Backstage support: traveling nannies

I decided to break up the nanny arrangements post and treat this backstage support item separately.

My last manager used to say that he could not put me on such and such (high profile) project because I cannot travel.  I repeatedly told him that I am able to travel, but I need to know in advance so I can make appropriate arrangements.  This back and forth went on for years with him making a false statement and me gently correcting him.  Anyway, all water under the bridge now.

In the last post, I wrote that the amount of backstage support that elite women can afford to purchase is out of the question for most women, even ones with PhDs like myself.  When my daughter was young and I was working nearly full-time, I did spend on a high-quality daycare center that provided coverage 7AM-6PM Monday through Friday.  A cleaning lady came biweekly.  My husband, when he was in town and not otherwise occupied, helped.  Otherwise, I was on my own.

My husband is a field scientist and travels frequently and with little notice. He told me that, if I put my travel on the calendar at least 6 months in advance, then he will hold that sacred and not book travel at the same time. That didn't work out as promised.   I have put travel on the calendar as far as 13 months in advance and he has then arranged to travel at the exact same time.  Again all water under the bridge now.

One time, when I was traveling to DC to brief a large project to the client agency, he had a trip pushed back from the prior week to the exact same week.  His client was one that could not be denied.  I couldn't back out of a big meeting arranged months in advance.  We were booked for the same flight to DC and shared a hotel room and car, saving our employer hundreds of dollars.

Our parents were in too frail health to help out with childcare overnight, so I  called the work/life balance counselor at HR for help with overnight daycare arrangements.  Blah, blah, blah.  They talked a good game, giving a work/life balance phone number.  But, when I really needed help, they offered me nothing but ridicule for even calling.   I told the counselor that the company was sending both parents out of town and that we needed help locating an overnight nanny.  She paused for a few seconds and then went into a spiel about how daycare is a private matter and not something that she can help me with. 

Anyway, I was heartened to read that U.S. Soccer provides and pays for traveling nannies as a normal part of the of cost of doing business and competing.

Wouldn't it be nice if all this talk about bringing women into STEM included more backstage support?  Or offering backstage support to anyone who needs it, regardless of profession?

Nanny arrangements

There's quite a bit of chatter about Marissa Mayer's new job as head of Yahoo.  Good for her!  And that's all I feel qualified to say as I've never worked in the dot com world.  If you want to read something, see Wandering Scientist's very thoughtful take.

I have to say that I am impressed at the difference that throwing money at a problem can make.  I was astonished to learn that the MBA CFO wife of a former scientist coworker had three full-time people facilitating her 'having it all' life.  At the office, she had a full time secretary AND a personal assistant in addition to the finance department staff.  At home, she had a full-time nanny.

Scientists don't earn that kind of money or have that much clout in the workplace.  Her personal assistant made about as much as I made working full-time as a scientist at a nonprofit.  Anyway, that kind of backstage support is not available except to elite women.  In effect, she's at the top of a pyramid scheme.

That's the thing that is getting lost in the debate.  There is a whole lot of care and attention necessary to run a home and family--what Joan Williams calls family work.  Family work, when it is not outsourced, generates no money and doesn't add to the GDP.  However, it is still work and it is still necessary to keep the family, community, state, nation and world running.  For instance, if no one signed up for the unpaid job of growing and raising children, society would eventually stop.

Elite women can afford to outsource.  But what are we doing to support all the lower-paid women propping her up?

Links:

• I have riffed on Joan Williams' excellent analysis multiple times, most thoroughly in Perfect Madness.  
• Please go back and read the Joan Williams series.  
• More than 20 years ago, sociologist Arlie Hochschild followed the lives of Silicon Valley women, the women hired to perform their family work and the women hired by those women.  She wrote a fascinating book, The Second Shift.  Follow the money trail and the pyramid scheme is evident.
• The pyramid scheme does not stop at our borders. Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild contains an uneven (but worthwhile) compilation of pieces by researchers following the global movement of women to satisfy the "care deficit" with devastating effects in their home (and host) countries.
  

Mommy Blogging, Part 2

The blogosphere lit up after Salon published a "Dear Cary" (advice column) letter, I get grossed out when I hear, "I'm a mom!" A thirty year old married woman is planning to have children soon, and quit her job to stay at home with them, but she doesn't want to end up self-identifying as just a mom.

I realize that being a mother is fun and rewarding, and all-consuming at times, but why does it have to be the primary identifying factor in some women's lives? I would think being a mother is sort of a family affair, and making it your calling card, so to speak, is no more appropriate than saying, "I'm a wife."
[snip]
I don't plan on working in an office when I have small children -- I want to be at home and my husband agrees -- but I'll be damned if rearing children is all I'll do for five to 10 years.

She didn't mention the part about motherhood being physically and emotionally arduous and dangerous. She will learn that soon enough.

[I wonder if women who self-identify as mothers only are merely echoing back the message society sends them.]

Moreover, she is planning on being financially dependent upon her husband while the children are young and then returning to the workplace when they are older. Good luck with trying to find a job after the mommy resume gap. From Off to Work She Should Go:

The Center for Work-Life Policy, a research organization founded by Sylvia Ann Hewlett of Columbia, found that women lose an average of 18 percent of their earning power when they temporarily leave the work force. Women in business sectors lose 28 percent.

And despite the happy talk of “on ramps” back in, only 40 percent of even high-powered professionals get back to full-time work at all.

From the likes of the letter, it sounds like she works in an office at something that is less than a calling. Perhaps she is in the set of mothers that will lose 28 percent of their earning power.

Grasshopper has much to learn.

I covered much of this territory last April in Mommy Blogging.

It is worth noting that women don't generally refer to themselves as wives anymore. Women don't usually leave the paid workforce any more when they get married. For the most part, the workload and subtle discrimination doesn't hit the tipping point until women become mothers. In The Second Shift, Arlie Hochschild found the tipping point generally occurs after the birth of the second child.

A friend says that no one in the media has picked up that staying home makes more sense AFTER the children are in elementary school. I agree with her.

Daycare centers are much more working mommy-friendly than schools. They are open much longer hours, they don't expect volunteers at the center and they provide all the class materials. Wait till you see the treasure hunt shopping lists that the schools send home with your kids! Additionally, all the school teacher training and prep days catch working parents by surprise. Add the way the schools always call the mothers, not the fathers, about every sniffle and forgotten lunch...

Enrichment activity providers come to daycare centers instead of expecting the children to come to them. They understand that the children attend daycare centers because both their parents work. Once the children enter the school system, all that stops. There is so much more kid schlepping as they get older. I don't know why people tell me that "it just gets easier and easier" as the children get older.

FYI I describe myself at parties and such as a scientist with both a special needs child and a special needs husband. I deserve credit for all the difficult roles I play.

Asides:
Has anyone read the Word Court in the back of the March issue of the Atlantic Monthly? WC deals with how to describe when you are trying to conceive a child, but not yet pregnant--the position of the Dear Cary letter writer. The March issue is not yet online so check back in month if you don't subscribe to the hard copy. (You really should subscribe and help pay their excellent writers. )

Also, don't miss Lori Gottlieb's article, Marry Him! The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough.

Cloud's comment brought Universal Sorrow to mind. Motherhood changed my persona forever.

Addendum
I have two friends that left the workplace AFTER their first child hit elementary school age. That's when kids most need their parents' guidance. I understand that is the less financially feasible option. Isn't it crazy that financial considerations trump developmental concerns?

The whole act of bearing and raising children in the post-industrial era runs counter to parents' economic self-interest. Yet, we let economics rule how families divide up their work and time.

Yeah, we are unique

Since we bought our blue Prius, we have been noticing them everywhere. In fact, there is another on our block, 3 houses away. There is another one at our workplace. Half the families of Iris' circle of a half dozen playmates have identical blue Priuses. See the photo at the camp bus stop above.

At work, I sometimes wander around the vast parking structure and lot, looking for my car. (Mark bicycles in most days and often takes the car out at lunch for errands. He doesn't always tell me where he left it.) I have mistaken the other blue Prius for mine, walked all the way across the parking lot and then discovered it was the wrong car. It is easy to be faked out; the other blue Prius has the same booster seat, but in a different color. That is not evident until I get right up next to it and the door doesn't automatically unlock for the smart key in my purse.

My solution is to park next to the other blue Prius. That way, we need to only walk to one area of the lot and we know our car is nearby. (This post is to inform Mark of our new system.)

Last night, I found out who owned the other blue Prius at work. I had to smile. They work downstairs from me and sent their two kids to the same day care center that Iris attended for 3.5 years. It was the same daycare center where I met the other 3 blue Prius owners. (I count the family that sold us their blue Prius when they moved across the country.) Of course their son, the same age as Iris, has the same booster seat.

6 families, one daycare center, and 5 blue Priuses. I better send them email to let them know that I am not stalking them, I just want to minimize the time it takes me to find the car.

Aside:
I heard one commentator say that we don't really meet people by chance any more. We think we do, but we meet people who share our values and interests because of the places we hang out. Mothers who meet at daycare centers bond because we already had something in common by virtue of selecting that daycare center.

Because we can afford this particular center, we have to have a certain level of income and education. The location of this center implies that we live or work nearby; housing segregation by class and income is commonplace. This center charges about as much as one of LA's cheaper (usually undocumented with little or no English) nannies for the same amount of hours. The fact that we chose the center over one on one care in our homes says something about our values.

Fire Update:
We are fine. Mark's parents in San Diego are fine. The current fires are farther from them than in 2003. The smoke level at our house finally became tolerable this morning. My breathing is less ragged now. There was a bit of coastal fog that precipitated out much of the fine particles in the air. I am even hanging laundry outside today.

The LA county fires are mostly out. The San Diego fires still pose a danger. Go to the KPBS website for the latest news and fire maps for SD.

Daycare Round 2

Mark sent me a link to Emily Bazelon's article, The Kids Are Alright, in Slate.com. She interviewed study's author, Margaret Burchinal. The article is worth reading in it's entirety.

One thing that is lost in much of the media hoopla is how little high quality daycare they found in their data set. Nearly all the families that used center-based care used low-quality ones, probably because they are the cheapest. They wanted to compare high and low quality daycare centers, but there weren't enough kids in high-quality daycare for them to do a meaningful comparison.

The media also overlooked the finding that the behavior problems increased only by a very slight amount, and mainly for kids who had spent 4 years or more in day care centers by the time they were 4 1/2 years of age. That meant they were in poor quality day care centers from infancy.

That makes me unbelievably sad, that parents are leaving their children in places that they know are not high-quality, but can't afford better.

When we were searching for daycare, we looked at a variety of places, both in centers and homes. In our research, we were astonished that ratios as high as 6:1 are allowed in daycare centers in most states. Who can take care of that many babies at once?

We put Iris in one of the most expensive ones because it had a 3:1 infant to caregiver ratio, versus the 4:1 required by California law. The kids seemed happier and the employees less stressed out. (It was also a 7 minute walk from our house and the bus stop for the line to our workplace was 50 feet away.)

Whenever we visited, it seemed like about 1/3 of the babies were sleeping and 1-2 babies were being held by each child care provider. When meal or diaper change time came, a center "floater" came to assist. Often, parents were visiting at the center. I was there often because I worked 20-30 hours a week back then and breast fed Iris at the center during my break.

As soon as she was able to sit up, she was playing games with the staff. We even have pictures of her finger painting at 11 weeks! The families bonded at the day care center. Today, she still plays with those friends.

In closing, did you notice that the articles almost always state that 1364 children were followed in the study? According to the NIH summary, they had lost track of nearly 300 children by 2004; the recently published results follow 1073 children. By the next report, they will likely have lost a few more.

Link
Blogger Linda Thomas has a humorous take on this.

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

Does using daycare make you a bad mother? Some people reading recent study results might conclude that. I don't really know; it is not my research area. However, I do know a few things about handling statistics.

Mark Twain wrote, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." (Actually, there is some confusion about who first coined this phrase.)

First off, read the report and see how the data were collected. The NIH, the people who funded the study, has an online overview of the longitudinal study. (Longitudinal studies follow the same group over time.)

The researchers recruited families with newborns in ten hospitals around the US to participate in this study. In 1991, there were 1364 children in this study. By 2004, there were only 1073 children, a loss of over 21%. No one knows why those children, or their families, dropped out of the study. The researchers are careful to point out that this is not a representative sampling. They got the volunteers that they got (less 21%).

How do they define child care? "Child care was defined as care by anyone other than the child’s mother that was regularly scheduled for at least 10 hours per week. This included care by fathers, grandparents and other relatives."

See, we are not blaming mothers here. But we are pointing out that care by mothers is fundamentally different than any other type of care, including care by fathers. ;-)

Read the report summary at the NIH website.

The researchers found that the correlation between high quality care and better vocabulary scores continued regardless of the amount of time the child had spent in child care or the type of care. The researchers wrote that this finding was consistent with other evidence indicating that children with greater early exposure to adult language were themselves more likely to score higher on measures of language development. However, child care quality was not associated with improved reading skills after 54 months of age.

The researchers also found that, as in the earlier grades, children with more experience in child care centers continued to show, through sixth grade, a greater frequency of what the researchers termed teacher-reported externalizing problem behavior.

Children who had been in center care in early childhood were more likely to score higher on teacher reports of aggression and disobedience. This was true regardless of the quality of the center-based care they received.

The researchers emphasized that the children’s behavior was within the normal range and were not considered clinically disordered.

The researchers are also careful to point out that their study can show correlations but cannot prove causality. (Correlation does not imply causality.) There was no control group. Children were not randomly assigned to child care centers; the families freely chose their own child care arrangements.

My interpretation of the report is that the negative effect (disruptive behavior) is very small in statistical significance compared to the large positive effect (increased vocabulary). The sample size is also quite small, not representative and uncontrolled.

Seriously, though, there is one fundamental flaw in this study. Because the families chose their own child care arrangements, there is likely an economic consideration that this report did not take into account. Families with only one child are more likely to use center-based child care.

High quality child care centers are simply too expensive for most families with more than one child. The disruptive behaviors described sound very similar to the behaviors more prevalent in only children.

I wouldn't worry too much about the effect of child care based on this study. So what if Iris is more likely, as a sixth grader, to be labeled disobedient and argumentative? When you tell her to jump, she looks at you like you are nuts. She takes nothing at face value and calls people on inconsistencies. Gee, I wonder where she gets that from.

Links
Sex, Lies and Statistics has nothing to do with child care, but I just like the title. It is also a good introduction to Bayesian statistics. I am an agnostic in the Bayesian wars. I think it is helpful sometimes, but often abused.

Be careful what you say to your kids

When we moved Iris from a daycare center to a preschool, she noticed that some of the other kids were picked up much earlier than she was. She discovered the creature called a ‘stay at home mom’ (SAHM). She asked me why I went to work instead of being a SAHM. Rushed as I usually am, I quipped it was because her daddy didn’t earn enough for me to stay at home.

Another day, soon after that conversation, she told me that she wanted me to go back to the daddy store and get a rich one.

Changing tactics, I told her that I also worked because I enjoy my work. I went to her classroom and told the kids about weather satellites, showed pretty satellite pictures and then topped it off with a NASA video of the Terra launch and deployment. [Satellite deployments are mesmerizing as the parts unfurl from the rocket casing-- like a flower emerging from a bud.] Thereafter, Iris gained cachet for having a ‘space’ mom and I thought the situation had been defused.

A few months later, she got mad about something and exploded. She went on about SAHMs again. I asked her why life with a SAHM would be so much better. She said that SAHMs pick up their kids right after class and take them home to bake cookies. She added, “All you do is go to work and launch satellites.”

What did I do? I bought a whole bunch of cookie cutters which were used exactly once.

I related this story to a coworker whose kids have all grown up and been successfully launched. He said that Iris is remarkably prescient in knowing that a satellite launch requires the work of thousands of people while cookie baking can only be done by the mommy and child.

We didn’t even eat most of the cookies we baked. I guess they were wrong for our household. But I did buy some rice ball presses. We had so much fun with those, we are inviting some other kids whose mommies (and daddies) have to work late tomorrow to come over to make rice balls with Iris and myself. Time permitting, we might even make some melt and pour soaps for Mothers’ Day.

Keywords: Iris, modern motherhood