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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• Wall Street Journal Womenomics///and Leave Dads Alone! (blogs.abcnews.com)
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• Womenomics, SHRM, and Claire Shipman (punkrockhr.com)

FACEBOOK STATUS UPDATE, MON, MAR 16, 2009:

3:49pm Christian reports: Berkeley (7lbs, 7oz - 20 in - 9.9 Apgar Scale) sends her love to all. She’s now feeding for the 1st time like she’s been doing it her whole life!

***

BACKSTORY:

Two and a half years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting my son, Beckett, for the first time.

As a first time father, Beckett’s arrival in our Ft. Worth, TX hospital delivery room — and his mother, Karla, who did all the heroic work that life-changing day — truly humbled me.  Trying to convey to my own mother on my cell phone a minutes later what it like to see him born and to hold him in my own arms was nearly impossible.  I simply lacked the words.  Tears replaced them as I fumbled to express myself.  Luckily, she understood and let me go back to my wife and son, telling me to give her a call later that night when time allowed me to fill her in more fully.

While photographs have allowed me to ‘remember’ those first few minutes/hours of Beckett’s young life, so much of what took place that afternoon has faded into the funky contours of the human brain, lost to the natural passing of time.  Even the entries I posted on our family blog only hit a few highlights, often written long after they took place.  The sense of the in-the-moment immediacy and wunderlust, however, was impossible to translate…

…until now.

FAST FORWARD:

Two and a half years later, my wife and I returned to the same hospital delivery unit to meet our first daughter, Berkeley.

Since Beckett’s birth, our family blog has magnified significantly from a tepid attempt to semi-privately ‘journal’ a few family moments here and there to the development of a robust hub of digital stories, photos, and videos that are now regularly shared with hundreds of family, friends, colleagues, and strangers around the world.  At last count, we’ve crossed the 2,250 blog post mark…and that was before our daughter’s birth.  We suspect a ‘few’ more will be added, too.

Additionally, we’ve added an iPhone to our tool set, not to mention dualing Facebook accounts for both parents. This means that just-in-time storytelling options have been magnified far beyond the boundaries of what a family blog can pull off.  Seems that blogging is so last status update.

It was only a matter of time before we’d put it all together, letting our family and friends grab a virtual real-time seat with us as we prepared to deliver our daughter via type-n-post Facebook status updates. something that would have been inconceivable not that long ago.

• Ever wondered how you’d tell the story of your child’s birth through the lens of 140-character Facebook status updates?
• Ever wondered what it’d be like to Facebook status update every step leading to, during, and after your child’s birth?
• Ever wonder how such a story would read, one status update at a time?

This is our story, told 140-characters (or less) at at time.

Continue Reading »

One of those things you hear before you’re a parent – and you wish parents would stop saying all the time – is how quickly the time goes. It starts during the pregnancy, “You just wait, the 9 months are going to fly by!” and continues through each developmental phase your child goes through, “You just wait, he’s going to be crawling/eating solids/walking/talking before you know it!”

The reason parents talk about time all the, umm, time is because it does go by so quickly. This past year has flown by for me, and I can’t believe how different my life is now than it was at this time last year. At this time last year, I was a single parent, I was starting a new job, I was trying to settle into a city that I hadn’t lived in in more than a decade, and I was trying to help my son adjust to our new lives. Now, I’m engaged to a man who has easily slipped into the role of “father” for my son, I love my job and feel like I’m not the new girl anymore, I can get in the car and drive without getting lost, and my son knows where all the important things are (grandparents’ houses, his school, the library, etc.). Life is very good and very different.

Tonight was a perfect illustration of that difference. We had planned to have dinner with my fiance’s family so after work I rushed home to get out of my heels (super cute, super uncomfortable) and throw on some cooler clothes. On our way to the restaurant, my pager went off. Dang it! A call from a reporter that an interview had been scheduled with a patient. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a big deal, except that we were in one car, were late for dinner already, and Nicholas was starving (and had to pee “very bad”).

Had this situation come up last year, I would have either had to hope the daycare at my hospital could take N as a drop-in for a couple hours, or turn the car around and take him to a grandparent, or asked my sister-in-law to meet me at the hospital to watch him. None of those things lend themselves to me being a very responsive media liaison. Instead, because William was with us (and fully comfortable and capable with N), they dropped me off at the hospital and went on to eat while I worked.

The feeling of having someone I can depend on so completely is still very new. William still reminds me that I don’t have to ask him to get N a drink or to take him to the bathroom…that N is just as much his son now as he is mine. And, yes, there have been times when I’ve had to stop myself from saying, “But that’s not how we do it!” And, yes, there have been times when I’ve been a little jealous if Nicholas lets William do something for him that I usually do. But for the majority of the last year, I’ve been thankful and appreciative.

What a difference a year makes.