I’m one of those children of the 70s/80s who grew up thinking I should “bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan,” and never let my man forget he’s a man. We were supposed to strive to be “Supermoms” who were able to do it all.

And, according to the recent Advertising Age white paper “The New Female Consumer: The Rise of the Real Mom,” most of us do “do it all.” Their research showed that “…women with children still handle the bulk of the household and child-care responsibilities, the so-called ’second shift’ — whether they are working full time, staying at home or something in between.”

This is in an age when the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports both parents were employed in 62 percent of the 24.6 million families made up of a married couple with children under 18. And, in the 2006-2007 academic year, the U.S. Department of Education noted women earned a majority of higher-education degrees.

The full report embedded here is filled with many more such statistics, including a 48-year comparison on education, purchasing power, and wages. But, the “real mom” to which its title makes reference is what they are really making a case for in the paper.

They posit that “the second half of this decade has brought a backlash against the mythical Supermom — that hyperactive type-A personality who whips up perfect cookies and perfect children — and an embrace of the likable, more relatable real mom, who doesn’t obsess over the little things.”

The case is made that millennial women (born between 1980 and 1995) are leading this change in attitude. They are apparently not as “conflicted” as my generation — Generation X. While I grew up being told I was equal to men, what I saw was my own mother doing an unequal amount of work to keep our family running - that “second shift” we women are apparently still working.

“[Millennials] grew up with seeing a lot of moms working, being outside the home a lot, and decided ‘Hey, this isn’t what I want,’” Aliza Freud, founder and CEO of SheSpeaks said in the AdAge report. “So they may be at peace more with their not working or working.”

Nearly have of the women surveyed for the report said finding balance between family and career is “a joke” for working women and I will certainly agree with that. The tagline for this blog used to say that it wasn’t about balance, but about juggling.

As one journalist put it: “While no longer striving to be supermoms doing everything for everyone, mothers are looking toward being pragmatic and good enough, and making a real impact in the areas that matter most for them and their children.”

This AdAge report implies that marketers should help empower women to delegate responsibilities to spouses, children and even brands so that they will have “more time to be who they want to be.”

As Carroll Trosclair on Suite101.com rightly points out, “marketers have been helping women delegate work to products, services and brands for decades. But delegating work to husbands and children may be a new and controversial challenge for advertisers.”

Interesting Side Note:
While researching for this post, I came across a blog that mentions one of the ways information was gathered for the whitepaper. Kitchen Table Conversations, “a new user-generated video research service revolutionizing how qualitative research is conducted” was used to gather information on grocery shopping habits. If you’re interested in qualitative research methods, check it out.

The #10 book on the New York Times bestseller list for the week of June 21 was one titled “Womenomics.” I haven’t read the book because, well, about the only time I ever get to read is when I’m on a plane by myself and I haven’t had the opportunity to travel in six months.

But, this news article on “Womenomics” has been an open tab in my Firefox browser for nearly a month now, as my own blending of work and life has prevented me from writing about it.

What made that article really jump out at me was that it mentions “a legendary ad sold working women on the idea they could have it all” and I have to believe the writer was thinking of this one that had so much influence on me growing up:

I grew up with images like that, and terms like “supermom” being thrown around, and I know it shaped me. I watched my own mother work part-time, then go back to college and begin working full-time - all the while doing the bulk of raising three kids and pretty much all of the the housework. And that shaped me, too. Reality looked a lot harder than the media messages I saw, and I became convinced that marriage and kids were not in my future.

My how things change as we grow older, huh? Toward the end of college I started to wonder what all that career success I anticipated would be like if I didn’t have someone with which to share it. And later, after several years of happy marriage, I saw another reality where someone I worked with really did seem to be living that supermom-career-woman life of perfume commercials.

So, I ventured into parenthood - and was reminded of my mother’s reality again. And, a few years later I watched that supermom-career-woman mentor leave a successful corporate career path for something this book now says we shouldn’t have it leave it to have - flexibility.

The Wall Street Journal’s Juggle blog says the message of “Womenomics,” by ABC News correspondent Claire Shipman and BBC World News America newswoman Katty Kay, is that skilled female workers have earned far more leverage at work than they’re using, by virtue of their educational credentials, experience and proven value in management.

I know I’m extremly lucky to have a job that affords me much flexibility without my need to push for it. I work online with teams around the globe, so much gets done over e-mail, IM and conference calls - all of which can be done from anywhere. And, I work for a manager that understands that and doesn’t require “face time” in the office as long as what needs to be done gets done. That sort of work schedule is not just something that women want, however.

When Shipman and Kay spent 90 minutes with Families and Work Institute (FWI) staff and Corporate Leadership Council members, they heard of FWI’s latest research that shows men are also making work/family choices. Men are making changes to take family responsibilities. The FWI National Study of the Changing Workforce shows that men and women are both less likely now to embrace traditional gender roles. Only 41 percent of employees in 2008 believe it is better “if the man earns the money and the woman takes care of the home and children,” down from 64 percent in 1977.

You can see it online in the DadLabs motto of “taking back paternity,” in the posts from the fathers that have joined us here on This Mommy Gig, and many of the other fathers who blog at places like Dad-o-Matic.

We’re experiencing it ourselves as my husband has recently made the decision to leave the workforce to stay home with our daughter over the summer. And whenever he re-enters the workforce, he plans to make flexibility a main priority, so he can continue to spend time actively parenting.

I think it is great, and it certainly makes it that much easier for me to not have to worry about the logistics of summer camps. But, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some adjustments we’re having to make as traditional gender roles get a little blurry.

Sure I want to bring home the bacon, but what happens when someone else frys it up in the pan?  I wonder if anything like that is covered in the “Womenomics” book? If you’ve read it, let me know. And, if you’ve got any tips for transitioning from two working parents to one, please share those, too!

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The good news? I’m marrying an incredible Fella on Saturday. The not-so-good news? I can’t decide on my name.

When I got married to my late husband in 1995, I was 20 years old, and wanted to keep my name. I became Sherry Carr-(c-a-r-r)-then-a-space-and-a-capital-”D”-(D-e-e-r)-like-the-animal. No, not Carter, not Cartier, not Carr-Deer, just Sherry Carr Deer. And I’ve been explaining it ever since.

The positive thing about my name is that once someone gets it, they never really forget it. This has been very helpful professionally. The negative thing is that it’s a pain in the rear to have to explain my name every time I call someone or meet someone new; I never know where someone has alphabatized my name; it’s always spelled wrong; and I have about six different variations of my last name on accounts and legal papers in my life. I guess I’m just tired of the two last names with no hyphen thing. Maybe it would have been different if they had been names with a couple more syllables. Regardless, it is what it is.

But now it could change. I could be Sherry Smith. I probably will be, I think it will be nice to have a simple name I don’t have to spell. I’ll just have to make sure Sherry Smith makes as big an impression as Sherry Carr Deer.

Have you changed your name recently? Did you get married after your professional life had been established? Tell me your experiences with a new name.

You can connect with Sherry Carr Deer (Sherry Smith?) on Twitter at prCarrD.

This Friday I hop on a plane to San Francisco and will be away for a little over 24 hours speaking at a start-up conference.  Over the weekend I started telling my sons, particularly my almost 5-year-old, that I was going to be gone for one night. My husband and I have found that our oldest does a lot better when he knows “the plan” and we can discuss it for a few days before it happens. If you sneak something up on him - he is liable to have on of his “fits” (as he calls them).  As I talked about why I had to be gone, my oldest said:

That’s not fair. Mommy always has to go. It’s Daddy’s turn.

He is right. I more often have events and travel outside of office hours. I don’t travel tons, and often times when I do travel I take the kids with me (along with my mom or husband or mother-in-law to help out). But about once a month I have evening events where I speak, teach, or facilitate entrepreneurship, and once on a while I plan a quick trip to a conference or speaking engagement where it is  just easier to fly in and out and not plan on the extra expense and all the extra hard work that entails bringing the  kids along. In April I will be gone for a total of 3 full nights away, and one evening at a local entrepreneurship event.  Daddy will be in charge, taking care of our 2 boys on his own.

My son knows my husband and I work together, running Palo Alto Software together. He knows that we go to the same office, and work with the same people. So his question is of course very logical. What is harder for him to understand right now is the different jobs that Mommy and Daddy do. I am the public face person for the company. My position requires me to travel more and to be in front of as many people as possible speaking, teaching and evangelizing.  My husband is our opps detail guy. He is all about product development, IT infrastructure and web development. So no matter how I like it or not - I am going to be the one that travels more and is more often gone.

And of course that gives me immense Mommy guilt. While I LOVE what I do, and I have chosen this life and this career, and I would NEVER change it, that doesn’t mean I don’t have guilt. Especially when the almost 5 year old wants to know why I have to be gone more than Daddy. I wish it could be different. I wish I could ALWAYS take the kids. But I also know its good  for Daddy to have some time on his own with the kids. Our kids are still so young that they definitely tend to still migrate towards me when they are hurt, tired, hungry, or upset. So every time Daddy is the only one — I feel like they get a little more bonded to him. Or maybe this is how I make myself feel better about being away.  One way or another though — I can’t change the fact that in order to do the job I love, I am going to have to travel here and there. This means I am going to have to leave the kids behind sometimes.  I know they are O.K. — I just need to learn how to not feel so guilty about it.

If you are a working mommy who travels more than your partner, I would love to know how you deal with it!

Sabrina Parsons aka MommyCEO

“Mama, don’t let your sons grow up to be cowboys!” So advises the country song - which may be good advice, or it may not.

As parents, we should put up barriers to “careers” that are harmful or illegal. But as for the wide variety of trades and careers that our children may be uniquely gifted for, and inclined to, we should not erect artificial fences.

The world needs good cowboys. And plumbers. And electricians. And shepherds. And mechanics. People good with their hands.

If your son shows strong interest in fixing cars, and has limited academic drive and ability, why in the world would you push him to become a lawyer? We need great mechanics, and his gifts and inclinations are already showing you a potential career path.

If your daughter gravitates toward making beautiful floral arrangements, why should she be guilt-tripped into being a business executive? Is there not an ongoing need for all sorts of gifted designers?

The fact is, we’ll always need people who are good with their hands. And even the greatest and wealthiest among us recognize that, when you find a capable and reliable craftsman, tradesman, or laborer, they are gold. These folks have tremendous earning power and job security, because there are so many shoddy and unscrupulous workers in the marketplace. People who are skilled in their work, and prove themselves over time, are almost always in demand. Compare that to the job insecurity of many in white-collar careers, and you begin to see that it is not a step down to learn and ply a trade.

I have five sons. It has always been my perspective not to pre-determine their academic and professional careers, but to carefully evaluate their wired-in gifts and budding interests, and seek to move them in that direction, even if it is quite different from the course my wife or I took as young adults. And, sure enough, we’re having some surprises. As you will with your children.

If you have children that are good with their hands, and you worry about whether they will go to college and launch into some high-profile information-driven career, remember - this is not about you and your reputation. Most people throughout history learned trades that were passed down through generations, and many still do. You can be immensely proud of a son or daughter who works with his/her hands, and who is skilled in the tangible arts. Make it your goal that if your mantel has smiling pictures of a fireman, a professor, a pet shop owner, and an architect, that you will be equally proud of each one.

Don’t rob your child of fulfillment in pursuing a direction that “fits” with her gifts, and don’t rob the rest of us of his abilities as we plan, build, landscape, and repair. Frankly, we don’t need a whole lot more lawyers, executives, and investment bankers. We will always need capable cabinet-makers, graphic designers, tailors, and - yes - devoted mothers who work part-time out of the home. These less-glamorous spheres of labor, using active minds and active hands, are where tremendously valuable work gets done.