A comment in Jessie’s post last week prompted me to rise to her defense – alongside many others – after a reader taunted her life as a “main line mom” being “so difficult.”  The reader also suggested that “working moms” were somehow more worthy of writing about their struggles.  The comment bristled me in a number of ways, but I was particularly disappointed to see that clichéd battle line between Stay-At-Home-Moms (SAHMs) and Working Moms (WMs) drawn here on our pages.

Newsflash:  Anyone who wants to fight this fight should take a long look in the mirror and do the internal work necessary to come to terms with their own insecurities about the choices they have made.  Because the rest of us are not at war.

Still, the topic of how we live our lives remains relevant if for no other reason than there are readers out there who find themselves in similar circumstances to the writers here at MoB.  So, Jessie and I thought we would dedicate some space this week to our respective choices – and some truths that lie behind them.  For my part, I present to you….

Five Truths from One Working Mom

1. I often put work before my children.  My very choice to work full time makes this truth somewhat obvious, but I will take it a step further when I tell you that our family schedule –and my day-to-day involvement with my sons — is usually driven by what’s happening with my job.  Sure, we working Moms like to say that “family comes first” and that is true for the major decisions.  But truth be told, conference calls often trump after school pick-up, business trips trump field trips, and late night writing assignments trump good night kisses.  When this happens, I feel shitty – particularly leaving a sick child at home as I fly thousands of miles away — but I always plow ahead with the thought that having them rely on someone other than me, even in times of need, is good for them.  That cuts the shitty by about 20 percent.
2. I am more domesticated than I would ever be if I didn’t work.  I actually fancy cleaning the kitchen, doing the laundry, and sweeping the floor in my home.  Whereas I might chalk these chores  up to annoying busywork if I was faced with them as an expectation every day, I look forward to the certainty of the tasks at hand when presented to me just a few times each week – and I crave the uber-control given to me in completing them.  Somewhere deep inside my head, a little voice is singing, “I’m going to fold this shirt and no journalist or member of Congress is going to stop me!”
3. My children are coddled because I work.   Although they may disagree with this truth, I really do let them off the hook a great deal.  I chalk my behavior up to one part guilt, two parts exhaustion.  I want the time I spend with my boys to be peaceful and fun.  So when it comes time to render or enforce a punishment, I am often relegated elsewhere in the house so justice can be served.  I also find myself doing things for them that no SAHM might ever consider doing for her teenage boys like making lunches, cleaning rooms, and cutting meat, er, I mean, dropping off forgotten homework at school (even when they were reminded to pack it up.)
4. Leaving them gets easier.  I remember in the early days of motherhood, I could feel the magnetic pull from my desk to the Exersaucer miles away.  It took everything in my power not to rush home by mid-morning to breathe in the oatmeal smell of my babie’s sweet little heads.  Now, I can go for days without talking to them and the pang in my heart when I think of my children – whether I’m on a flight or in a meeting – is fleeting and temporary.  I think this peace comes with knowing that they are alright – and that my decision to work hasn’t hurt them in any way.  If I could give a gift to any of my SAHM friends, it would be that liberation of being able to leave their children for longer than a few hours and do something for themselves without feeling like they abandoned them.  Many of my SAHM friends struggle with this, I know for sure.
5. I think studies are crap and detract from the greater good.  Every time I hear about an academic piece of research suggesting that children of working moms or SAHMs are ___ percent more likely to ___________ (fill in scary blank here), I want to debunk debunk debunk. (Plus, I love saying debunk.)  We parents have enough fears about our choices that bubble up from the inside; we don’t need any more thrust upon us.  Here is my conclusion after years of first-hand reserach and observation:  It doesn’t matter if you go to work or stay at home with your children.  That choice isn’t going to screw up your kids.  It is every OTHER choice you make as you parent within the reality you have created for yourself that matters.  And it is there where working and SAHM’s have an entirely equal ability to do harm or good.

Here’s to us all rising together.

And I still felt shitty when I left.

I didn’t have much of a choice but to leave early because today I take the stage.  I’m speaking at a conference, interviewing New York Times reporter, Zach Kouwe about the future of private equity and newspapers and reporting.  And I’ll ask him about how to get stories into the NY Times because people will want to know the answer to THAT question.  I’m also hosting a dinner tonight for about 30 people – half of whom are also journalists — so that we can make better connections with the financial press in NYC.  It will be a productive two days.

But tomorrow morning, I will miss Chase’s young author’s presentation on the country of Chile.  He did a PowerPoint presentation and I found a recipe for Chilean coffee cake that he and Dave will make tonight and bring in to share.  The kid gave me his blessing to miss it but I still feel shitty.  Yet, if I left the conference early, I would feel lousy about that too.   (Shhh. Do you hear that?  It’s Don McClean singing “Cat’s in the Cradle”.)  Maybe while I’m up here, I’ll buy Chasey a little something.  Like a Ferrari. 

I love my job and most of the time I manage this working parent thing okay.  But there are times like this when even though you put in a monumental effort to play both roles well,  you feel as if you’re not quite cutting it on either end.  This week was one of those times.  Noah doesn’t care that I saw his EXTRAVAGANZA in reverse and I don’t think that Chase will miss me terribly at his presentation tomorrow. (In fact, I think he is secretly relieved as somehow my presence tends to embarrass him.)  But it is my God given right to embarrass my kid, just like its my right to feel shitty and lousy about missing the chance to do it right one last time before the school year is over.

I arrived in the Big Apple yesterday for a 24 hour whirlwind business trip. When all is said and done I will have spent 10 hours working, 6 hours sleeping, and 6 hours of downtime and 2 hours fighting U.N traffic.

Usually when I am in NY (and not getting all my hair cut off on a whim), I spend my downtime in my hotel room under the covers watching Seinfeld and Law and Order reruns. This is not recommended for anyone with a pulse. The following approach is much better:

Call a denizen. In my case, I called Leigh – one of those people who you meet professionally who turned out to be such a fun human being that you want to be friends for life. (Truth be told, I have also befriended Leigh because two short years ago she embarrassed me in front of Matt Lauer and I will continue to hang around with her until we come into contact with an equally famous person so I can return the favor. True story.)

Ask local dweller what to do. Leigh suggested meeting at the MoMA, where I have never been. Not only was this an incredible treat for me culturally but experiencing this with Leigh was particularly enjoyable. You see, both Leigh and I do not like to linger over art. We see it, we like it, we hate it, we move on. We power walked our way through the museum in an hour. Monet, Matisse, Pollock, Mondrian, Warhol. I was all like, I can’t believe this museum has so many originals! And I’m sure Leigh was all like, I can’t believe this Neanderthal keeps forgetting she’s in New York.

Be sure to do something that you can brag about to your spouse who is at home with the kids. The highlight was the Van Gogh exhibit which was in a quarantined area. As we enter the first exhibit space, there are several of VG’s original paintings on the wall. As I slow ever so slightly to catch a glimpse of one of these pieces, Leigh says, “Alrighty, c’mon, let’s just get to the good stuff.” Before I had a chance to gently suggest that..uh.. it’s Van Gogh and it’s pretty much all good stuff, we fell upon Starry, Starry Night. It truly took my breath away. It is so much more vibrant than in any of the reproductions. Wow. Cool.

Feel guilty that your kids are not with you. The next time the brothers come to NY, we are forgoing the Empire State Building, Toys R Us, and Mars 2112 to going straight to the MoMA. They’ll thank me for that someday.

Experience the local retail and entertainment options. The evening continued with spaghetti and meatballs, riding some sort of contraption at Hammacher Schlemmer, Dylan’s Candy, and a major chick flick.

Be sure to engender at least one inside joke per trip which you can use for life. After seeing “The Duchess”, Leigh promised to bow and call me “Your Grace” every time she sees me. But only because I asked her to.

Sometimes business travel is a total trip.

History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme.

This quote is one of my favorites from Mark Twain and is entirely apropos after last week’s roller coaster ride on Wall Street and the subsequent government bailout of our financial system. So what business does a self-professed Mommy blogger have dishing about last week’s market turmoil? Let me zero in on just one tiny bit of shrapnel from the past several days.

The year was 1990 and like all of my Wharton undergrad classmates, I went through rounds and rounds of interviews with investment banks on Wall Street. The cutthroat culture in the student career center was enough to give you a big fat ulcer. We all compared notes on a daily basis and made each other either totally paranoid or gut wrenchingly envious.

Which interviews did you get?

What about that jerk from Goldman? Wait, you liked him?

How in the world did she land a JP Morgan interview?? The girl can’t tie her own shoes!

Those seniors who impressed the recruiting professionals during the on-campus interviews would be given a golden ticket to “Super Saturday” where you would be whisked up to New York for the weekend and spend the day in no less than ten back-to-back 30 minute interviews with various directors. The interviewers didn’t seem to mind being there for an entire Saturday – because they were usually there working every Saturday, a fact they made known at every possible opportunity. If you were lucky enough to be made an offer for the following year, you should also expect to work 80 hours each week on average…and like it. Starting salaries were $38,000 plus bonus which was the most money anyone out of Penn was making at the time. But it wasn’t so much about the job or the salary for most of us. It was about the prestige of landing one of the biggies.

I was fortunate enough to make it up to several “Super Saturdays” probably for a number of reasons. I was female with a 3.5, an athlete, and I worked for a professor who did a great deal of academic work on “high yield debt” better known as junk bonds. For my part, I had my sights set on one notorious bank in particular: Drexel Burnham Lambert. I was admittedly star struck by the fame and notoriety of Michael Milken, but I do remember that I liked the people I spoke to there. During the third and final round of interviews, I had to explain why I wanted to work for Drexel. I said that I couldn’t really describe it but it was definitely driven from here (pointing to my heart) rather than here (pointing to my head). It was a little grandiose but seemed fitting for the company I was keeping. One of the women interviewing me smiled and winked. A week later in late January, I got the offer. Come summer, I was moving to New York City!

Two weeks later Drexel Burnham Lambert failed in spectacular fashion and I watched on the TV as all the people who vetted me so carefully walked out of their building with boxes filled with their personal belongings.

I remember wondering if they would still send me a check for my Amtrak train reimbursement from last week’s interview (They did.) I no longer had a job with the firm of my choice and I was completely spooked. Rather than consider any other Wall Street offers, I took a job with the local commercial bank, The Philadelphia National Bank, in my hometown. It was not nearly as sexy as going to New York and my starting salary was 30 percent less. I didn’t have the bragging rights that I had just a few weeks earlier, but it felt right. Many of my classmates who took jobs at PruBache, Shearson Lehman, and other banks were laid off in that next year, not unlike the Lehman Bros employees last week.

It may have seemed like the end of the world back then. The collapse of Drexel altered the course of my life dramatically. But my life, I must say, has been pretty great without that first killer Wall Street job. And my career has gone as well as I ever could have hoped. The universe was operating in everyone’s best interest back then. It seems a little humility was the right medicine at a time when we all got too greedy and in love with ourselves. Hopefully, it will be again this time around.

I spent most of my summer working on a video that shows what venture capital is, what it isn’t and how it impacts the lives of everyday Americans. I’m really proud of the industry that I represent – and also proud of this video which producing was something totally new for me. We premiered it tonight – and it is now up for the world to see. I think you will enjoy it – check it out.

So here I am on my first trip since July and I have to say I’m a little out of practice. Emotionally, that is. I know many MoB readers who have children travel for work. My brother just started an assignment that takes him away from his family to Pittsburgh a few days a week. I told him that he will get good at the logistics. But I didn’ t tell him that the separation is always tough. He will figure that out on his own. For me, the feelings are like clockwork:

• 24 hours prior to your trip you start to feel guilty about leaving them.
• 6 hours prior to the trip you panic that the plane is going to crash; you then quickly pay all the bills before departing.
• 10 minutes after you say good bye to them a feeling of amazing freedom washes over you as you move deftly through the airport without having to tell anyone to “please stop that.”
• 1 minute after you arrive at your hotel room you feel badly they are not there to jump on the beds.
• 8 hours after a great night’s sleep you remember why this is a good thing.
• 24 hours after the trip has begun you start missing them. (When they were toddlers I couldn’t bear to talk to them on the phone because it hurt too much. That gets better).
• Any trip longer than 48 hours really takes it toll on me. After the second night, I get cranky. Just on the inside though where I desperately crave to get home and smell their sweet little heads.
• Invariably, five minutes after I arrive home and get my wonderful hugs and kisses, the brothers start some sort of fight with each other causing me to say, “Fellas, that is NOT what I wanted to come home to. Do you want Mommy to go back to Kansas??”

Yes, my friends, I am in Kansas. I’m scheduled to speak at a conference this morning. Usually my business travel takes me to San Francisco or New York, or Washington DC where there is always something to distract me. But here, it’s rainy and cold – and my room has a pullout couch which the brothers would love.

Missing your children sucks – but it puts a lot in perspective. And I although I went out for drinks and bar-b-que with some very fun people here (requires its own post), I keep clicking my heels together and repeating … well, you know the words.