18 July 2007

Someone else like me

I'm trying to get a news ticker on this blog. I have one on the one for class, and it is nice. But because this blog goes through our server rather than Blogger's, I have issues.

One of the stories that popped up on my ticker (set to "working mom") pretty much sums it up for me on the economic impacts of having kids:

If I continue my accounting of the annual bill for my working summer, I can't omit one number that begins to explain why my work can't possibly cover the costs of the childcare that makes it possible: government statistics say that mothers like me have to stomach a 7% hourly wage penalty per child. I have three kids. That's 21%. Ouch. The survey cites the usual reasons--loss of job experience; employer discrimination against women with children; and the one I'm most interested in for the sake of this argument--a tendency to seek lower-paying, mother-friendly jobs. I have to be in a flex job, working freelance from home instead of full-time in my old office at Fortune magazine. How else am I going to stop at four o'clock to pick up all these kids from all these camps?

I fail to understand why, as a nation, we persist in structuring the year this way.


Stephanie Losee continues to explain the true cost of working. It's not a choice for a lot of families like ours. We need two incomes, plain and simple. The price we pay is a high one, folks.

Read the full article

2 comments:

abigail said...

I found it difficult to sympathise with her particular situation as she is far above average in standard of living (which she freely admits). However, I do get the larger point she is trying to make. Interesting article.

Unknown said...

I'm just frustrated, because there is no support in this country for working parents at all.

C1 has a friend whose mom is a single mom, no family in town. I honestly don't know how she makes ends meet, because she's going to school, too.

I'm endlessly frustrated at Corporate (and Academic) America. Parents of all stripes would like the option of job sharing, flex-time, and reduced schedules. Yet corporate America refuses to consider it.

The Society of Professional Journalists recently published a study on why women leave the profession (full disclosure: I participated in the study).

The No. 1 reason: the long hours, low pay, and lack of respect were the main reasons. We loved being journalists, but we love our families, too. When a choice had to be made, we left.