The Cupertino Courier San Jose National Bank employee Laurie Arvizo feeds her son, Joshua, at her desk. Balancing Act These days, parents find innovative ways to extend their support network By Sandy Sims The friendly-to-the-family face that big business shows women these days is a far cry from the cold shoulder of the '70s, when women found the working world unresponsive and even hostile to mommy problems. Mimi Wong remembers it well. Divorced in the '70s, she struggled without help from her former husband to support their 5-year-old daughter. Her boss at her secretarial job in San Jose told her she could not use her sick leave or vacation days to care for her sometimes-sick child. "There was very little day care then," she recalls. "Believe me, it was tough." Professional women faced the same cold shoulder. Attorney Margaret Patrick, a Saratoga planning commissioner, recalls that she had her first baby on a Thursday night and was back in court on the following Monday. "I didn't want to call attention to myself as a woman attorney. So I played having a baby down. That was our mindset at the time," she explains. These were the avant guard who blazed a path into the men's domain and established women as competent workers. Along came affirmative action, open education, a booming economy and the promise parents made to their daughters that they could be anything they wanted. And the winds of work shifted toward women. The federal government nudged this shift a little further in 1993 with the Family and Medical Leave Act and tax breaks for day care, as did the state of California with the Family Rights Act, also in 1993. What it all adds up to is a different picture in 1998. These days, 72.3 percent of all moms have jobs, and the nation's total workforce is almost 50 percent women (the biggest growth in the last three or four years coming from mothers of babies and preschoolers). These women often establish their careers and move into management by their early 30s, thus becoming important players in the workplace. About that time, they begin having babies. Our 1998 30-something women are as fierce about being good moms as they are about developing their careers. If the stress on the job is too much, and there is no flexibility, they often go someplace else or, if financially able, quit altogether. With our booming economy and shortage of qualified and talented workers, companies don't want to lose their women. So business is courting them with everything from on-site breast pumps to job sharing. Nationwide and beyond, business has been trying innovative ways to help working moms. Steelcase, a Grand Rapids, Mich., corporation, and Children's Hospital of British Columbia offer take-home meals at a moderate price for their employees. PepsiCo has on-site dry cleaning. IDS Financial Services in Minneapolis piloted a program in 1990 offering parents of school-age children a nine-month work year with prorated pay, so they could be home during the summer months. After the first year, however, parents "went nuts" from spending such a long, concentrated time with their children, not to mention the stress of a reduced income. IDS found that what works better for their employees is six weeks of optional, unpaid personal leave. This eases the stress of summers and family needs that come up. James Kenny, president of San Jose National Bank, faced a possible crisis when four of his supervisors were pregnant at the same time. After much discussion of possibilities, SJNB came up with a plan. The moms could bring their babies to work. "It's called Babies in the Workplace," Kenny says. In exchange for coming back to work in six weeks or two months, mothers can keep their babies at the bank until the little tikes are crawling or 6 months old. All the booty that comes with baby showed up at the bank, and over the last few years 16 or 17 babies have made SJNB their second home. Two new babies will be moving in soon. Word is spreading about which companies are family friendly. In fact, Working Mother magazine and various Internet sites have listed 100 family-friendly places to work. When Kelly De Grange had her first baby three years ago, she did not want to return to her 50-plus-hours-a-week, high-stress Silicon Valley job. She knew she would not have energy left over for her baby. However, after eight months at home, Regis and Kathy and baby-talk were getting old, and she was feeling the pangs of isolation that motherhood can bestow on new moms. When she heard about a Campbell public relations company--the Benjamin Group--that had in-house day care and flexible hours, De Grange applied for a part-time clerical job. "That's all I felt I could manage then," De Grange recalls. There was another benefit. BG also subsidizes the cost of child care from 50 to 80 percent (according to an employee's income). This is a major perk when day care for babies under 2 years old averages $1,000 a month and for ages 2 to kindergarten from $700 to $800 a month. Day care itself is a major perk, because most day-care centers have waiting lists. Today, with a second baby to feed and the new house De Grange and her husband just purchased, she is working full time at BG as a human resources representative. She was back on the job after 13 weeks and able to continue nursing her second baby at work. "I can visit my kids any time I want," De Grange says. Interestingly, the on-site day care at Benjamin Group began unintentionally when the owners, Shari and Steve Benjamin, brought their own baby and nanny to work. They had to jump through many city hoops later on to establish their larger day-care program, called "Executive Sweet." In spite of the many efforts companies make to help mothers juggle their jobs and motherhood, working moms still face a tough battle within their own psyche. Nancy Ross, a Cupertino resident and a licensed clinical social worker and counselor, explains that working moms have a conflict between two important values--wanting to be good moms and wanting to be good team players at work. Amanda Jaramillo is a 31-year-old full-time public relations manager at Cisco Systems and the mother of 2 1/2- year-old and 6-month-old daughters. She supervises a staff of four or five, and she works at home one day a week. Jaramillo has a good support system: a husband who shares the load, extended family close by and an excellent baby sitter. Still, she has a sense of guilt that she says seems to go with the territory. "There's no matrix, no formula. I'm always evaluating. Am I spending enough time at home, or enough time at work? I feel as though I'm doing half a job at each place." This despite that she believes her children are healthy and happy and that she has continued to grow professionally. Aware of this conflict, megacompanies like Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and IBM are getting into the "family friendly" act. They use telecommuting, flexible hours and management by objectives to give moms (and dads) ways to juggle work hours around their home life. Cisco Systems employees can work one day a week at home by telecommuting. At Sun, a worker can create an alternative working plan that includes odd hours or working at home as long as it's approved by management. The concept of management by objectives at Hewlett-Packard enables employees and supervisors to set up objectives and due dates, so employees can work the hours any way they want. Job sharing is burgeoning in many of today's businesses. Mom can be home part time and still grow professionally. Business benefits from two knowledgeable workers and a position that is always covered. It's a win-win for both. Sun even has an in-house Web site dedicated to job sharing. Major corporations aren't the only businesses making an effort to help working moms with their balancing act. Theresa Frank and Anne-ly Garay, dentists sharing a practice in Sunnyvale, are both moms. Garay works three days a week, and Frank works two. "My husband travels a lot in his job, and my son has asthma," Frank explains. "I work a mile from the school and live a mile from the office. This way I'm available for my kids." Companies are going to great lengths, even extending services to the employee's personal life. Sun is on the cutting edge with an extensive support program. They offer counseling for child care, adoption, elder care, education and working and parent issues. They offer on-site lactation centers with a registered nurse/lactation consultant to help nursing moms. Sun also subsidizes a day-care center for (moderately) sick kids, and, amazingly, they will pay a portion of the fees when an employee adopts a baby. Paige Horton, 32, is experiencing a cutting edge '90s life as a working mom. After 2 1/2 years as a technical writer for Cross Access Corporation, a software company in Santa Clara, she and her husband decided to move to Las Vegas, where they could afford to buy a nice home and make a nest for their future family. Horton was able to continue her job at Cross Access by telecommuting and coming to Santa Clara twice a month. She's recently had her first baby and is taking two months off with full pay. Her husband plans to stay home and care for the baby for about six months and then return to work part time. Horton explains that she has been building her high-tech career for nine years. She is also the one making the bigger salary. If she stayed away from work too long, she would have to start her career over. Technology is changing too fast. "Besides," Horton says, "Brett is better at being home. After a while, I would get bored." But she will be home, upstairs in her office with the door closed, working full time, talking to engineers, translating what they say into instructions for software users, faxing, emailing, and supervising two employees at the home office, just as she did before. "I actually get more done here in a day than I did at the office. No commute. No water-cooler discussions. "It's hard to imagine ever leaving him," Horton says as she nurses her baby. If she had to go back to work on a 9-to-5 basis, she says, she would quit and do freelance work from home. The notion of "Mr. Mom" staying home with the kids is no longer a novel idea, either. According to Peter Baylies, president of the At-Home Dad Network--a stay-at-home dad's Web site--there may be as many as two million stay-at-home dads. Fathers are picking up more and more of the nurturing load. Interestingly, with more moms of preschoolers working, there hasn't been a drop in enrollment in parent-participation preschools. What the preschools are seeing is more dads filling in for or sharing mom's volunteer hours. The traditional role of mom as the nurturer is changing. Fathers, supportive friends and various child-care providers are moving in and sharing the nurture limelight. With all the bending of the corporate world, working and being a mom is still like balancing atop two circus horses. "Working moms need a strong support system," says social worker Ross. Even though it's the '90s, many of us still carry around the old image of the ideal mom that most Americans have tucked away in some back pocket of their brain: She's a woman somewhat akin to a saint, ever available, patient, always home cleaning, smelling like chocolate chip cookies or Clorox. Then there is the image of the ideal worker: efficient, productive, brilliant, very organized and, of course, a spiffy dresser. "This conflict has to be resolved," Ross says. "Children don't care about fancy meals or a well-cleaned house. What's important to kids is quality time with their parents," she explains. The images and standards need to be altered to something that makes sense for working moms. One mom has decided that her bottom line is "dressed, bathed and fed." Karen Plank, marketing manager and mother of a 6-year-old and a 12-year-old, says she never feels like she does enough. The images she carries in her head are of a house with everything in its place, good healthful meals and perfect kids. "Realistically, it's not possible," she says. "We need a bulldozer to clear off our desk so we can use it. I trip over things in the family room. And I run to Taco Bell sometimes for dinner." Plank works on a contract basis Monday through Thursday. With Fridays off, she says, she can get enough done to free her time up on the weekends. That's when she and her husband cart their kids to sports activities and when they make an effort to do something as a family. Patti Aquiar, owner of Green Hills Day Care in Los Gatos, says, "These moms seem to be doing it. I don't know how they do it, but some of the healthiest kids here are the ones who stay at our day-care school from 7:30 till 5:30." It's not easy, though. She often sees moms in tears as they drop their 2-year-olds off. If the children cry, they stop almost immediately after mom leaves, but mom is left with the image of the crying child. Some day-care centers have elaborate programs to help mom and child make the adjustment to separation. And Aquiar says that parents these days are much more informed about child care and parenting issues. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, they say, and, ironically, as the world of men has accommodated the working mom, men are finding themselves included in the perks. The national focus on family support is now called work/life support, open to any employee with work/living problems. Men can take family leave, job share, stay home with the children, and they no longer have to feel they are the sole provider for the family. [ Back to Contents Page | Cupertino Courier Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Cupertino Courier, November 11, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.