To appreciate fully the issues surrounding working mothers, consider what happens when Mommy attempts to head off to work on a typical day. First, the two-year-old attaches himself like a barnacle to your leg and begins howling, ignorant of the fact that he's smearing his breakfast cereal all over your power suit. Then, with heartbreaking simplicity, your older child gives a wan little smile and says, "We're having a class trip, but don't worry, Mom. I already told them you can't go." These are the little moments that have propelled women and the companies that hire them into a new, slightly awkward pas de deux centered on work and family issues.

The news is mostly good; transformation in the workplace is occurring, albeit slowly. The steady rise of women in the workplace -- combined with their growing refusal to neglect their families -- has given birth to a raft of new company policies. Those corporations that do take on employee-friendly initiatives are finding that productivity is up, and the bottom line is steadily improving. For a handful of the savviest (smartest) corporations, integrating work and family has become another way to stay competitive in the marketplace. For many others, however, flexible work schedules (commonly referred to as flextime) and other such options remain vaguely suspicious, widely seen as "a woman's thing" not pertinent to corporate life.

Today, almost three quarters of married women with dependent children work in the paid labor force in America. Of that figure, 38 per cent work full-time and year-round. A 1995 Whirlpool study¹ labels these women the "new providers" with 55 per cent providing half or more of the household income. Yet, the motivation is not strictly financial. The Whirlpool study also finds that these women see themselves as playing important roles in and outside the home, in both kinds of work. So women's work has come to take on a new, more holistic meaning, defeating old notions that women who take paying jobs do so at the expense of their families. Findings indicate that full-time homemakers actually feel less valued at home than women who are employed in the marketplace full-time.

Yet, while gratified, working women still feel the pinch. Even though a U.S. Department of Labor survey found 79 per cent of women "love" or "like" their jobs, another study found more than four in 10 "worry a great deal" about balancing family and work responsibilities. Dubbed "The Tired Class," these working mothers are logging more hours at paid jobs than their predecessors ever did, and they are more likely than ever to have a small child to care for. This said, how exactly does the working mother juggle career ambitions with the ever-present drain of family needs? The answer lies in a variety of creative options.

As a married, working mother of two children aged two and seven in New York City, I fall into the category most working women want to be in: part-time employee. By choice I am also self-employed in that capacity, which is another growing preference for women in the workplace. This allows me to pick up my kids from school and day care two afternoons a week, a chore I share with my self-employed husband, and in the summer when we move up to our summer house in the mountains, to commute to my job every other week for four days. If I were not self-employed, I would not have this flexibility. But in turn, I receive no benefits from the company I work for; I am excluded from most important meetings and company functions, and any kind of actual job advancement is strictly out of the question. Job security is also not great, but I reason that is the case with any job these days, and as far as job benefits go, I have my own health insurance policy and retirement account. Like working women everywhere, my need to mother my children at least part of the time has put me at a disadvantage when it comes to riding the fast track. Yet, it's a trade I gladly make.

A different story is that of my niece, Jennifer Liebowitz of North Wales, Pennsylvania. A vice president and lending officer of a large urban bank, Jennifer handles a three-hour commute four days a week. On those days, she and her 18-month-old son leave the house at 6:30 a.m.; he is in day care from 7:00 a.m. until 6 p.m. On the fifth day she stays home and telecommutes (works via computer) while her mother comes over and cares for her son. The reasoning is this: It provides her with six additional hours of quality time per week with her son, plus a much needed break from the constant interruptions of the office so she can actually get something done. An added advantage is her clients' responses. "Clients call me at home, and they love it because they reach me on the first ring," she explains. Needless to say, the arrangement works and her own career path remains intact.

The unseen benefits of this kind of work arrangement are being discovered by more and more companies nationwide. A survey by Business Week and Boston University's Center for Work & Family² rated work-family policies and benefits at 37 publicly-traded companies in the Business Week 1,000. Their findings reported that 48 percent of 8,000 employees said they could "have a good family life and still get ahead" in the company, while 60 percent reported that management either ignored or took people only "somewhat" into account when making decisions. The most enlightened of these companies, such as First Tennessee National Corporation, operate on the premise that family life directly affects business results. By getting rid of many of the company's policies and permitting employees to create their own schedules, they found that productivity soared and customer satisfaction rose.

The Business Week study noted that those First Tennessee supervisors who were rated as supportive of work-family balance retain employees twice as long as the bank average, which in turn allows them to keep 7 percent more customers. This has contributed to a 55 percent profit gain over two years. When managers at Xerox's Dallas, Texas, customer administration center handed over responsibility for scheduling shifts to workers, they reaped an overnight drop in absenteeism, as well as higher productivity. Their Webster, New York, production-development team banned early morning and late night meetings, with a result of the first on-time launch of a new product in the business's history.

The May 1997 issue of Parenting Magazine³ singled out Patagonia and Lucasfilm Ltd. as parent-friendly companies because of their well-subsidized, on-site day care centers. Not only do parents get to stop in several times a day to visit their children, but Patagonia's child care center even provides an after school program complete with transportation from nearby schools. First Tennessee, which also appeared in Parenting's Top 10 list, runs a special child care center called Sniffles and Snuggles specifically for kids who would ordinarily have to stay home sick. Tom's, a toothpaste company in Maine, offers employees compressed work weeks with four 10-hour shifts and one day off instead of the traditional five-day work week. And at computer-maker Hewlett-Packard, where flextime began back in 1972, 85 per cent of its employees participate in some sort of flexible work schedule. A popular alternative here is job- sharing, in which two employees share one job equally. For Hewlett-Packard, job sharing has the benefit of offering two employees with their unique perspectives and talents for the price of one. These new approaches appear to be the beginning of a critical and much-needed shift in how American companies do business.

Still, for many companies, the movement has not happened yet, and not solely because of management. In my niece Jennifer's office, there tends to be a male-female divide about flextime and other arrangements, such as telecommuting. Men view it as a women's issue. Women say they'd support the men if the men wanted to adjust their schedules. More prevalent, however, is a creeping, general fear of the policies. People who do make flexible work arrangements try to keep them quiet, in case some higher-up (supervisor) should notice and remove the privilege. And many are afraid to ask for alternative arrangements out of a fear of being seen as uncommitted to their work. "It's as if they're thinking no one would ever grant them flextime -- as if they don't deserve it," Jennifer says. And yet, flextime is a company policy.

Also noteworthy is the phenomenon discussed in a new book by Arlie Russell Hochschild, recently excerpted in The New York Times Magazine⁴. In "The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work," the author describes the phenomenon of parents who escape to the sanctity of their offices and stay there, in order to avoid the pressures and hard work of family life. Hochschild cites a Bureau of Labor study of 188 companies in which 35 per cent offer flexible work arrangements, but fewer than 3 percent of employees take advantage of them. Her premise prompted Boston Herald columnist Suzanne Fields ⁵ to suggest that the Ms. Foundation replace the annual "Take Our Daughters to Work Day" with "Let Our Daughters (and Sons) Stay Home with their Mothers Day."

Flextime and telecommuting are also simply not options for many workers, particularly those who perform clerical or manual labor. Deborah Marie Peterkin of Hillside, New Jersey, a former executive secretary and mother of four, grew so frustrated by her inability to be a part of her children's school life that she left her office job to work with the ground crew of a nearby urban airport. She gets out on the tarmac from 2:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. to flag in and refuel airplanes. Upon reaching home, she hustles children off to school, goes on class trips, picks up the kids after school, and spends the afternoon with them. Then she goes to sleep after preparing an extremely early dinner. Despite a decrease in pay, she considers the arrangement an improvement.

For these workers, only such initiatives such as the Family and Medical Leave Act protect their interests as parents. Passed after eight years of bitter debate in Congress, the bill requires employers with 50 or more employees to offer 12 weeks unpaid leave around the birth of a child, or to care for a critically ill family member.

Nonetheless, we can safely say the winds of change are sweeping the workplace, and such participation is not limited to mothers alone. During the work week in our house, my husband spends twice as much time as I do caring for our children, and I am the primary breadwinner. A casual trip to the playground always reveals at least a handful of Dads on duty. And when I walk in the door at the end of the day, my children come at me screaming "Mommeeee!" but more and more my husband is the one they ask for help with homework or cups of juice. This is a positive change, I keep reminding myself, one that makes for a truly integrated family. I do love the fact that their Dad is as important to them as I am. Still, I can't help feeling some jealous twinges in my mothering genes. What it's really all about is achieving that delicate balance. A balance that will hopefully become even more balanced by the time our children grow up.

ENDNOTES:

1. Women: The New Providers: Whirlpool Foundation Study, Part One, 1995; Families and Work Institute, 98 pages. Back to text.

2. Business Week, September 16, 1996; Balancing Work and Family, Keith H. Hammonds, pages 74-80. Back to text.

3. Parenting Magazine, May 1997; "Take this Job and Love It," Leah Hennen, page 164. Back to text.

4. The New York Times Magazine, April 20, 1997; "There's No Place Like Work," Arlie Russell Hochschild, page 50. Back to text.

5. The Washington Times, April 24, 1997; "How About a Stay At Home Day," Suzanne Fields, page A17. Back to text.

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In addition to her part-time job writing promotional copy for The New York Times, Suzanne Falter-Barns is a freelance writer, social commentator, and author of the novel, Doin' the Box Step (Random House, 1992)

(The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.)