Jennie: Thanks for your comment, and for taking the challenge. The Mama Bee (www.themamabee.com) has written about this exact topic in the past. Sometimes, in the interest of sparing young women later work-life challenges, we encourage them to take “flexible” jobs, or ones that are known for a good lifestyle, as opposed to whatever sets their hearts racing. But the truth is, we are all going to have rough weeks when we are raising our children and building our careers at the same time. We stick it out when we have careers that we love. And there are spill-over benefits of figuring out what we love — I write in 168 Hours that we’ll have more energy for our families working 50 hours a week in jobs we love vs. 30 in jobs we hate. Obviously there’s no study quantifying that, but that was certainly the way people I interviewed put it.

Lindsey: Thanks so much for commenting! Definitely working on the mindshare issue. When I have worked a “job” what I liked is that I was done for the day when I got home. Now, working for myself, I’m never done. There is always something else I could be doing — I have to work on consciously putting down the iPhone, or just not turning it on on Saturdays…

Cara: So true on some firms not even knowing their own policies because it’s an unspoken rule that no one uses them. I learned that my husband’s office has a back-up nanny benefit (if your caregiver calls in sick, or if your daycare is closed or some such — they contract with a service that has pre-screened sitters). I think if he were a woman, someone would have mentioned this to him as a perk he might use. I guess the assumption with a man is that his wife is the back-up if something goes wrong.

Cloud: That’s certainly been my experience with time-tracking. I see that I’m spending a lot of time with my kids. Partly this is because they’re such night owls, but the net result is that I really don’t think I’m over-investing in work right now, and I could scale that part (or the leisure part) of my life up if I decide I need/want to.

Karen: Thanks for this comment. I’m more of a solo contributor myself — part of the reason I work as I do, I’m sure. I worked for myself and worked from home long before I needed any “flexibility” because of the kids. And I totally get what you’re saying about traditional notions. There’s a scene from an early job that’s burned on my brain — one woman was coming back from maternity leave, and her boss made her stay until 8pm on her first or second day back. I’m not quite sure what the story was, and perhaps there was some sort of crisis, but the result was she pretty much quit on the spot. Then there was a hiring freeze, and the department was short-staffed for months. An example of things not going optimally for either party.

But I think I was in the sort of bind that Lindsey was in–my old job in biotech was simply untenable and impossible to reconcile with the kind of flexibility I needed to be with my family. Not all jobs in biotech are necessarily like that, in theory, but that one was. It varies so much within an industry and even, perhaps, within the same company. And it’s almost impossible to go into a job and know beforehand whether it’s going to work that way or not. If you are too up-front in your interview about needing flexibility it may cost you the job (this happened to me).

Many people currently in upper management, in their 50’s and 60’s, still can’t really imagine doing business differently than the way it was done when they were young tigers: with face-time, secretaries, and the phone, rather than google, email, and the internet. They may pay lip service to flexibility, but when push comes to shove, it bothers them if they can’t walk out of their office at random with an off-the-wall request, and find you there at your desk, smiling and eager to answer it. And you can’t be eagerly at your desk at your boss’ beck and call if you are “off” at your child’s birthday party at 10 am, even if you make up for it later by working at 10 pm.

I also found her comment about being an individual contributor rather than a member of a team interesting. Some people just prefer being individual contributors due to temperament or work style–nothing necessarily tied to having kids. Some people are introverted, or just not necessarily “people people,” but are brilliant, hard-working, creative, etc. But those who prefer to be individual contributors for whatever reason do tend to get marginalized in the workplace–underpaid, underutilized, and fewer opportunities. And I wonder if Lindsey is onto something different there, if workplaces would be better, more efficient, more humane, or more productive, if they found better ways to utilize the talents of individual contributors instead of always insisting on teamwork from everyone–even those who do it poorly.

I wonder how much of the difficulty some women have with the idea of combing motherhood with a challenging career is the sexism we’ve internalized? I hear all the time- and most often from women- that motherhood and a career in science are incompatible. This is bunk. If science is incompatible with motherhood but not fatherhood, then that is sexism, pure and simple. I got so tired of hearing this that I started a list of scientists who are mothers on my blog: http://wandsci.blogspot.com/2009/11/yes-virginia-there-are-scientists-who.html

I think the internalized sexism manifests itself as guilt- so we mothers feel guilty about leaving work for that kid’s birthday party when a father in an equivalent job might not think twice about it. And we feel guilty about our occasional late nights at the office when again a father in a similar situation might not worry. I think this guilt cycle is self-destructive, and at least in terms of our careers, it can be self fulfilling, as our colleagues decide that maybe there is a good reason that we’re feeling guilty! I wrote up an entire post about this, too: http://wandsci.blogspot.com/2010/08/sabotaged-by-guilt.html

Finally, AskMoxie had a post yesterday about dealing with working mom guilt: http://www.askmoxie.org/2010/09/qa-guilt-guilt-guilt.html. I mentioned the timetracking in my comment there, because I think that if more working moms saw how much time they actually spend with their kids, they wouldn’t feel so guilty!

I really agree with a lot of what Laura writes about this idea that it is either or like if you don’t stay at home or work part time you are not there for your kids. But I think for those of us who can work from home and who have flexibility — no matter how many sacrifices we have had to make for it — we should keep in mind the woman like the single mom who has no choice and also the woman who is in a career which is so unbending. My friend is a six-figure attorney and yes she has made material choices that require her staying in that job but she is the breadwinner in her family and the one time she asked about childcare benefits at work — NO ONE IN her firm knew anything about it b/c they all had stay-at-home wives. Think how that woman feels and how she deep down will race out of that job b/c it really is not a good fit for her in achieving balance. Also I think if your balance comes at the expense of yoru child having a father or at the expense of your partners balance it is time to look at this b/c maybe more folks want balance in both worlds — and more needs to be written about this. If it works for you it isn’t wrong to let your man say take on this role but I don’t think most men who want to be good fathers are really happy with this.

But it will be very hard for me to work 9 hours or even 8 today, very hard. But maybe full time is not 8, it is really 7.5 or maybe those four hours on the weekend or as you say at other times.

Flexibility is key. I also think that if you really don’t need to work for the money it is harder — and easier for women to find motherhood so very very marginalizing — but it is also hard if you don’t really know what you want to do or your job is not flexible (which many many many are NOT).