Mommy Track

This winter Felice Schwartz gave the business world a few facts of life. Using the Harvard Business Review as a forum, the longtime supporter of working women told the collectively powerful that, because their attitudes and policies were too inflexible, they were losing many of their best and brightest women. She gave them bottom-line reasons for changing. But in the middle of this measured advice, there was a red flag waving. Schwartz suggested that businesses identify two sorts of women: those who put their careers first and those who are more interested in balancing career and family.

The next battle about women in the workplace may be among women in the workplace, University of Pennsylvania sociologist Jerry Jacobs contends. On one side will be that small minority of women who are successful in male-dominated careers such as medicine, law, and business and who can afford to pay privately for child care. On the other side will be the majority of women in female-dominated occupations who, Jacobs said, will face increasing discrimination in terms of pay, opportunity and ability to cope with family pressures.

OUT OF ORDER, MR. CHAIRMAN When William B. Allen, a former California government professor and outspoken conservative, assumed the chairmanship of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights last year, mainstream civil-rights groups groaned that he'd carry on the practice of swinging the wrecking ball at all manner of pre-Reagan anti-discrimination policies. One commission centrist, though, found solace in Mr. Allen's orderly "sense of deliberation. " Well, so much for that silver lining.

NOT ALL IN THE FAMILY We're now looking for public solutions to problems that until recently were considered private matters. "When we entered the 1980s, Americans felt that day care was a family responsibility," said Ethel Klein, a family expert at Columbia University. "Only 4 out of 10 working women said companies should share in the responsibility . . . and the public did not want the federal government to spend more money on day care. Today, almost everyone - 87 percent - agrees there must be a joint effort between private employers and government.

Johnson Controls didn't have a mommy track. What it had was something different. It was a "may be, could be, might someday be, a mommy track. " The company had a policy that assumed every fertile woman was a pregnancy waiting to happen. It banned those women from working in jobs with high exposure to lead on the grounds that some unborn - indeed unconceived - children might eventually suffer damage. Johnson called this a "fetal-protection policy. " So have many other companies.

District Justice Elaine Berkoff taught her sons a lesson in equality. "My boys were well-trained. As soon as they could reach over the washing machine, they learned to do their laundry," Berkoff told a group of about 20 members of the Business Women's Network of Greater Willow Grove. A former member of the Upper Moreland school board and Board of Commissioners, Berkoff raised a family before earning a law degree in 1981 from Temple University. She served as a Montgomery County assistant district attorney and is a district justice of Upper Moreland Township.

A year has passed since the concept of a "mommy track" first stirred debate in boardrooms and bedrooms. The suggestion that women with children might be relegated to an institutionalized lesser rung on the corporate ladder and the path to the top cleared for "career primary" women enraged many. Today, the debate continues. But it is subtly changing the expectations women have of their employers. While women soon to have Wharton MBAs may hide their engagement rings during job interviews, they are daring to ask what a decade ago was unthinkable: What is your parental-leave policy?

Did anyone react to the sad death of baby Matthew Eappen at the hands of his au pair by crying, "Good grief, with that father off at work all day, no wonder this happened"? If they did, I missed it. Instead, people calling themselves defenders of "family values" deluged call-in shows to say that Matthew's mom, who was reckless enough to be a part-time ophthalmologist, "got what she deserved. " Unfortunately, the notion that giving eye exams three days a week merits the sacrifice of your second-born pretty well captures the quality of debate these days about work and family.

Molly Baker is a journalist in Wayne who blogs at www.playgroupwithsylviaplath.com Starting a blog is really just dipping the big toe online. To really make waves on the Web, a friend instructed me, you have to get a domain name. How? GoDaddy.com, the friend informed me. I'd seen the Super Bowl ads - women in skinny jeans and even tighter "GoDaddy" tank tops. Of course, they'd be selling alphanumeric identification labels on the Internet. Which made me wonder why the term daddy connotes cool, hip, even sexy, while mommy decidedly does not?

This is my first column. I feel compelled to sharpen pencils and drink bad coffee out of somebody else's mug. The mug should say something cute and office-y, like "You want it when?" And I wish I had a company manual, a plastic ID, and a secretary. Especially a secretary. My mother was a secretary, and I really wish I had her, specifically. I think I might be nervous. I write novels, so I usually have 100,000 words to tell a story. In a newspaper column, there's no story, and I have only 700 words.

Molly Baker is a journalist in Wayne who blogs at www.playgroupwithsylviaplath.com Starting a blog is really just dipping the big toe online. To really make waves on the Web, a friend instructed me, you have to get a domain name. How? GoDaddy.com, the friend informed me. I'd seen the Super Bowl ads - women in skinny jeans and even tighter "GoDaddy" tank tops. Of course, they'd be selling alphanumeric identification labels on the Internet. Which made me wonder why the term daddy connotes cool, hip, even sexy, while mommy decidedly does not?

This is my first column. I feel compelled to sharpen pencils and drink bad coffee out of somebody else's mug. The mug should say something cute and office-y, like "You want it when?" And I wish I had a company manual, a plastic ID, and a secretary. Especially a secretary. My mother was a secretary, and I really wish I had her, specifically. I think I might be nervous. I write novels, so I usually have 100,000 words to tell a story. In a newspaper column, there's no story, and I have only 700 words.

Did anyone react to the sad death of baby Matthew Eappen at the hands of his au pair by crying, "Good grief, with that father off at work all day, no wonder this happened"? If they did, I missed it. Instead, people calling themselves defenders of "family values" deluged call-in shows to say that Matthew's mom, who was reckless enough to be a part-time ophthalmologist, "got what she deserved. " Unfortunately, the notion that giving eye exams three days a week merits the sacrifice of your second-born pretty well captures the quality of debate these days about work and family.

That scenic cascade of blond curls, dangerous curves, and white satin in L.A. Confidential is Kim Basinger as '50s glamour-puss Lynn Bracken. She looks like a movie queen, but she's really a call girl dolled up to resemble Veronica Lake. The down-home creature scuffling around a hotel room in black blazer and pink capris - the one with the ear-length ash-blond locks - is Basinger as herself. She looks like any slightly disheveled working mom, but she's also a movie queen playing "meet the press" at the Toronto International Film Festival, where L.A. Confidential wowed audiences at its North American premiere this month.

Judith Petrangeli says her gender had everything to do with her recent resignation from the Pennsbury school board. The two-term board member will step down this month to spend more time with her family. "The stress on women in public service is 10 times what it is for men," Petrangeli said. It sounds dated, but it's the perception of many of Bucks County's working mothers who serve in elected offices. Many of them say they still feel traditional pressures of making dinners and taking care of children, while trying to seize new opportunities in elected offices.

Johnson Controls didn't have a mommy track. What it had was something different. It was a "may be, could be, might someday be, a mommy track. " The company had a policy that assumed every fertile woman was a pregnancy waiting to happen. It banned those women from working in jobs with high exposure to lead on the grounds that some unborn - indeed unconceived - children might eventually suffer damage. Johnson called this a "fetal-protection policy. " So have many other companies.

A year has passed since the concept of a "mommy track" first stirred debate in boardrooms and bedrooms. The suggestion that women with children might be relegated to an institutionalized lesser rung on the corporate ladder and the path to the top cleared for "career primary" women enraged many. Today, the debate continues. But it is subtly changing the expectations women have of their employers. While women soon to have Wharton MBAs may hide their engagement rings during job interviews, they are daring to ask what a decade ago was unthinkable: What is your parental-leave policy?

The next battle about women in the workplace may be among women in the workplace, University of Pennsylvania sociologist Jerry Jacobs contends. On one side will be that small minority of women who are successful in male-dominated careers such as medicine, law, and business and who can afford to pay privately for child care. On the other side will be the majority of women in female-dominated occupations who, Jacobs said, will face increasing discrimination in terms of pay, opportunity and ability to cope with family pressures.

NOT ALL IN THE FAMILY We're now looking for public solutions to problems that until recently were considered private matters. "When we entered the 1980s, Americans felt that day care was a family responsibility," said Ethel Klein, a family expert at Columbia University. "Only 4 out of 10 working women said companies should share in the responsibility . . . and the public did not want the federal government to spend more money on day care. Today, almost everyone - 87 percent - agrees there must be a joint effort between private employers and government.

District Justice Elaine Berkoff taught her sons a lesson in equality. "My boys were well-trained. As soon as they could reach over the washing machine, they learned to do their laundry," Berkoff told a group of about 20 members of the Business Women's Network of Greater Willow Grove. A former member of the Upper Moreland school board and Board of Commissioners, Berkoff raised a family before earning a law degree in 1981 from Temple University. She served as a Montgomery County assistant district attorney and is a district justice of Upper Moreland Township.