Needlestack Jobs

The way work is today doesn’t work for moms. Work is still designed for the 1950s lifestyle when the father went to work and the mother stayed at home to care for the children. But since the 1950s, we have more women earning bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees. We have more women obtaining professional work experience. So what happens when these educated and experienced women start having babies? These women try to fit their role as mother in with their careers, and it’s like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It just doesn’t work. And if work doesn’t change, this conflict, this pull, is going to continue to take its toll as it currently is on our marriages, our families and our children.

So work needs to change in two significant ways:

1.      Women need to be able to off-ramp and on-ramp, (meaning exiting and reentering the workforce) at the different stages of their career, based on the needs of their family at that time. Work needs to provide opportunities for woman to off-ramp and on-ramp.

2.      Women need more flextime work arrangements made available to them. Flextime is any work arrangement, full or part time, that is not a typical Monday through Friday, 8 to 5 schedule. Right now, if a woman wants a flexible or flextime job, she often has to accept a position beneath her skill set. Women need to be able to obtain flextime jobs that allow them to put their education and experience to work while at the same time, still being able to meet the needs of her family. Work needs to provide more flextime work arrangements.

What if this happened? What if women had more opportunities to on-ramp, off-ramp and work flextime jobs? Would this all be fixed and just go away? It wouldn’t. As with all things in life, we are our own worst critic. Not only does work need to change, but so does our perceptive of working moms. As a society, our mindset needs to change. It’s often believed that the concept of a working mom and that of a good mom are mutually exclusive. We need to come to the realization that a mother can work, and still be an excellent mother.