When I first read this op-ed by Joanna Weiss in The Boston Globe, I couldn’t figure out what bothered me about the piece. She expresses an interest in making life less stressful for working parents, a proposition that I believe in strongly. She quotes Ellen Galinsky of the Families and Work Institute, an organization that I think is great. So why did I feel the need to pick this one apart?
The editorial badly oversimplifies work-life solutions, boiling them down to a question of flex-time and telecommuting. The fact is, these options are only a small part of the solution — and they don’t work for everyone. There are many jobs, professional and non-professional, that require being on the premises. Even for those jobs where telecommuting is feasible, it isn’t necessarily desirable for the employer or the employee.
More systemic solutions to the problems of overstressed working parents would include universal access to high-quality childcare/early education; universal healthcare; and government-supported paid family leave. All too frequently I find the wonders of technology and the possibility of flex-time offered up as a cure-all, leaving these more substantial and critical family issues on the table.
There’s another piece of the article that bugged me — and I’ll admit that it’s an unfair bias in many ways — Joanna Weiss is a popular culture and television critic for The Globe. Her bio cleverly touts watching Mr. Roger’s Neigborhood and Diff’rent Strokes as credentials. While I haven’t read much of her stuff, I’ll wager that she is a great television writer. But is she the person to be representing the working mother community in a major newspaper? Not from my perspective.
And this speaks to one of my big picture problems with working mother media coverage. It’s typically done by women who aren’t in the mainstream workplace — they’re writers, not corporate drones or factory laborers or non-profit workers. Writing is not a job that represents the general working mother population, especially freelance writing. Time and again I find that the journalists covering working parenthood are profoundly disconnected from its real trials and tribulations.
Yes, there’s more than a little jealousy harbored in my mini-tirade here — don’t we all sort of wish we could be freelance writers? — but I also think this is a real problem. When I read this kind of commentary from the usual suspects, many also soldiers in the mommy wars, I wonder, don’t we deserve someone who is in the trenches and has a thorough understanding of the many issues surrounding working parenthood?
Related links:
- Newsweek article on the recent Families and Work Institute study indicating that men and women both report stress related to work-life balance.
- Cathy Arnst at Business Week‘s Working Parents blog talks about how the media has been complacent on working mother issues.
- Kate Butler critiques traditional media coverage of Mother’s Day.
great piece. i fully agree with you that our work-life priorities are all mixed up in this country.
keep writing!
andy
Hi MamaBee,
My beef with most coverage of the work-family dilemma is that if focuses on only one partner in the equation– the worker. What about the organization?
Organizations are greedy. Organizations are designed by managers to get as much as they can (occasionally within reason, often unreasonably) out of members and employees. We need to continue to speak out that it is the design of jobs, the design or organizations, and the design of our economic system that make it so difficult to manage work & family.
Without *always* holding organizations accountable, the recommendations for ‘fixing things’ devolve into individual problems and initiatives that can sometimes work for the worker, but that rarely make systemic change.
cvh
Yes it’s a huge cultural and economic issue
The biggest factor for working parents is the way our nation- federal and state government agencies have failed us by not creating and funding a national infrastructure for safe, affordable, and accessible child care. There are a fortunate few who have found their way to flexible work and great benefits provided by insightful businesses, but by and large, legislators have ignored the need for systematic child care funding for all children birth through 5 that is attached to stringent regulation and oversight. There are more than 11 million children in child care nationwide. Our legislators have been able to skate by legislation that ensures safety and well-being, and growth and development because the vast majority of the consumers of child care are working-class, and poor, and because they are busy working to survive, do not have the time, money, or access to connect with policy makers.
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As a freelance journalist and mother sent here by Jeanne Sager (http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/archive/2009/04/03/why-writing-mothers-count-too.aspx), I find this a very frustrating and upsetting commentary.
Even in the “factory” or “corporate” setting you claim to know, I have to assume that you could work outside the typical 9-5 scope in at least some jobs. I am right on board with more daycare options, etc, but you did not have to trash the piece to make your point. We are ALL working moms. Period.
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