Mansfield Mothers’ Club: Leaning Every Which Way

By Theresa Freeman

Boy have my work-life-balance spider senses been tingling these past few weeks. So much in the news has been stoking the fires of the mommy wars.

Most pervasive in the media, and lighting up my Facebook and Twitter feeds, has been Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and her book, “Lean In: Women, Work and The Will To Lead.” It had so much press before it was released that it topped Amazon’s best sellers list on its first day.

I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on the book because I haven’t read it. (I’ve been leaning in on kids, family, part-time work and simply life for the past few months, but I have added it to my Amazon Wish List.) I’m here to say from many of the reports it seems Sandberg is not commenting on whether us gals should be full-time working women or full-time moms; she’s also not demanding we burn the candles at both ends and work into the night.  

Sandberg is saying, however, that many women are their own worst enemies in the workplace. She implores them to challenge themselves, to take risks, to work hard, to speak up, to be the best in their chosen field - or risk getting left in the dust of their more aggressive colleagues.

Tough advice to swallow for many women who feel like they are leaning hard on so many aspects of their life, from kids to work to supporting loved ones, myself included.

The New York Times has looked at the book, and the discussions it raises, from several perspectives, including the Sunday Book Review. I think so many of us in the Mansfield Mothers’ Club, and around the world, can feel for Sandberg when she says, “I still face situations that I fear are beyond my capabilities. I still have days when I feel like a fraud. And I still sometimes find myself spoken over and discounted while men sitting next to me are not. But now I know how to take a deep breath and keep my hand up. I have learned to sit at the table.”

Vanity Fair’s Michael Lewis balances the Lean In discussion with, “Obviously, there are all sorts of reasons for the inequity at the top of American life, and Sandberg addresses most of them. But she takes a particular interest in the ways women undermine their own cause. Women tend more than men to view their success as fraudulent, for instance. They give in too quickly to the idea that you can’t have both a career and a family; they fail to take risks they need to take; they are afraid to demand that their husbands do their fair share of the housework; they misunderstand how to cultivate useful relationships with their superiors.”

TIME put together a full online companion piece to keep the conversation going which includes an exclusive excerpt of the book and more info on LeanIn.org, Sandberg’s nonprofit foundation with corporate partnerships, online seminars and guidelines for establishing support groups, among other topics.

The seeds of the ideas in the book are laid out in Sandberg’s 2010 TED talk where she laid out messages for women who stay in the workforce. We have to tell girls to “own your success,” she said. Sit at the table, that is, become a part of the conversation at work, she advises.

Invest yourself in your work, she says, and don’t remove yourself from working hard, from reaching for goals because you think that’s what moms must do. Sandberg tells the TED audience, “What happens when you start quietly leaning back...once you have a child at home, your job better be really good to go back, because it’s hard to leave that kid at home. Your job needs to be challenging, it needs to be rewarding, you need to feel like you are making a difference.” If you lean back, others will advance without you, and you’ll be bored upon your return to work and you’ll think “you should have kept your foot on the gas pedal.”

Powerful stuff. Why do so many of us our own worst enemy?

Meanwhile, a national modern parenthood study released by the respected Pew Research Center found working mothers increasingly want full-time work, though the reasons are likely linked to economic motivators. Still, working parents, both male and female are stressed and feel rushed in today’s working world. The Wall Street Journal’s The Juggle blog talked about some the stress around work-life issues and asked readers to share their stories.

I heard echoes of all of the Sandberg chatter in a great essay in the Boston Globe Magazine last Sunday by Kara Baskin, blogger at The 24-Hour Workday. It focused on Yahoo! CEO Melissa Mayer’s ban  in February on working from home and outrage followed. “Yet when Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly, a middle-aged man, made a similar decision in March, there was barely a whimper.” Baskin write, “By now we should all know better than investing our hopes for work-life balance in CEOs, just as we should know better than looking to pro athletes for marriage advice. The heads of public companies are beholden to stockholders, not society.”

I applaud anyone who gives serious thought to how we can best care for our kids, our spouses, our partners, our family and ourselves while keeping up a career. Work is necessary or society will implode. Enjoying your work is a blessing. Thriving at your work is a talent.

Can you share some concrete examples of how you manage the lean, tug, push and pull of family and work?

Theresa Freeman is a member of The Mansfield Mothers' Club, a non-profit organization aimed at providing support for local parents. For more information visit http://mansfieldmothersclub.com, email mansfieldmothersclub@gmail.com or write to Mansfield Mothers' Club, P.O. Box 831, Mansfield, MA 02048.