-ing to holiday parties to planning wrapping presents. See http://www.amazon.com/Second-Shift-Arlie-Hochschild/dp/0142002925 If my husband had manned up and bought Sister Marjorie’s present, he would have gotten major points – but who would it have wrapped it and mailed it to Connecticut in time for the holidays?

The final problem is the Martha Stewart syndrome. There’s been a speed-up in American family life in the past 20 years, a sense that no Halloween is complete without a homemade costume, and that no Hanukah is complete without homemade applesauce. If I were a conspiracy theorist I might point out that the sharp increase in household standards came at precisely the same time that married women joined the workforce in large numbers, ensuring that women would run themselves ragged staying up til 2 a.m. making Christmas cookies—and still feel they weren’t meeting their own standards either at home or at work.

We can change this thing. Here’s how, in four easy steps.

1. Negotiate. “Sweetie, you know how holidays are always so stressful? This year, let’s sit down right now and write a list of everything we are doing to do, and decide who will do it.”
2. Simplify. There’s such a thing as cookies-in-a-tube. Give the same hostess gift to everyone. Send gift certificates to your nieces. Cut corners. No one will notice – they’re too overwhelmed themselves.
3. Get over yourself.  Note well: you cannot expect your husband to stay up til 2 a.m. baking those cookies. Why? He’s not insane. He is not under gender pressures that make him worry that the other moms will judge him if he goes bakery. But that worry is about your maintaining your status in the community of women, not about what’s good for the family. So listen to him when he says you just don’t need to do make the wreaths by hand.
4. Self-reflect. I’m not saying some husbands aren’t lazy bums—some are. If he is, he tell him studies show that lazy husbands get less sex. http://www.amazon.com/Lazy-Husband-More-Parenting-Housework/dp/B001G8WSSM/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324226014&sr=1-1-spell. If this is your problem, stop reading this column and start searching the net for a good family therapist. In the mean time, it’s better to ratchet down your standards and have a true family celebration, rather than suffer through another year of mommy-frenzy-cum-massive-resentment.

Have a blessed holidays. Let me know how it works.