Getting to 50/50: How Working Parents Can Have It All

Getting to 50/50: How Working Parents Can Have It All

Getting to 50/50: How Working Parents Can Have It All

Getting to 50/50: How Working Parents Can Have It All

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Overview

Winner of the ForeWord Reviews 2013 IndieFab Awards Silver medal in the category of Family & Relationships

Winner of the Independent Publisher Book Awards 2014 Gold medal in the category of Parenting

Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober are professionals wives and mothers. They understand the challenges and rewards of two-career households. They also know that families thrive not in spite of working mothers but because of them. You can have a great career a great marriage and be a great mother. The key is tapping into your best resource and most powerful ally—the man you married.

After interviewing hundreds of parents and employers surveying more than a thousand working mothers and combing through the latest government and social science research the authors have discovered that kids husbands and wives all reap huge benefits when couples commit to share equally as breadwinners and caregivers. Mothers work without guilt fathers bond with their kids and children blossom with the attention of two involved parents.

From "baby boot camp" for new dads to exactly what to say when negotiating a leave with the boss this savvy book offers fresh ideas to today's families offering encouragement hope and confidence to any woman who has ever questioned her choices regarding work and family.

Winner of the Independent Publisher Award Gold Medal in Parenting

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781936740581
Publisher: Start Publishing LLC
Publication date: 09/17/2013
Pages: 340
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Sharon Meers leads global business development and sales for X.commerce the open commerce platform of eBay helping merchants grow with better technology. Formerly Meers was a managing director at Goldman Sachs where she worked for 16 years and was co-chair of the Women's Network in the Investment Management Division. She and her husband founded the Partners for Parity at Stanford Business School and the Dual-Career Initiative at Harvard.Joanna Strober is Managing Director of a fund investing in private partnerships at Sterling Stamos an investment firm in Silicon Valley and the founder of the "working stiffs" mom's group. As one of the few females in private equity in Silicon Valley Strober has been featured in the front page of the Wall Street Journal for launching several well known companies.Sheryl Sandberg is chief operating officer at Facebook. Prior to Facebook she was vice president of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google and chief of staff at the U.S. Treasury Department. Sheryl lives in Menlo Park, CA with her husband and their two children.

Read an Excerpt

The most important career decision you make is whom you marry. (And the deals you make with him.)

INTRODUCTION - Imagine a Full Life—There's No Need to Choose
Do we know you?
You worked hard to get where you are. You pushed yourself in school, got a job, and gave it your all. You learned your trade and found your strength, spurred on by the challenge of doing things well. When you see the next mountain, you gear up to climb it.
Along the way, you think about meeting the right guy. Or maybe you've met him and he has joined your journey. Either way, you see how linking your life with a man's may change your course.
Setting out, it all see,ms simple. It's fun to be a twosome, and you help each other when the ground gets rocky. If he slips, you steady him; when you lag behind, he pulls you up. You map out your future together, and it's good. Two people joined by love and shared dreams. This is the marriage you hope for.
Then, one day, you take a grand new path: parenthood. No longer a couple, you're a family. While you pause to adjust to this miracle, your husband resumes his course...
You look into your child's eyes and wonder, How much will I miss you when I go back to work? Should I slow down to keep you safe—even stop altogether?
Other voices echo yours. Those who once cheered you on now ask, "Do you have to work? Won't the baby need you? Do you really want to leave your baby with strangers? Does your salary even cover child care?"
Back at work, some colleagues now see you differently.
"You seem less focussed. We'll ask Jack to help you run that project."
"We restructured the group while you were out. Half your team now reports to Charlotte."
"Commitment is important. We'd like to see you here more hours."
And you see things differently, too. Do we need the third staff meeting? Is the trip to Tucson really necessary? you start to ask—time is no longer something you give away freely.
You look to your partner for support, but he faces a steep grade himself. Convinced he must "provide for the family," he resolves to work even harder. You call to him for help—did he hear you? You ask him to take his share of the load, but he worries he'll stumble if he does.
"I know it's my turn to do day-care drop-off, but can you do it? I have an early meeting."
"The baby is calmer with you. He always fusses when I t (with hope that she'll stay there.)ry to feed him."
"There are no other dads at the playground and the moms look at me funny. Can't you do the play date?"
Once day you wake up and wonder, Why not just quit? You see your paycheck depleted by childcare costs and your time vanish as each day repeats itself: dressing your child, feeding her, going to work, coming home, feeding her again, and putting her to bed (with hopes that she'll stay there.) Weekends are cram sessions of diapers, groceries, laundry, errands, and the occasional night out that takes as much planning as a space shuttle launch. You begin to think of your spouse as a kindly roommate who usually remembers to put the seat down.
You're still giving it your best at work, but you're tired and scared about the not-so-subtle signs that no one thinks you'll stick it out. On bad days, you ask yourself, Can't we make do without my income—just for a while? You certainly wouldn't be the only working mother to "opt out." You can tick off a half dozen ex-colleagues, all mothers, all talented in different ways, who drove off into the sunset, children strapped safely in their car seats. You keep hearing that voice: Is is really worth it?
You bet your kid's college tuition it is.
We're going to show you precisely why working is worth it for you, your children, and your spouse, and how both your family and your career can flourish—when you tap into a powerful ally. It's not your babysitter, your BlackBerry, or your boss (thugh thy come in handy). Here's a hint: You married him.
...
We are two working moms who believe that everyone wins when men are full parents and women have full careers. When both parents pay the bills and care for the kids, this life is possible—we know from experience. In our homes, we don't assume that Mom is destined to be the "primary parent." Our kids see Dad as equal to Mom because we set it up that way. True, we did 100 percent of the breast-feeding and sometimes only we can make the monster under the bed disappear. But Dad loves parenting as much as we do—and he's good at it, too. There is also no "primary breadwinner" among us. Mom and Dad are both on the hook for the costs of raising kids, from groceries to braces, from housing to soccer cleats. The payoff? We enjoy rewarding careers and see that our families thrive—not despite our work but because of it.

Chapter Five: Success Does Not Require 24/7
We started our careers in two times-intensive fields - Joanna in law and Sharon in finance. We each looked around our offices and saw men working 24/7, and women doing the same thing - until they became parents. In our mostly male professions, long hours were not only a badge of honor, a sign of status, they were a necessity for anyone who wanted to get ahead. It was clear who the working mothers were (a handful of women who tried to keep more normal hours), but it was hard to tell who the fathers were. Single or with four kids at home, all men arrived at work early and went home late - or so it seemed. Talking to men and women in all kind of jobs, we heard the same story. As young people starting out they, like us, got this message: To succeed, you need to work all the time. To work all the time, you need to be (or act) childless.
We've been lucky to learn this is not true - but only after many years of laboring under the delusion that it was. We've all been duped into thinking that more is better when it comes to our jobs, that somehow the more time we spend at work, from offices to hospitals to test kitchens to newsrooms, the more productive we'll be. It starts from a belief that's largely right: That hard work is good (which it is), that we can do a better job if we put in more hours (which was true when we were talking about bringing the harvest in before the crops froze). "It didn't used to be this intense," says Bill George, who ran Medtronic and now sits on the boards of global companies like ExxonMobil. "It got much worse starting fifteen years ago."
Compounding the problem, some of the most hardheaded leaders romanticize 24/7 life. "I used to show up at the office Saturday morning," writes former General Electric CEO Jack Welch in his best-selling book Winning. He had plenty of company, all men, on these weekend mornings he describes as "a blast." "We would mop up the workweek in a more relaxed way and shoot the breeze about sports."
"I never once asked anyone 'Is there someplace you'd rather be - or need to be - for your family or favorite hobby or whatever?' The idea just didn't dawn on me that anyone would want to be anywhere but at work."
We've created a breed of managers who think 24/7 is a matter of pride and success. The overfocus on hours can lead even bright bosses to stop measuring things that matter more, like results or the inputs that drive them, which take more effort to track. Consider the management maxim that "what gets measured gets done" and it's no wonder we're all at the office even longer.
Studying a large firm, Harvard Business School professor Leslie Perlow heard one boss excuse a failing worker this way: "I think we would have lost faith in him a long time ago. But he works so hard, you just have to assume he's working on something really challenging." Bosses at this firm (as in many) were so focused on hours that they would cut a poor performer slack but pushed out successful workers who put in less time.

Something happens to our sense of time when we become parents. Time becomes a prized commodity, something we'd rather not waste. When our time is being misused - by either ourselves or others - we want to punch the clock, literally. It's always aggravating when the person who called the 2:00 meeting shows up at 2:15 and then blows another fifteen minutes off topic. It's even worse when you'd like to leave by 5:15, not 5:45. That's half an hour your child will be waiting for you at day care (accruing those infuriating late fees).
"'This is the dumbest meeting I've sat through in my life.' That was all I could think. It was an important client but we weren't using our time well and I had to leave to make my daughter's event," said Grace, the advertising executive. "Before kids, I'd bought into this idea 'I'm a partner at this big firm and this is what we do.' But when there are kids who need you for specific things, you acknowledge the truth - that we spend a lot of time doing stupid things at work."
It gets harder to see 24/7 as heroic when you know how much it hurts the well-being of kids (and of your marriage and spouse). You can't get good results unless you put in good, hard work, but as Doug, a professor of psychiatry, says, "Sometimes I think we overdo it. When people feel they're expected to be at the office for twelve hours a day, they spend a lot more time bullshitting at the watercooler."
While it's easy to think that the workplace is kinder than it was a generation ago, we are in fact being asked to work longer, harder, and faster, all in the name of the global competition. If we're really interested in winning, our addiction to midnight oil is a danger. Productivity, efficiency, innovation should be our focus - all more easily achieved by alert minds not working 24/7.

Chapter Nine: Baby up all Night? Good Guys to the Rescue - how 50/50 men save the day

Your baby is sick. Your meeting runs late. Your sitter needs an emergency root canal. The day care closes for the Columbus Day holiday - but your office does not. Early parenthood can feel like a place where Murphy's Law is the only rule on the books.
And if the bombardment of new problems weren't enough, you're having to problem-solve with a deeply sleep-deprived mind (unless you lucked out with the rare infant who sleeps the full night). Kara remembers commuting on the freeway one morning after a rocky night with her six-month-old. "'The cops should pull you over,' I told myself.' I could barely keep my eyes open." "I think it takes six to nine months to rebalance, to recalibrate your life," says Carol, the accounting partner. "You have to know you're going to have rough nights when your kid comes in your bed and throws up on you."
In these stressful first months of parenthood, it's easy to feel like the damsel in distress. If your husband is not rushing to be your 50/50 knight in shining armor, you might share this with him. James
Levine, director of the Fatherhood Project and author of Working Fathers, says that we need to help men stand up and ask for flexibility as often as women do. Levine says too many of us play a game of "Blame the Culture." "Working parents assume that employers won't allow men the same leeway as women. But they rarely ask. Men don't ask their.

Table of Contents

Introduction — Imagine a Full Life — There's No Need to Choose

Part One — The Good News About Work: Why Two Careers Are Better Than One
1. Mom and Dada: How Kids Can Get More from Two Working Parents
2. What Your Husband Wins from a Working Wife
3. What Women Gain from Working Motherhood

Part Two — Three Truths to Bust the Myths About Work, Women, and Men
4. Women Don't Quit Because They Want To
5. Success Does Not Require 24/7
6. It's Not a Fair Game — but You Can Improve Your Odds

Part Three — The 50/50 Solution and How to Make It Yours
7. The Great Alliance: How Your Husband Solves the Work/Life Riddle
8. The Pre-Baby Road Trip: Mapping Out a Leave You Can Return From
9. The Post-Baby Uphill: Test-Driving 50/50 and Getting Back Up to Speed
10. Getting to 50/50: At Home, at Work, for Life

Resources

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Authors

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