We need to start keeping it real about what it means to be a working parent.
I mean, “keep it real” in an actual sense, not in an Ivanka Trump sense of the word “working mom”. For working moms— whether they’re climbing the corporate ladder or simply trying to make ends meet— it’s not easy.
Earlier this month, Ivanka released her book called “Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success.” It was (not surprisingly) met with a lot of criticism, with many claiming that Ivanka is out of touch with the realities of being a working mom.
Being a working mom isn’t a thing of Instagram beauty, where three smiling children line up at the door in their school uniforms, squeeky clean and holding their Burberry lunchboxes.
No. There’s a whole backstory that Instagram forgot to tell you.
Last week, I gave that backstory. I wrote a LinkedIn post about my un-glamorous daily morning routine with my kids. The post went viral and has 15,000 clicks in a week and has comments from men and women.
I realize why people liked this post. It’s because corporate parents are sick to death of hearing about how beautifully people like Ivanka manage juggling parenthood and career.
It’s because not all of us have a spouse who can take the lion’s share of the parenting responsibility, as Sheryl Sandberg suggested in her book, “Lean In.”
It’s because not all women can even afford to “lean in.”
The corporate landscape needs to change in order for women to actually be able to lean in. We need shifts in attitudes and policies. This is true even in supposed “flexible” and open-minded environments like Silicon Valley.
I’ve worked around Silicon Valley. Companies with supposed work-life balance philosophies failed to walk the walk. They just talked the talk.
Talking about your kids at work is still taboo for women
For years, I dodged any questions about kids. And when I did talk about the fact that I had kids, I would immediately sense that it branded a letter on my forehead. To be fair, I worked on a team with a very involved father and he, too, was somewhat branded. But I got worse treatment than he did. We both worked for two female editors, neither of whom had any kids at the time.
I won’t go into the details of how I would be singled out.
But I will tell you this— years later, I ran into one of my former editors at a food truck festival, with her double stroller in tow. She apologized to me for how she treated me and said “I know now how hard it is to work when you have kids and I didn’t understand at that time.”
Work hours don’t allow parents to meet the demands of after school care
Unless you have a baby sitter or a nanny, it’s very hard to make it home in time to pick up your kids. Most after school programs end at 6 PM, which is a time that many are still required to be in the office. And even if you can leave by 5, it can be very hard to make it through traffic, as commutes in Silicon Valley can run up to an hour long.
Again, if we could have more open dialogue about parenting obligations, it wouldn’t look so bad if someone left work at 4:45 to get their kids on time. Instead, many parents find themselves sneaking out at five minutes to five, hoping that nobody sees them on their way out.
If we had proper dialogue on the topic, as we do at my current company, then nobody would have any issue with employees who left on time to get their kids. From Day One, I have been very clear with my boss (a VP) about the fact that I leave before 5 to get my kids and that I log back in after I get them, to finish any additional work. His response: “My wife is on a business trip and I will be leaving at 4 to get my son this week, too”.
You see what open discussion can do?
Facebook and Instagram “supermoms” are ruining it for the rest of us
Ladies— stop looking at the Facebook moms who seemingly have it all. One of the biggest problems we have, as I mentioned many times, is that we don’t talk openly enough about the less glamorous parts of parenting.
Instead, we turn to Facebook and Instagram and see photos of lawyer moms who are baking with their little ones. We see photos of the avocado toast they made for dinner.
Where are the photos of the bag of flour the little brats spilled on the counter?
What about the tantrums thrown after the kids eat all of those brownies, well after 7 PM on a school night?
And wait— when did they do their homework? For that matter, when did they eat dinner? After all, there’s only a small window of time between 6 PM and bedtime. Yet these Instagram supermoms somehow manage to juggle a perfect career, maintain a clean house, find time to bake and decorate cupcakes, and still get their kids to bed at 8 PM sans tantrum.
Look, we all like to see pretty cupcake photos on Instagram. But the problem with these Instagram supermoms is that they create false expectations. These false expectations are especially dangerous when people who don’t have kids see these images, because they hold the struggling parent up to an unfair standard.
The bottom line is this— we need to start having open and frank dialogue about parenting and career. We don’t need anymore advice from Ivanka. We don’t need anymore photos of avocado toast and cupcakes. We need more posts of kids rolling around on the floor at 8AM, their unfinished lunches that come home every day, or their mismatched outfits that they insisted on wearing (and that we let them wear because hey, at 8AM, you have to pick your battles).
Let’s keep it real about parenting.