Our eldest daughter is all decided on college. Those of you who have been through college shopping, wishing and praying know well what this past nine months has been like for our family. In with the dorm accessories and technology I am packing her a copy of M.F.K. Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf. Fisher's breakthrough book, first published during World War II, is a collection of essays on enjoying the humble pleasures of living and dining during times of dearth.

Not only the economic times influence this selection for me. It has hit her dad and I between the eyes to see how little dearth our darlings have had to endure while being raised. But now is a time to rethink our values and I, for one, am optimistic. Like Fisher, our daughter attended the private prep school by the shore where she began writing -- and both favor ambiance over opulence in getting together with friends. I want to see our daughter begin to both begin understand the basics of economy, hosting and simple pleasures and to also appreciate how contemporary is the notion of simple feasting ala the slow food movement. Good for her, good for the planet and decidedly good for conversation which should ease this big transition for her just a bit.

We celebrate the anniversary of women's suffrage each year on August 26th at our house. From the time my girls were little and I used the movie Mary Poppins to explain women's suffrage, we have made note of the progress of women. Or lack of progress ...

Thanks to Ellen Goodman's op-ed piece in the Boston Globe today, we had fresh suffrage fodder for dinner tonight. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080821/news_lz1e21goodman.html
My favorite example offered up in a couple of Goodman's recent posts is the apparent closing of the math gap between men and women. Since we have a teenager who reads math books for fun, the validity of the gap was never on our radar. But we do like seeing the acknowledgement that math is an equal opportunity skill set.

I only wish that there were more happy examples of the advancement of women. Every month, I turn to the back of Ms. magazine to get a fill of outrage at the atrocities of advertising, law and economics that women must face around the world. Elizabeth Edwards and Silda Spitzer come to mind for their silence. Phyllis Schafley for her outspokenness against women's rights. It is one thing to note the inequality of women as dished out by men. Quite another thing to see intelligent women doing to us all.

Thanks to Goodman for shining a light on those who have done their best this year to set back the cause of women.

John McCain issued a press release this week in support of establishing a National Office on Work Life Balance.
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/News/PressReleases/
cc55f873-0d4f-438b-a866-688633c02e71.htm

The issue of entitlement to time off is an emotive one for most working professionals. This is true whether you are the boss, the manager or the only employee. As you have heard from this column many times, time is a very valuable asset for most individuals. Much of what time off an employee is entitled to has been legislated over the years I have been working. Thanks to maternity leave policies, it has even been okay to consider leave practices that vary by employee/gender/group. The argument that if time is given to one employee, then it must be made available to all employees has more recently been applied to the development of paternity leave policies. Statistics so far support the notion that what works for one group of employees may not apply or appeal equally to all employees.

Legislation may have set up annual holiday leave policies that most companies adhere to but it has yet to touch on a different dilemma -- leave entitlements that meet an employee's satisfaction. Given that the legislated policies are widely interpreted upon implementation, individual contracts need to be carefully crafted to succeed. What the entitlement dilemma illuminates for employers is the complex labyrinthine measures employees use to balance their entitled time. For example, few HR manuals describe how to compensate employees when they travel for the additional time "on the job" such as getting to the airport early and overnights including work done in the hotel room. Likewise, the late evenings in the office, the breakfast and dinner meetings, Saturday trade shows and midnight global concalls all constitute time that management has long considered due them from their well paid professional staff. And well it might be.

What is being calculated, however, is entitled time. I don't know an employee, no matter what their rank, who hasn't done a private accounting of their extra time expended and an offsetting accounting entry for making that time up in personal pursuits. Given that money runs neck and neck with time as a valuable asset in most people's minds, similar accounting is done for the expense sheet. Although leave entitlements for events of short duration like hours and days doesn't make for very interesting conversation, it can offer a great deal of comfort to have these policies outlined and referred to by your valued employees.

Just as the news breaks that women are getting squeezed on maternity leave benefits due to changes in corporate insurance programs, I am reminded of the dealing so many women in my office did to maximize their six week paid leave with banked vacation and sick days. The women were usually able to take eight weeks of paid time off but tipped close to the brink of the corporate culture in attempting to take another month of unpaid leave. Usually they simply returned to work a little sad at 8 weeks.

What this evokes in me, however, is the memory of the shared work arrangement my husband and I agreed to and several of my peers tried to negotiate as well when looking down the face of the calendar and childcare for a new baby. We built what we called a new model -- one that only our modern generation understood the need for. We were planning to be parenting and household partners with an equal distribution of work and homework hours. As Lisa Belkin once again hits the bulls eye in her June 15, 2008 article for the New York Times: When Mom and Dad Share It All, modern women still do more of the housework and care taking at a ratio of two to one. Class doesn't matter -- and our family has been multiple classes over our 16 years of child rearing. Working class, middle class, upper class, the ratio is still two to one in division of labor in families.

What really needs a flashlight focused on it, however, is the issue of why women continue to put up with this lopsided division of labor in the first place. Even in families where the woman works full time and the husband stays at home and you would expect a reversal in this division, you find the wife doing the majority of the housework. And childcare is measured separately from housework in the University of Wisconsin National Survey of Families and Households. The division of labor in childcare is (are you sitting down?) 5:1! There is no rational explanation for these out of whack proportions. I understand that social norms (however outdated) play a part in the way work is fashioned. What I cannot understand is why women put up with it.

Well, actually, I do know why. It is another type of making a deal much like negotiating maternity leave. Many of us know the women who put her foot down on the unfair division of labor and found themselves on food stamps and living in an 800 square foot apartment. I am always a bit aghast when I witness women who continue to work themselves to the bone raising wonderful children, managing their relationship and often working a full time job too. What shocks me is the women's perspective that they have a pretty good arrangement. I have seen their husbands go from golf course, to tv remote to a brief try at catch or homework and heard them applaud their men. The survey I would like to see the sociologists conduct is the one that measures the economic value of maintaining this 2:1 and 5:1 division of labor in order to keep the family intact and the concomitant value for the growing child.

In April 3rd's www.salon.com/books/ review of Meg Wolitzer's new novel Ten Year Nap, Rebecca Traister raises a question that I believe sums up the pain and frustration so many women feel in today's work world. Traister points to the "professionalism of parenthood" brought about by our generation of high achieving women who were compelled to leave the workforce. These women applied the same skills to parenting as they did to their previous jobs - and the same intensity. Wolitzer agrees and says this is the heart of the mommy wars. There is anxiety from the pull of motherhood and the pull of career in another direction. Self-doubt follows and unhappiness settles in.

As we mothers apply our professionalism to raising our kids, another type of fallout occurs - perfectionism! According to Psychology Today (March/April 2008), perfectionists are made, not born. Experts also know that perfectionism in children is increasing. Pressure on children to achieve is rampant, because parents now seek much of their status from the performance of their kids. The kids' view on this pressure to not make mistakes is self evident. They feel criticized. Raising our kids on this kind of distress will never yield adults who will be able to adapt in our fast moving world. Adaptability is the characteristic that enables the species to evolve. Kids need to be raised to be flexible and comfortable with ambiguity. They need to feel free to take risks. Since perfectionism is the "endless reportcard" this path is doomed to result in endless frustration and anxiety. Hhmm. Sounds like the mothers who off ramped from their careers.

More on this topic and how to turn things around, next time. For now, just remember to breathe.

While sending regrets for a school party I couldn't fit into my weekend recently, I was struck by how much I really did regret that I couldn't make it to the party. There are two kinds of regret in life -- regret about things we haven't done and regret about things we have done. When asked what is the biggest regret of their life, three fourths of my workshop attendees describe something that they did not do in their life.

When considering flexible work schedules with my clients, it is often that case that they are seeking to make time to do something they will regret not having done at the end of their career or life. Women often complain of not having enough time - and we know this is a true stressor in modern life when you both work and run a household. When we do our self assessments and list and prioritize our days, it is very likely that something regretted will pop out. It may be something you wished to try when younger and you never got around to it. It may be something that has taken on signifigance in your life through caring for yourself or your family. It may also be a "before I die" sort of longing as you face the second half of your life.

So try this exercise : if you could have anything you want and noone would crticize or sabotage your dream -- what would it be? There would be no downside. Cost wasn't the issue. Time isn't the issue. I know. The "buts" stream on endlessly because the real question is WHAT DO YOU WANT? When you really know that, the way generally cooperates and opens up. If it is something you have always wanted to do, your task is taking the steps to begin to do it. Remember how sorry you will feel if you never do it. If you are not entirely sure of what you would regret passing up, consider similar things and select from them. Believe that you are in control and that things can change. For years, I did what I was good at but never questioned whether it was what I wanted to do. In taking control of my career - after losing control, which is another story - I have found a far richer tapestry which contains no regrets.