Ready Moms Blog

New Website

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:50:00 +0000

Dear Readers,

Thanks for your interest in my work and in the evolving dynamics of birth timing. Please stop in at my new
www.DomesticProduct.net blog for ongoing posts on the politics and economics of women's work -- at home and outside it -- and at
www.elizabethgregory.net for info on events and other publications.

While the Ready website and blog will remain online, the new site will include my work on a diversity of projects, some related to Ready themes, some more literary.

Cheers,
eg

CDC Report: Delayed Childbearing: More Women Are Having Their First Child Later in Life

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:32:00 +0000

Here's a link to a report from the CDC out today on the global rise in later motherhood. Exciting to be cited as a reference!

And here's another link to a related story in USA Today, including some input from yours truly.

Behind Closed Doors

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:54:00 +0000

These last two weeks I've been part of a seminar for high school English teachers (and one bold Math teacher) called Common Ground, reading a list of books organized around an expansive idea of of secrets and repression. Exploring how keeping secrets from ourselves is a key part of the way we make sense of the world (by blocking out material it's not convenient to know about ourselves and others), at the same time that we are deeply informed by the awarenesses that we work so hard to repress, on personal, familial, national and global levels.

Here's the book list:

Marcel Proust, Combray
Meredith Hall, Without a Map
Dalia Sofer, Septembers of Shiraz
Toni Morrison, A Mercy
Deborah Rodriguez, Kabul Beauty School
Fran Ross, Oreo
Harryette Mullen, Sleeping with the Dictionary
Zoe Heller, The Believers
Yiyun Li, The Vagrants
Junot Diaz, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

It was a great two weeks!

Happy Belated Daddy Day (in Advance)

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:05:00 +0000

We hear often about later moms these days, but less about the new later dads who've walked hand and hand with those moms into the modern world of birth timing. While it's always been possible for men to have kids later than women (Sarah was the miracle, not Abraham, when Isaac arrived), the Tony Randalls of this world (new dad at 77) have always been a small contingent.

Like most women, most men tend to have their kids in their 20s and early 30s, though increasing numbers start their families in their late 30s to mid 40s (birthrates to men and women increased in all age ranges between 15 and 45 in the latest data). Though 80% of couples who marry in their 20s have a male partner older than the female partner, and it's not exactly rare to see couples with men a decade or more older, most couples are still within a few years of one another in age (just 60% of couples who marry in their mid to late 30s and over have an older man - much closer to the 50/50 split that would occur if cultural pressure for an older man didn't operate at all).

When birth control gave women the capacity to delay kids until they felt ready for them, whenever that might be, men began delaying at a similar rate, for similar reasons. The new later dads of our moment differ from the later dads of yore in that their wives are their peers - not just close in age, but often with similar educations, job histories and earnings (Ben Affleck [36] and Jennifer Garner [37] are one example among millions).

This completely changes the marriage dynamic and has been directly responsible for men's increased involvement in the lives of their kids. If both parents are educated and earning, the logic of separate spheres evaporates. If they're both working outside the home, it only makes sense that they'd share the care work as well. What started within individual marriages has quickly become a culture-wide phenomenon, among parents of all ages.

As men have become more involved in the lives of their kids, they've come to love being there - even as they understand in new ways the time and effort involved in home work. So dads and moms together are forging the movement to innovate new work rules that will allow both members of a parenting couple to be active participants in their families' lives while pursuing fulfilling and decently paid careers ( Families and Work Institute ).

While we're wishing Happy Daddy Day this weekend to all the loving dads, let's take a minute to appreciate how much more involved in the lives of their kids dads are today than when the first father's day was celebrated 101 years ago , and how interconnected are the changing dynamics of dads' and moms' roles inside and outside the home.

This piece also appeared on the Huffington Post.

Midlife Mamas: It's Worth the Wait

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 04:13:00 +0000

Here's a link to a story by Karen West published in Seattle Woman Magazine in May.

The media stories on later motherhood focus most on infertility -- but 1 in every 7 US babies is born to a mom 35+ and the average age at first birth for college grads is 30.

This article breaks the media pattern by looking at both pros and cons of delay --the reporter cites my work but also did a lot of interviewing on her own.

Birth timing, women's work and the status of women as policy shapers all entwine. There's no one right way -- but we badly need a straightforward discussion of what's at stake.

Gay Moms Doing Well, in Spite of Prop 8

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:28:00 +0000

Gay Moms Doing Well

Recently Wanda Sykes (47) and her wife Alex (wed in California, October 2008) joined the growing ranks of gay parents, as these first-time moms celebrated the birth of twins. Sykes has described herself "proud to be a woman, proud to be a black woman and proud to be gay" -- and now she can be proud to be a gay black mom as well.

Though today's California Supreme Court decision qualifies her status as a gay black married mom--by affirming it for those like her who are already married but by denying the same option to others--the likelihood is great that that qualification will be undone in the not-so-distant future. The tide has turned, and the flood of images and stories of loving gay families like Wanda's have already begun to redefine her status as part of the status quo.

Firm stats on the number of gay families aren't available - one recent study put the number of gay parents at between 2 and 8 million - but clearly they're on the rise, with or without the marriage option. For lack of a better category, the CDC counts births to partnered gay women in the births to "single" moms (39.5% of births in 2007).

While gay women have been parents for ages, in the past they were generally the parents of kids from hetero unions entered before the mom came out. An out gay woman didn't often think of herself as a potential mom until recently, for several reasons:

•because it just didn't seem like an option physically
•because "mom" often wasn't the image many gay women had of themselves
•and because the world was not very receptive to gay families.

But that's changing fast. With the growing openness about gay relationships and the availability of sperm donation and adoption, lesbians can now explore family options as never before. And gay moms are doing fine, at least in part because, like Sykes, many of them start their families later in life. This turns out to be a good thing.

My study of later moms found that delay of kids allows women of all orientations and backgrounds to finish their educations, to mature and settle into relationships more likely to last for the long term, and to establish themselves at work (whether in the limelight or in a cubicle) -- leading to higher lifetime salaries and to more flexible schedules (essential to care-giving parents) than are available to women who start earlier, in our very family unfriendly work environments.

Gay women face the same pressures to establish themselves at work before starting a family as other women. As with their hetero peers, starting later means gay women have established themselves as individuals, with the kind of personal authority that allows them to be clear on what they want for themselves and can make them conﬁdent advocates for their kids.

In addition, the gay couples I interviewed pointed out that it takes time to figure out who you are and to go through the coming out process, which makes it even more likely that gay moms will come to motherhood later. In the coming years, as society becomes more welcoming to gay people, that process may move faster.

As with hetero women, delay may also lead later gay moms to infertility -- especially women who seek to start biological families after 40 (this does not apply to the "other mothers" whose partners do the bearing and who in states that don't allow gay marriage often become legal parents through adoption). But the steady rise in the birthrate to moms 35 to 45 over the past three decades and more has continued its rise in the latest data, and many women form families later through adoption and egg donation.

Out gay women become moms for many of the same reasons as straight women, but accident is not one of them. These highly intentional moms are changing our understanding of what family can mean, and their successes inspire more change. In turn, the move toward expanding the availability of marriage to gay couples nationally will secure these families a fairer chance at their own pursuit of the happiness our Declaration of Independence calls an inalienable right.

This piece first appeared on the Huffington Post.

Remember Mama?

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:26:00 +0000

Motherhood changed utterly on the day after Mother's Day 1960. That's when the FDA approved the birth control pill for general use, and women at long last could become mothers by choice rather than by default. Immediately the birth rate fell, down by 44% within 15 years, where it's basically stayed ever since.* Voting with their wombs, women had fewer kids, started their families later than their mothers did, or went "childfree."

Released from the old biological constraints, women flooded universities and the workforce, developing their skills, expanding their incomes, and doubling our national talent pool. Most women still want to be moms -- on the new terms that allow them to participate in civic life as well. But while they now hold a majority of middle management jobs, 49 years later women still haven't done more than trickle up into policy-making roles. Currently women (51% of the population) hold 17% of Congressional seats (a new high). In the business world, where women now hold 50.6% of professional and management positions, they comprise only 15.2% of boards of directors and 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs.

What's the holdup?

Well, basically, men -- particularly of the legislative and business-heading types. While our male leaders and representatives might have facilitated change on behalf of their female constituents and workers, with few exceptions they've failed to do so, leaving the old and actively family-unfriendly business model in place. Like John Adams, whose wife Abigail (see above) famously enjoined him to "remember the ladies" as he developed the constitution, most somehow forgot.

Even though women can now time their births, our nation's lack of a family-support infrastructure holds them back -- and mothers especially -- with a dirty laundry list of inequities: unfair pay, job ghettos, inadequate childcare, no sick leave, limited career tracks, and more. Increasingly access to birth control and abortion have been limited as well, especially for the poor. We've heard this list so often, it's come to seem insurmountable.

But the stress and struggles women workers and their families undergo while trying to do their jobs are not only a national disgrace -- they're completely unnecessary. Two examples: Our military runs a strong childcare system, with trained, well-paid workers; a similar system could work for the rest of us and create hundreds of thousands of good jobs. Pay equity may frighten employers who've depended on cheap female labor, much of it in unexportable care work, but if women were paid more, they'd spend more -- revenue neutral for the economy but an important corrective to the current gender power-imbalance. Women with money could contribute to the campaigns of women candidates, and women with good childcare could stay in their jobs and climb the ladders to leadership roles in business. Things would change -- for the better.

Circularly, because the support infrastructure hasn't changed, women haven't been able to move in sufficient numbers into positions where they could change it.

The rationale we're given for this mistreatment holds choice against moms: It was their choice to have kids, so any consequences are their problem. But mothers' work produces not just the happiness of their families; the kids they bear and raise are essential to the operation of commerce and of the nation, which demand citizens, workers and consumers for their continuation -- and good ones at that. It's in our national interest to ensure that all families can do well and women workers do not suffer because they choose to raise the next generation while also contributing to the wider economy and civic life.

Our business model is outdated in not providing circumstances in which women can contribute to the fullest, and earn a fair wage. When women's insights into how to make our systems better meet our nation's needs, including but not limited to the needs of women and families, are not taken seriously at the levels where they might be implemented, every one loses.

Part of the problem is systemic. As legal scholar Lani Guinier explains: "Whoever designs the game or defines the rules predicts the outcome...[Then] the winners tell...the losers that it is futile to resist." This is true for all biases, not just gender. As we've seen, the narrative we're handed justifies the status quo. In this case, as in others, the game was established in a very different landscape, and the rules no longer makes sense for any of us. Men as well as women will be better off when we even up the playing field here.

In fact, things have been improving incrementally, and we may now be approaching the critical mass needed for a game-changing jump. Women have trickled up to the point where even our incredibly low version of a Congressional high has had visible effect. The Speaker of the House is now a woman, and she and her ilk have put pay equity and paid sick leave on the agenda. Not the same as passing, but progress. Big sister is helping mom.

The Obama administration has already signaled its woman-friendliness through a number of bills already passed and through its creation of a White House Council on Women and Girls to scrutinize the gender-effects of legislation. Michelle Obama, self-styled Mom-in-Chief with an impressive employment history and a new full-time job as first lady, exemplifies in her daily life the importance of support for both dimensions of women's work. She and Vice President Biden's Middle Class Task Force have committed to advancing America's work/life balance.

But mama needs more, including the Commission on Women proposed by Congresswoman Jackie Speier, to take a big-picture look at the circumstances that hold women back economically and socially, and to recommend specific actions to rectify those. (Perhaps the threat of a diversity quota on boards of directors could get industry moving.) Here in Houston we recall a conference with a similar charge, held in 1977, which came up with 25 policy recommendations. Those were then overwhelmingly ignored by the same Carter administration that had called the conference. Back then, there were no women in the Senate and few Congresswomen. This time, there'll be follow-through.

To guarantee it and to promote further positive change, we need ongoing active citizen support for the pro-equality legislation proposed by current office holders, male and female. Successes or even near successes in these battles can invigorate women and increase the stream of female candidates. (Women's candidacies in the last election have already led 30,000 girls to apply for a training workshop on political leadership for which fewer than 300 applied last year.) Female candidates won't all agree on everything, but their presence in the race will change the discussion in ways that will make what used to seem impossible suddenly look do-able.

The recent collapse of the finance markets makes this a particularly auspicious time to consider alternative models for doing the nation's business. The culture of greed has failed. Who better than mothers to turn to for wisdom on how to build a culture of care -- one that assumes, for starters, that everyone in the national family deserves respect, fair wages, and a solid education. One that recognizes that we are our common wealth. Time for legislators to remember the ladies, and the mamas, at last. It becomes harder to forget them when they're there in the same room, voting for themselves. Since nobody else is going to do it for them.

*The annual US birthrate fell from 118 births per 1000 fertile women in 1960 to 65 in 1976 (the low in that period). It's bounced around in that vicinity ever since, reaching an all-time low in 2002 at 64.8, and a recent high in 2007 at 69.5.

While the Pill was developed to assist women (at the behest of and with funds supplied by women), it also arrived at a point when the world needed fewer babies. Infant survival rates were up, health gains meant people lived longer, technology innovations meant farms needed fewer workers, and the globe was getting crowded.

Ready When You Are

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Sun, 03 May 2009 02:07:00 +0000

Here's a link to my guest blog at MotherhoodLater...ThanSooner - an on and offline community/resource serving those parenting later in life, with chapters nationwide and beyond. Their mission is to connect, empower and inform those who became moms at age 35+, whether for the first time or again: Ready When You Are

Baby Gusher: Birth Rates Up in All Age Ranges

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 03:31:00 +0000

On the fiftieth anniversary of the biggest birth year in US history, the record burst. More babies were born in 2007 than in any year prior: 4,317,119, according to the CDC. Before that the record was an approximate 4,300,000 – set in 1957, the zenith of the baby boom. Birth rates were up in all age ranges except the very youngest and the very oldest, which held steady: fifteen year olds and fifty year olds and everyone in between were reproducing busily (the overall rise was 1%, with 30-34 year olds leading the pack at 2%).

So does a new boom loom? Not quite. While the numbers look alike, the birth rate differs dramatically: In 1957, it flew at 118 births per thousand women ages 15 to 44, while in 2007 it jogged along at 69.5 (and that included an expanding number of women over 45, using donor eggs).

Our population has grown, so relatively speaking fewer women had babies in 2007 than 50 years before (the hypothetical average woman had 3.8 kids in the late 50s, whereas now it’s 2.1). While that still adds up to more babies on the ground, they won’t make the huge proportional change in the population that the boomers did.

But it’s not the increase in population alone that spurs the current rise. From 2003 to 2007 the birth rate increased steadily if incrementally, from the all-time low of 64.8 per thousand in 2002 up to the new 69.5 – the highest since 1990.

So what’s up with this? The rise in teen births (this 1% adds on to a 3% rise among teens in 2006, interrupting the 34% decline that ran from the peak in 1991 until 2005) links in some measure to the failures of abstinence-only education and decreased access to birth control. But what about the rest?

Have all the star babies in the media spawned a copy cat trend? Or does the influence go the other way? While the tabloids belabor us with endless updates on pregnant celebrities, most people don’t reproduce just because Angelina does (except maybe the octo-mom). Jen, under big tabloid pressure, has held out for her own timetable.

But the baby fever in the tabloids does operate in a feedback loop with lots of other cultural factors that affect decisions around babies, like

•optimism over what looked until recently like a good economy
•a heightened anxiety about possible infertility (overplayed in the media, especially for women in their mid-30s)
•diminished access to and information about contraception and abortion
•nostalgia for the more relaxed pace of the family-filled fifties (in contrast to our busy lives)
•expectation that the work world will either live up on its own to recent promises to provide family-friendly options or that it could be made to do so

These factors and more skew differently for women (and their partners) in different age ranges, since their work, economic and fertility situations differ.

But 2007 is quickly fading into the deep past, and these trends may shift quickly. Though the tabloids continue to provide regular fertility scoops, recessions have historically been potent contraceptives--and then they pass. On the other hand, later would-be parents are likely to be less willing to wait for better times than their younger counterparts. Since they're generally in more stable financial positions than younger folks, the downturn may be less of an issue. But not necessarily.

Stay tuned for the 2008 installment in our national fertility retrospect from the CDC toward the end of this year. But for the breaking story, keep an eye on the tabloids, on your neighbors, and on your own thoughts in this direction, for updates from the home front.

From the NY Times: Why Is Her Paycheck Smaller?

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 03:12:00 +0000

Click here for direct comparisons of male and female average wages within specific professions:

Why Is Her Paycheck Smaller?

Cut Hours, Not Jobs - Part 2 of "Family Friendly Recession?"

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:43:00 +0000

The last post examined how in recessions women's movement up career ladders has historically suffered setbacks, with long-term negative effects. Can we break the recessionary pattern today? Absolutely.

Firstly, as Ellen Galinsky of the Families and Work Institute notes, flexibility has suddenly become a mainstream business strategy for companies seeking to retain current workers rather than having to start from scratch with new employees come the upturn. Reduced hours are among the cut-backs on the table, until things improve. President Obama endorsed that option in his Inaugural speech, and the savings to the nation when people stay in jobs speak for themselves.

Reduced hours may look like automatic family friendliness, but if the reduction is entirely on the employers' terms it doesn't help parents in need of flexibility much more than the standard workweek did. If employers work with employees, male and female, in devising reduced schedules, all parties gain.

And the government can assist. In 17 states, a Shared Work program helps employees and employers who must reduce hours by paying pro-rated unemployment benefits. In 2008 in New York 83% more employers participated in this program than in 2007, and a 2009 surge is already underway. In Texas the program is little known, but word is spreading. This option makes much more sense than layoffs in many environments and should be available nationwide.

Where potential savings on worker health care pushes employers to consider cutting workers they might prefer to cut hours for, government should cover the difference.

A second break with old patterns lies in society's enormous capital investment in women's education and in the extensive work experience women now have. Like any other form of capital, business leaders should find ways to utilize this human capital in a downturn. Smart employers will make every effort to hold onto their best talent, whatever the worker's gender.

Thirdly, the enormity of the failure of the business culture of greed means the time is ripe to rewrite the model and move toward a culture of care. Rather than view the downturn as reason to turn away from initiatives that support women's participation in better-paid jobs, the nation will be best served if we redouble our efforts in that direction, to take advantage of our full national talent pool.

It's time for new ideas and big pictures. In today's troubled economy, one way business and government can collaborate to keep workers, male and female, employed is by cutting hours instead of jobs, at all levels. One by-product could be that the old recessionary patterns that slow women's progress up career ladders finally fall away. But we're going to have to work actively and intentionally to make that happen.

Tracking Women's Careers in Recession - Part 1 of "Family Friendly Recession?"

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:36:00 +0000

We've heard a lot recently about how this recession is affecting men's jobs more than women's. But while women's relative labor-force participation rises in recessions, most of the jobs women hold on to earn small wages and low status. In the long-term, recessions can have very negative effects on women's careers -- both at the individual and national levels. Gains for women earned through years of effort may be swept away in the undertow of layoffs, when flexibility and diversity efforts suddenly disappear.

Women's movement up business ladders and through glass ceilings is endangered right now. Early reports suggest that on Wall Street, a disproportionate number of women overall and almost all those hired in through firms' "opt-in" programs to work flex time have been let go. Little thought is being given to maintaining diversity as layoff decisions are made. This could have huge negative effect long-term. One financial insider (who requests anonymity in sensitive times) observes about the downturn: "In this industry, it definitely set women's progress back at least 20 years."

The current issue of Forbes documents a resurgence of sexism in the finance field -- "In the worst financial crash since the Depression, financial services and insurance firms have cut 260,000 jobs. Seventy-two percent of the missing workers laid off have been women, even though they constituted 64% of employment before the crash began."

Women overall earn a lot less than men do because many industries are still strongly sex-segregated, often because women with kids need part-time or otherwise flexible work. Historically the jobs offering such arrangements have paid less.

But the professions are not as gendered as they used to be, and some women do make high wages. Additionally, once sufficient numbers of women reach positions of influence within business and government, they change the gender-dynamics of the workplace at all levels, introducing family-friendly policies and challenging the gendering of the pay structure. The work still gets done, but on a new, more flexible schedule. It takes a while to establish these new dynamics, which allow women to contribute more fully to the national economy.

While women comprise only 15.2% of boards of directors and 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs, they hold 50.6% of professional and management positions. As a result, 79% of businesses reported offering some flex options in 2008, the pay equity bill is now law, and we have several initiatives in Congress to put all workers on an equal playing field.

Progress has been made, but the recession could halt it, and not just in the finance world. In troubled economic times the historical tendency has been to send the ladies with higher-status jobs back home, or down ladder, pushing them out not just through individual actions but through policy changes and negative media messages.

In the Depression, working women were scapegoated for men's lack of jobs, and the group's career progress was set back for decades. Similarly, in the recessions of the 70s and 80s and in this decade, women's progress up ladder was slowed by a hostile environment that paralyzed the EEOC, undermined access to abortion and birth control, and portrayed women's job losses as the result of a choice to stay home.

When recessions past ended, laid-off men returned to good jobs. Women remained largely in dead-end, low-wage work. With their collective status diminished, post-recessionary women had less ability to influence business policy than before the recession, and the system remained biased in favor of people without care-giving commitments (remember that these are not "merely personal" commitments, they are essential to the running of the nation). Eventually the trickle up began again, but the recessionary cycle ensured that it remained just a trickle. Recessionary setbacks have been a big part of the answer to the question "Why has women's progress been so slow?" The Wall Street example makes it clear that long-term setbacks could occur again now.

Family Friendly Recession?: Cut Hours, Not Jobs

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:54:00 +0000

Family Friendly Recession?: Cut Hours, Not Jobs

We've heard a lot recently about how this recession is affecting men's jobs more than women's. But while women's relative labor-force participation rises in recessions, most of the jobs women hold on to earn small wages and low status. In the long-term, recessions can have very negative effects on women's careers -- both at the individual and national levels. Gains for women earned through years of effort may be swept away in the undertow of layoffs, when flexibility and diversity efforts suddenly disappear.

Women's movement up business ladders and through glass ceilings is endangered right now. Early reports suggest that on Wall Street, a disproportionate number of women overall and almost all those hired in through firms' "opt-in" programs to work flex time have been let go. Little thought is being given to maintaining diversity as layoff decisions are made. This could have huge negative effect long-term. One financial insider (who requests anonymity in sensitive times) observes about the downturn: "In this industry, it definitely set women's progress back at least 20 years."

The current issue of Forbes documents a resurgence of sexism in the finance field -- "In the worst financial crash since the Depression, financial services and insurance firms have cut 260,000 jobs. Seventy-two percent of the missing workers laid off have been women, even though they constituted 64% of employment before the crash began."

Women overall earn a lot less than men do because many industries are still strongly sex-segregated, often because women with kids need part-time or otherwise flexible work. Historically the jobs offering such arrangements have paid less.

But the professions are not as gendered as they used to be, and some women do make high wages. Additionally, once sufficient numbers of women reach positions of influence within business and government, they change the gender-dynamics of the workplace at all levels, introducing family-friendly policies and challenging the gendering of the pay structure. The work still gets done, but on a new, more flexible schedule. It takes a while to establish these new dynamics, which allow women to contribute more fully to the national economy.

While women comprise only 15.2% of boards of directors and 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs, they hold 50.6% of professional and management positions. As a result, 79% of businesses reported offering some flex options in 2008, the pay equity bill is now law, and we have several initiatives in Congress to put all workers on an equal playing field.

Progress has been made, but the recession could halt it, and not just in the finance world. In troubled economic times the historical tendency has been to send the ladies with higher-status jobs back home, or down ladder, pushing them out not just through individual actions but through policy changes and negative media messages.

In the Depression, working women were scapegoated for men's lack of jobs, and the group's career progress was set back for decades. Similarly, in the recessions of the 70s and 80s and in this decade, women's progress up ladder was slowed by a hostile environment that paralyzed the EEOC, undermined access to abortion and birth control, and portrayed women's job losses as the result of a choice to stay home.

When recessions past ended, laid-off men returned to good jobs. Women remained largely in dead-end, low-wage work. With their collective status diminished, post-recessionary women had less ability to influence business policy than before the recession, and the system remained biased in favor of people without care-giving commitments (remember that these are not "merely personal" commitments, they are essential to the running of the nation). Eventually the trickle up began again, but the recessionary cycle ensured that it remained just a trickle. Recessionary setbacks have been a big part of the answer to the question "Why has women's progress been so slow?" The Wall Street example makes it clear that long-term setbacks could occur again now.

Can we break the recessionary pattern? Absolutely.

Firstly, as Ellen Galinsky of the Families and Work Institute notes, flexibility has suddenly become a mainstream business strategy for companies seeking to retain current workers rather than having to start from scratch with new employees come the upturn. Reduced hours are among the cut-backs on the table, until things improve. President Obama endorsed that option in his Inaugural speech, and the savings to the nation when people stay in jobs speak for themselves.

Reduced hours may look like automatic family friendliness, but if the reduction is entirely on the employers' terms it doesn't help parents in need of flexibility much more than the standard workweek did. If employers work with employees, male and female, in devising reduced schedules, all parties gain.

And the government can assist. In 17 states, a Shared Work program helps employees and employers who must reduce hours by paying pro-rated unemployment benefits. In 2008 in New York 83% more employers participated in this program than in 2007, and a 2009 surge is already underway. In Texas the program is little known, but word is spreading. This option makes much more sense than layoffs in many environments and should be available nationwide.

Where potential savings on worker health care pushes employers to consider cutting workers they might prefer to cut hours for, government should cover the difference.

A second break with old patterns lies in society's enormous capital investment in women's education and in the extensive work experience women now have. Like any other form of capital, business leaders should find ways to utilize this human capital in a downturn. Smart employers will make every effort to hold onto their best talent, whatever the worker's gender.

Thirdly, the enormity of the failure of the business culture of greed means the time is ripe to rewrite the model and move toward a culture of care. Rather than view the downturn as reason to turn away from initiatives that support women's participation in better-paid jobs, the nation will be best served if we redouble our efforts in that direction, to take advantage of our full national talent pool.

It's time for new ideas and big pictures. In today's troubled economy, one way business and government can collaborate to keep workers, male and female, employed is by cutting hours instead of jobs, at all levels. One by-product could be that the old recessionary patterns that slow women's progress up career ladders finally fall away. But we're going to have to work actively and intentionally to make that happen.

Darn It!: Recycling Frugality

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 15:57:00 +0000

Darn It!: Recycling Frugality

As jobs disappear, stocks plummet and credit freezes, many of us are cutting expenses and looking for ways to save. This is new territory for most of us, who've grown up in the age of disposability and more, more, more. But it's familiar ground to the old folks, who made it through the Depression and WW2 rationing. Before them, before the past 100 years really, recycling, at home and in the wider world, was the only way of life. Turns out the finance crisis and the eco-crisis share a cause, and, at least in part, a solution.

The current emergency throws us back on old wisdom and skills. "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without," went the old line. "Mend and make do, " the British government enjoined the home-front. Time to talk to grandma and your old-hippie aunt who still buys kasha in bulk with no packaging (we do pay for that stuff we then have to cart away). Or to the twenty- and thirty-something members of your local knitting group, who've made parsimony over into a new style and who don't fear the realms of craft. Time to practice a new frugality, one with lots in common with the old frugality.

Last month inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander invoked images of the old thrifty ways, describing "[Someone] stitching up a hem, darning / a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, /repairing the things in need of repair." These may be viewed as images of poverty -- of how far many of us come from a darker past, but they are also images of love and caring and a model for behavior now on many fronts. There's a lot in need of repair nowadays.

The skills themselves are not so difficult -- fixing, re-using, making from scratch -- though the mindset behind them may be, in the short term. "Do you know how to do that?" someone asked me incredulously, when I said I'd just have to darn the holey cuffs of an otherwise cute sweater I picked up at a clothing swap. It won't look expert, but even I can figure out a basic warp and woof. Maybe with practice I'll manage that special look of stylish ruin. Make it a game, not a sign of shame.

What these skills also require that's maybe harder to come by is time. Collectively, we haven't had much of that to spare recently. But increasing numbers of us will -- if we're out of work, or if our hours reduce. This last could have its positive side. If employers cut everybody's hours instead of cutting some workers and keeping others (one more argument for a national health plan), everyone will have more time to talk to our families and our neighbors and to make good, cheap soup. More time to invest in looking for bargains, since, as our elders knew, a frugal housewife fattens the family fortune (works with househusbands too). More time to write letters to our purveyors reminding them to stock in bulk and to let us refill our old shampoo bottles, on the old co-op model. More time to follow through on that model and actually carry those bottles back.

Frugality can't make soup out of a stone -- nor will it provide the kind of stimulus the economy needs to pull us out of the current fast-deepening hole. We do have to spend some money in order to make money, it seems. But we recognize that we can't just go back to the profligacy of the recent past, even if we do get access to credit again. And we do have to re-think the operations of value in all the senses of that word.

As we figure out the terms of the new economy, we could do a lot worse than to listen to the band of grandmas, knitters, granddads, historians, hippies, poets, cooks, tightwads and crafts-men and -women who connect us to the wisdom of generations past. Not only could that wisdom save us a few bucks, it could reinforce the fabric of those ties that bind.

[This piece first appeared at huffingtonpost.com]

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Mother Knows Best

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 03:44:00 +0000

Mother Knows Best

Woman gives birth at 70 -- isn't that ridiculous? Or worse, isn't it unethical, to bear kids you might not be around to see into adulthood?

Those aren't my questions -- they're the undertow in all the reporting on the latest installment in the "how late can you wait" fertility story. This time the new record comes from India where the 70-year-old Rajo Devi finally fulfilled her life-long quest for a baby, via egg donation. (But wait -- didn't Omkari Panwar give birth at 70 in India -- to twins -- this June?) Last year the story came from New Jersey, when psychologist Frieda Birnbaum, already the mother of two adult children and a first-grader, became at 60 the oldest woman to have twins in the US (there seem to be no end of record-setting opportunities).

Responding to dubious questioners, Birnbaum noted at the time, "I think those people [who object] need to get ready for what's coming up in our society. ... There are a lot of middle-aged women [having babies] -- 40s, 50s, now I just turned 60. That's going to be acceptable. They have to just keep up with what's going on with society."

What's going on is revolutionary. The so-far only occasional 60- and 70-year-old mothers get headlines, but the hundreds of thousands of women starting or continuing their families in their late 30s and their 40s, and the increasing numbers having kids in their 50s are the big change agents, redefining women's roles in every respect. It wasn't long ago that they too were facing questions about their suitability as parents -- wouldn't they be too worn out and out of touch with the youth culture? But kids are a fitness program in themselves, parents who start later make the extra effort to keep up, and it turns out that older parents offer special benefits, both to their kids and to the world.

Newly supplied post-1960 with birth control, longer life expectancies, expanded adoption options, and more recently with IVF and egg donation technology, women as a group have been rewriting our life plots, answering Freud's question "what do women want?" by example. It turns out that many of us want families, but we also want careers and a say in the way the world is run. Delaying kids makes it possible for women to have all three, for the first time in history.

That's not the story we tend to hear however. Instead, we get lots of admonitions - either about waiting "too late" to have kids the usual way, or about succeeding "too late" to do the motherhood job well. But though the many media stories about infertility might give you the impression that nobody over 35 can have kids the standard way, many do.

Where in 1970 only 1 in 100 women started their families at or after 35, in 2006 it was 1 in 12. And 1 in 7 babies overall were born to moms 35 or more (611,000 in 2006, of which roughly 6,000 involved egg donation). Add in the adoptive moms and that's quite a crowd of later moms.

Which isn't to say that there are no problems. While about 11% of women are infertile at 35, it's about 50% at 41, and after 43 very few women can have kids the usual way. Egg donation is an option for those who can afford it - chances are 50/50 at every attempt. Adoption is an option too, with its own complexities.

So why do women wait? In interviews, later moms give four basic reasons: education, establishing at work, finding the right partner and self-development. Many cite all four. It turns out that delaying kids has served women as a shadow benefits system, linking to higher lifetime salaries (delay can be a class elevator, and one study shows a 3% annual return to delay in lifetime earnings) and the clout to demand flexible schedules when they're not offered to less experienced workers. As women trickle up into policy-making roles, family friendliness spreads. Maybe soon women who feel ready to start earlier won't have to choose between having kids and earning a decent wage.

In addition, delay leads to greater equality in marital decision-making, a phenomenon that transforms the family dynamic and raises the happiness level of all involved. Amazingly but handily, later moms live longer (partly a physical issue and partly one of health-care access linked to their higher incomes). There's a new twist on the "how-late" contest.

Of course, the demand to expand the fertility window pushes scientific innovation, and we can expect ongoing breakthroughs in that realm.

But perhaps most importantly, later moms are the agents of enormous social change, because their business savvyness and credentials are getting family and women's issues a hearing they've never had before, and moving us toward a culture of care and fairness.

It turns out that many individual women's personal choices add up to good effects for the group. Which brings us back to the 60- and 70-year-old moms. Rajo Devi made her choice in circumstances quite different from Frieda Birnbaum's, to escape the negativity she's lived with as a "barren" woman in a culture where female fertility is highly valued. Relatedly, Omkari Panwar, the mother of two grown girls, sought out IVF at 70 in order to have a son in a world where boys are preeminent. Both women have extended families who will care for the kids if they cannot. Their choices might not be yours, but apparently they make empowering sense to these ladies.

Birnbaum operates in a different but related world in which she and her husband expect to live long in good health and choose to spend their later years actively parenting young children. Sounds neither ridiculous nor unethical, but it does sound new. All these women are exercising choice, which in itself may be what shocks the naysayers. It's a new world when women can write their own life stories, and as they do they further change the world for everybody.

For millennia, mothers have been strategizers, making good choices for their families and themselves in whatever circumstances, based on the available information, and building upon one another's experience. Instead of admonishing mothers for not doing the familiar, it's time to listen and learn. In this season of innovation around standard maternity, we can celebrate and support the familial, in all its forms.

Childcare as Infrastructure: Minting the Common Wealth

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:55:00 +0000

Childcare as Infrastructure

In presenting his plan for an economic recovery last week, President-elect Obama spoke of creating 2.5 million jobs by 2011--jobs that would both address the immediate crisis and work as long-term growth engines, by shoring up our crumbling infrastructure and laying the groundwork for the alternative energy industries of the future. These industries are not two but three mints in one (taking mints in the value-producing sense)--supplying jobs today and tomorrow and fighting global warming at the same time! Here's another means of multiplying value and jobs: add childcare to the jobs-creation list.

An expanded national childcare system can also provide at least three mints, of both the short and long term kinds. While Obama aims to fund traditional infrastructure-maintenance work (rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools), in the big picture, good, affordable childcare shores up infrastructure of an even more essential kind, our citizens.

As the enormity of the failure of the current business culture of greed has demonstrated, it's time to rewrite the business model. It's time to move from a culture of greed toward a culture of care, one that invests in all citizens on the understanding that together we are our common wealth. Along with the move to universal education for four-year-olds that Obama has proposed, we badly need a network of care for children 0-3, both to provide all kids with good care and to allow mothers who want to work to contribute fully to the national economy.

To date the case for a national childcare system has been a political nonstarter in the US, though for decades we've seen that the French program serves its families and that nation well--much more satisfactorily than does our lack of program. But in troubled economic times, political barriers to good framework choices suddenly look less imposing.

In the US, good childcare is available to relatively few children. The lack connects to life-time poverty and diminished opportunities for many people, both the children who do not receive good care and the mothers who step out to raise their kids and as a result cut short their own educations, their lifetime earnings and their retirement incomes.

Women of all classes are also discouraged from putting their kids in childcare by the politicized media coverage that over-stresses the importance of constant mom care, partly through contrast with the frequently inadequate childcare now on offer. This negatively affects their long-term earnings ability and women's influence overall in shaping our social institutions because they do not trickle up proportionately into policy-making roles.

There are many ways that a national childcare system might be configured--but here's an outline to open the discussion: neighborhood centers, staffed by trained and well-paid professionals, would provide good, affordable childcare to all the kids in the area whose parents chose it. These centers would also offer parenting classes and drop-in care and would be linked to the health care system. As in France, these centers could take a variety of forms, and might include expanded pre-existent Head Start programs, newly constructed centers run by a national childcare agency, and private businesses, new and pre-existent, run to meet rigorous federal standards and under federal supervision. It would also include partial funding for in-home care for those who need it. Different centers would involve different costs to parents, who could choose among the available options. Funding would involve sliding-scale payments by parents along with government underwriting both directly and through tax credits.

Jobs generated would include construction work for new centers and renovations, hundreds of thousands of teaching positions, as well as new positions for those who teach the teachers. As in both the French and the US Military's childcare programs, teachers in this initiative would be well trained and well compensated, and centers would be supervised and accredited. Teacher turnover would plummet, enrollment would rise and children would thrive. Women of all classes could feel comfortable leaving their kids (the next generation we all count on) in a safe and affordable educational environment while they went to work. What a concept!

This program would pay forward on at least three levels--many mints in one: First, it would increase our human capital and put our nation on track to compete globally with the many nations who already invest more in their kids than we do. Studies suggests that a universal pre-school program would return many times the value to investment over the child's lifetime, and benefits would multiply further with expanded early education.

Second, it would inject a huge economic stimulus<, creating many good jobs nationally. Many of these jobs would go to women. They would differ from current childcare positions in levels of pay, training, and respect. The human capital of teachers would grow as well as that of kids.

Third, the program would free women at all class levels to participate more fully in growing the economy by making good childcare more affordable and by changing the current culture around childcare--countering the current guilt-inducing media coverage that misrepresents childcare's role. Good childcare has much to offer kids in terms of socialization, range of activities, structured environment, and skills development, especially if it's combined with flexible work arrangements that allow parents to cut back on work to be with kids when needed.

The program's expense would be offset in the short term by economic gains from the stimulus it would introduce between 2009 and 2011. It would be offset in the long term by economic gains from women's more consistent work and expanded productivity; from savings on worker replacement and training when parents have to step out because good childcare is not available; from drops in the costs of crime, welfare, and prisons among disadvantaged children; and from the pervasive societal gains in innovation and vitality that expanded education brings to all citizens.

Every crisis brings opportunities. By shifting from a culture of greed to a culture of care, we can multiply our common wealth many times over. Innovations in our provision of health care, family-friendliness and elder care will also mint new value for our national economy and our culture. In addressing recessionary concerns, it's essential that we make innovative use of all our resources. Rather than throwing good money after bad debts, let's bank on the future by creating a level playing field on which all workers and their children, of all classes and both sexes, can flourish and contribute.

[This piece first appeared at huffingtonpost.com]

Thinking Ahead, on The New Longevity

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 00:36:00 +0000

The likelihood is, whatever your age, that you're aspiring to be even older. Whether she thinks about it this way or not, every young woman who hopes to live long and happily aspires to being an old lady. And every young man an old man. The good news is, these days we have a good chance of getting there.

But while we're encouraged to live long, we get a lot of mixed messages about how we regard the old, and ourselves as we age. Ours is a youth-focused culture that equates youth with beauty and excitement and age with un-beauty and tedium. How do we put it all together? With some difficulty, frequently!

But increasing numbers of the population are crossing the border into older territory. Due to increases in public health measures, people in the developed world, and increasingly the less developed world as well, are living longer and longer. We've added nearly 30 years to the average life expectancy in the US over the past century, jumping from roughly 47 for all in 1900 to 75 for men and 80 for women in 2004.

That is an immense change--one that you may take for granted, but one that neither our culture nor our social systems has any real precedent or preparation for. Soon 20% of the population will be over 65, up from 5% not long ago. This affects our lives in all directions--shaping our investment strategies, our aesthetics, our decisions around healthy lifestyles, our housing construction, our career trajectories, our patterns of family formation, our health and elder care system, our relationships with parents and children, our tax structure, our sex lives, and on and on.

In 2011 the first of the boomers will reach 65--which means we'll get to see what their patterns of retirement are. There are predictions – based both on the economic downturn and on indications about choice – that many of boomers with their big work identification will not retire at all, at least not at 65, or they'll move to a second career or realm of volunteer work, which means we'll be seeing a new sector of productivity in our workforce.

In the coming years, we'll be learning about what the new longevity means at every turn, since the boomers as a group will be more educated, and more well to do than elders past – and as a result they'll be healthier longer as well, since health has a direct connection to socio-economics in our system.

Expanded longevity leads to new options for life sequencing and for life choices. Quite a few boomers will still be raising kids in later life – since our increased longevity has shaped the choice of many women and men today to start their families later than their parents did – a choice made possible by the twin agencies of birth control and the new longevity. If we didn't expect to be around a good while longer, we couldn't be starting our families at 35 or 40 or even later.

While increased longevity affects everyone, women experience it in special ways, both because they live longer than men on average, and because their circumstances are often very different from those of men. Women face a special form of ageism, since their social value is often linked to fertility and youth—even though grandmothers all over are essential to the lives of their families.

Anthropologists attribute the evolution of the human brain to the fact that humans are one of the few creatures who experience menopause. The existence of postmenopausal women who could help their toddler grandkids while the moms tended the newborns allowed toddlers to avoid having to grow up fast and gather their own food. As a result, their brains could grow bigger and mature longer. Many thanks to the grandmas past for that!

In spite of their service, women are more likely to live in poverty in old age than men, and because their husbands often pre-decease them, they tend more often to live alone in their later lives. These issues need addressing in terms of social security policy and the re-structuring of communities, and those are some of the issues we'll be addressing in the next few days.

Chances of developing dementia increase with age, and since women live longer they have increased chances of developing dementia. While scientists work toward developing cures or means of slowing the rate of onset, it's also key that we develop better care mechanisms than we have.

While aging involves losses, it also involves gains. For one, we as a society have an opportunity to discover on a large scale what wisdom comes with long life, and to incorporate that wisdom into our social structures. As elders live longer, we have our history and traditions present among us in new ways.

Gains may be gender-specific too. Women may also find that old age offers an escape from a lot of social pressures, and a chance to set their own agenda.

Clearly the scene is changing fast for all of us, both in terms of prospects and in terms of current reality. As a group we often buy into the ageist view and don't want to think about the old or about ourselves becoming old. But that's a formula for trouble – since if we don't address the reality, we can't re-shape it to work well. It's time to explore all the issues that the new longevity presents –both the opportunities and the challenges, and to respond creatively to them.

Kisses for My President: Work/Family Balance in the White House and in Your House

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:13:00 +0000

Kisses for My President

Polly Bergen played the mother of the first female President in ABC's Commander in Chief a few seasons back with a wink to those who remembered her past. Back in 1965 Bergen also played the first female POTUS, in a movie called Kisses for My President.

While her husband (Fred MacMurray) hung about awkwardly, President Leslie McCloud handled her job ably. The first gentleman wasn't sure what his job was, however, and all the implied questions about where the dividing line between men's work and women's work lay and why were resolved when she, already the mother of two older kids, became pregnant and resigned, facing a choice between losing the job or losing the baby. Even in the sixties a working woman with kids was imaginable, but working with a baby was not.

Forty years later, Geena Davis's Mackenzie Allen might have been that child Leslie McCloud left office to raise. With three school-age kids, the baby question didn't arise for mama Mackenzie, presumably for two reasons: first, things had changed enough that the point of the story was no longer to find an ending that pushed her out of office, it was to show her managing there. Second, and equally pragmatically, because, as the female candidate for VP in the 2000 film The Contender assured those worried about the chance that she might become pregnant in office, Mackenzie and her husband could be assumed to employ reliable birth control (something still fairly new in 1965).

Nonetheless, though she had many devoted fans, Mackenzie too left office early--when the show was canceled. So, yes, she could be imagined holding the job, but then again, not so much.

Those two story lines in tandem with this year's political stories suggest both that we've come a distance, and that we're still conflicted about what kinds of work women are supposed to or are allowed to do in our world. Hillary has already lived the life of a working mother with a young child in the White House, but her status as First Lady looked enough like a familiar role and occurred against a backdrop quite different from that of today. These days advocates for revising the national work/family dynamic speak on every other corner. In between you'll hear voices raised for a return to a world in which women knew their place and stayed in it.

Part of the conflict stems from the fact that the system we operate within makes it so hard for women to succeed. The question of how to accommodate the dual needs of kids of all ages--and babies in particular--as well as a demanding job remains a huge issue in contemporary America, and Sarah Palin's candidacy brings it front and center even though she herself has not made it a talking point.

It's an issue for working women all over America, from executives to middle management to line workers, shop assistants, and clerks. And increasingly it's an issue for men, whose working wives make child care a family concern. The world is full of working people with young kids, and they need answers.

A few basic changes could make enormous differences. A national investment in an affordable, reliable system of good childcare (see the French example) would release a torrent of talent and energy into the rebuilding economy on at least three levels: the childcare workers who will earn more and get more education while providing more consistency to the children they're tending; the mothers and fathers of those kids who will be freed to participate more fully in growing the economy; and the children, who will themselves be more educated and more able to contribute down the line.

If we value families as the source of the next generation of citizens, there's plenty of room to make changes in the work culture so that people who want to spend time with their kids while building careers can do so. And framework changes in areas like the tax code so that mothers' income isn't unfairly charged as it is in the current income averaging system could reshape the way women's work adds up in the home budget. Many more changes, large and small, could emerge from a vigorous national discussion.

While this political season won't yield a woman president, it has seen a movement of women into the political forefront as never before. We're ready for a national leadership (male and female) that takes seriously the contributions on both the home front and the business front of all citizens and commits to facilitating both. So far Barack Obama is the only candidate who has demonstrated an interest in pursuing such family-friendly change. If he, as an active father to young children, can carry that banner into the White House, he can count on lots of kisses, of the metaphorical kind, from families all over the nation. And the groundwork for a return to a burgeoning national economy for good measure.

[This piece was first posted on huffingtonpost.com]

GENDER, CREATIVITY and the NEW LONGEVITY

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:49:00 +0000

The Women's Studies Program at the University of Houston will be presenting a symposium on GENDER, CREATIVITY and the NEW LONGEVITY, on November 13 - 15, 2008.

Speakers will explore the social and personal outcomes of the new longevity and our creative responses as a community to the changing scene.

Katha Pollitt will give the keynote on the evening of the 13th. Speakers include Margaret Gullette and Martha Holstein, among many others.

A linked exhibit called THRIVE!, curated by Mary Ross Taylor will open at DiverseWorks on November 14th, with an opening party from 6 to 8. www.diverseworks.org

Check out www.friendsofwomen.org for full details.

Ready or Not?

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:12:00 +0000

Here's a piece from earlier this year:

Ready or Not?

What do Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama have in common? They all began their families at relatively advanced ages. Hillary was 32 when she had Chelsea in 1980, Laura was 35 when the twins arrived in 1981, and Michelle was 34 and 37 at the births of her daughters in 1998 and 2001. All three are part of a decades-old worldwide trend among women, who, when offered the chance, often choose to start their families later (sometimes quite a bit later) than their mothers did. The CDC's recent birth data release reveals that births among first-time later moms increased again in 2006 (up 1% over 2005).

Births to older moms have been rising for years (10 times as many first births to women 35-39 in 2006 as in 1975 and 13 times as many births to 40-44 year olds), while the rates for younger moms have generally been descending. This year however the numbers of births to younger moms also rose (up 3% for teens -- the first rise since 1991, and linked to reliance on abstinence-only programs -- and up 4% for women 20-24). The average U.S. woman starts her family at 25.2, up from 21.4 in 1970. College-educated women generally put a hold on kids while they go to school and then establish at work, so their average age at first birth has been over 30 for several years. For many reasons, birth timing shapes a woman's life.

The thirty- and forty-something new moms, like Laura, Hillary and Michelle, are educated women with work histories, whether they're currently in a job or staying home. And that history, it turns out, offers many benefits -- to the individuals, their families and to society.

Most media stories on later motherhood focus on infertility, but my study of New Later Mothers (women who started their families at 35 or over, by birth or adoption), found that many women succeed in having kids later in the usual way (over 600,000 in 2006 - 1 in every 7 babies). Those who don't succeed with their own genetic material often find alternate routes to happy families via egg donation (another 6,000 or so) or adoption.

The women I interviewed were overwhelmingly glad they waited until they personally felt ready for family, because for them waiting brought many advantages. Established in their jobs and secure in their senses of self, they can focus on their kids' development rather than their own. They have fewer money worries and more clout at work (handy for negotiating family-friendly schedules). The self-confidence they've built at work transfers to their mothering. Their marriages feel sound. And, remarkably, they even live longer!

Today's later dads are also a new breed. Though in years past some dads started their families later, those guys tended to have younger wives, whereas in 2007 the older dads tend to be married to peers, which creates a different family dynamic. (Bill was 33, George was 35, and Barack was 36 and 39 when their kids were born.) Home life is more egalitarian, tasks more evenly shared, when women have cultural clout equal to their husbands'.

The new later motherhood involves an enormous cultural shift -- maybe even a form of species evolution. It's made possible by two prior changes: the broad availability of reliable birth control, and the health advances that have greatly extended the life expectancy of middle-class Americans.

These additional years mean that we can sequence our life-stages differently than ever before. For women, that means more opportunities to explore realms of life that they didn't have time for when they had to focus on raising the next generation before hitting the graveyard (at an average 47 in 1900). For men, the expanding workplace family-friendliness that women's trickle up has wrought means the chance to participate in their children's lives and to share the burden of family support. Women's education and work experience mean big additions to our pool of innovation and skill -- in the women themselves and the kids they nurture.

While many people feel ready to start their families in their twenties, readiness at any age involves choice and presumes access to reliable birth control. Beyond that, all families need expanded social support, which can be enacted through business and legislative policy. Real family friendliness builds a strong workforce for tomorrow while allowing the current workforce to focus on their jobs and perform at their best.

We are beginning to recognize the cascading ramifications of the changes the new later motherhood brings. But the diverse accomplishments of Michelle, Laura and Hillary (respectively, hospital administrator, librarian, and politician, and, similarly, wife, mother and envoy) just hint at the kinds of benefits that can flow when all women can decide for themselves when they feel ready to start their families.

[This piece was first posted in January 2008 on huffingtonpost.com]

Never Done and Under Paid

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 16:26:00 +0000

"A farmer works from sun to sun," goes the adage, "but a woman's work is never done." It's also been said that women who don't hold paying jobs "don't work." What's that difference about?

Here's my take on the many aspects of Women's Work--both in the home and outside it, in honor of this year's close conjunction of Women's Equality Day (the suffrage anniversary) and Labor Day:

Never Done and Under Paid

This year Labor Day and Women's Equality Day bookend the week: a timely conjunction, since tension over what properly constitutes women's work is the crux of much of our current public discourse.

That concern feeds the babble about baby bumps that fills the celebrity magazines, lies at the root of the Supreme Court's rejection of Lilly Ledbetter's suit for fair pay restoration, of the push to pass legislation to reverse that judgment and for pay equity overall, and of the efforts by the current administration to cut access to sex ed and to birth control wherever they can find an opportunity. The Democratic primaries operated in part as a labor debate over what kinds of jobs women are allowed to hold (president or clothes presser, in one formulation). The endless stories on fertility and Mommy Wars play into the debate as well.

It's the change in definition that "women's work" has undergone in the past 50 years that generates the controversy. For ages, women's labor, apart from sex and reproduction, was largely limited to care work, whether it was done in the home for free or outside it for pay. Within the family, care work is viewed as private and personal. But this work has a very public aspect too: the nation and the business community depend on mothers to bear and raise children to be good citizens, reliable workers and avid consumers.

In effect, mothers have been underwriting the national bottom line by raising their young for no pay.

Insofar as the business world presumes their efforts, mothers have always been part of the larger economy, but their contributions have been invisibilized by the economists who segregate "production" from "reproduction" and calculate the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by omitting the work that goes on in that most domestic of spheres, the home, because it is unpaid. A more-apt acronym would be GIDP, since it's fundamentally Grossly Inaccurate.

What's more, instead of being recognized for their generosity, mothers have been further punished economically, with low pay and limited benefits when they work outside the home, and with small protection when they divorce. Motherhood is a big predictor of poverty in old age.

Jobs available to women in general have been paid less than the same or comparable jobs done by men. Women's work has been considered just worth less--not because it was but because women didn't have the status to command better treatment. Or the time to fight for it: they were too busy tending the torrent of babies, many of whom died young of ailments now treatable.

But since the advent of hormonal birth control in 1960, the social fabric woven over millennia around the assumption that women were baby machines has been undergoing quick redesign. When offered the chance, women and their partners in the US and around the world have chosen to start their families later and to keep them smaller. Most have kids, but some do not, by choice or default. Birth control has allowed large numbers of women to enter the universities and the workplace in an ever-expanding range of fields. In so doing these women have doubled our national talent pool and strengthened our skilled workforce. When mothers are well educated, the children are too, and the population lives longer in better health. The playing field has changed utterly.

In this new arena, women combine raising the next generation of workers and citizens (often in active partnership with the dads) with actively contributing as workers and citizens themselves -- an overall increase in efficiency.

The new gender realities of employment and national interest call for equal pay for equal work as well as workplace policy that allows people who wish to be parents to build both families and careers. But though women's status has been rising, we're not there yet: women still make just 78 cents for every dollar men make, and 80 cents on the dollar adjusting for occupation and rank. Oppression anyone?

Gradually, the work rules have been changing, as women trickle up into positions in business and government that either allow them to institute change themselves or cause their colleagues to make change in order to retain them. Two much ballyhooed pay-equity bills have made it through the House, and we'll soon see if they make it through the Senate and past the likely veto.

Those who blame feminists for focusing on women's workplace rights and failing to tend the family side of the struggle in the early days might consider whether it wasn't necessary for women first to establish the clout they now have in order to be heard around equity and work/life issues at all.

In the face of the ongoing redesign, there's plenty of push back by the forces of yore. This is exercised both around opposition to pay equity and work-place flexibility and in the recently very-pressurized discourse around that specifically female version of labor -- the work of child-bearing.

A network of real supports for people of both genders would promote the maximization of our potential, as workers and as parents, for personal and national benefit. It would include the usual suspects like fair pay protections, access to affordable good child care, affordable access to and information on birth control and abortion, and paid sick days, and it would expand to fund FMLA, mandate infertility coverage, and create real on and off ramps for women and men who need time off from a career to focus on family, and more.

We've just had a fine example of what a business model focused on short-term profits does for us. A better model would focus on long-term growth and honor all the work that women have done and will do in the home and outside it.

For millennia women's work has been underwriting the bottom line for business and the nation. It's time for some return on that investment.

[This piece was first posted on huffingtonpost.com]

Reviews & Interviews

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:03:00 +0000

Here's a recent review by Jo Keroes at the Mommy Track'd site.

Earlier reviews include the Washington Post (see Learned Ladies Living Large post below), the Houston Chronicle , the Austin American Statesman , and the Feminist Review.

Other discussions of the book appeared in the New York Times, the Daily Telegraph, Time Out NY Kids, among others...

Radio interviews include Conceive, on Air, The Current on the CBC, Conversations with Joy/WPR, and
Northeast Public Radio.

Births Up--No, Down!

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 04:52:00 +0000

Here's my take on the differences between the CDC and Census reports on 2006 fertility, and the context of fertility anxiety the reports operate within:

"Births Up--No, Down!: Stats and the Politics of Fertility Anxiety"

"More Women Than Ever Are Childless, Census Finds" read last week's NY Times headline. Both the claim and the rather alarmist phrasing ("more than ever!") may have confused readers who recalled the December 2007 headline for the story on the annual CDC birth data (gathered from birth certificates), which told us that "Teenage Birth Rate Rises for First Time Since '91." That article then went on to report that rates were up for women in all age categories between 15 and 45. Both reports were based on data from 2006.

So how can births be up and down in the same year? Easily, if you're comparing to different years past.

Where the CDC report compares to 2005 data, the Census report looks back thirty years and finds that in 1976 women 40 to 44 had a total average 3.1 kids, whereas now they have 1.9--one child fewer overall. Since some women do still have three or more, part of that average is a rise in the number of women who end their "childbearing years" without bearing children - up from 10% in 1976 to 20% in 2006, the lowest level documented to date.

Easily too, if your data come from different stages in women's fertility stories: where the CDC documents actual births in the given year, the Census takes a retrospective look at how many children women report having by the time they're 40 to 44, an age group assumed to have largely finished having kids.

It's no surprise that more women are childless now than were in 1976. Work and family expectations have changed substantially. For most, birth control means the chance to decide how many kids you want, and when. But for some it means the chance to say "None" and still have a romantic life.

The 2006 CDC data tell us that births to teens 15 to 19 were up 3% after a steady 14-year decline, and that, less problematically but interestingly, births to women 20-24 were up 4%, women 25-29 were up 1%, 30-39 up 2%, and 40 to 44 up 3%.

In addition the CDC report calculates that the total fertility rate [TFR] for women went up to 2.1 in 2006. The TFR projects the total number of children that a hypothetical woman currently of childbearing age might be expected to have at current rates. Given that the TFR in 1983-1986 (when the women who were 40-44 in 2006 were just starting to have babies) was between 1.799 and 1.837, the recent Census report of 1.9 could just as well have been headlined: "Women Having Slightly More Children Than Predicted."

But that would have required cross-referencing the CDC and Census data. Doing that might also have raised other questions. For instance, since the birth rate to women 40-44 was up 3% in 2006, and up consistently for more than 20 years prior, and with egg donation offering the possibility of expanded numbers of births to women 45 and over, there is basis for questioning whether the set of women 40 to 44 actually does offer us a good portrait of "completed fertility." Something to talk about.

Background Anxiety

Though both reports don't purport to do more than give some "facts," statistics are always read in context. There's a lot of complexity to the back-story on recent birth patterns, having to do with education, economics, changing social rules, HR policy, and the relative lack of affordable childcare, but the takeaway from the Census article for many readers was one more drop in the bucket of fertility anxiety.

Though the Times article began with a statement about women choosing not to have kids, the alarmist cast of the headline plays into an ongoing story we've been hearing constantly over the past five years about rising problems with infertility, in spite of the fact that that story is highly unspecific.

Lots of women have kids in their late 30s and early 40s, some in the usual way and some with the help of IVF, though sometimes it takes them longer to become pregnant than it would have earlier. Some try without success. After 43, increasing numbers of women employ egg donation, and many women adopt. Some decide to stay childfree.

Presumably the rise in the number of childless 40-to-44 year olds is due to a combination of some women and their partners choosing against kids altogether, others hoping for kids but out-waiting their fertility, and still others planning to start soon. Exactly what proportions are unknown. But infertility was the inference made by the reporter who called me asking if the story wasn't evidence that working women were waiting "too late" to start their families.

The hyped-up infertility consciousness (repeated by the media ad infinitum) and the big emphasis on babies and on women's "secret desire" to stay at home with kids long term, in spite of plenty of evidence to the contrary, is a sign of another, underlying anxiety among some of us over how many women really don't want to just stay home.

That anxiety helps shape the environment that's putting pressure on women of all ages to have babies NOW, at whatever age--along with the recent highly politicized decreases in access to birth control, especially for younger women. Will it block the exits from the ways of yore? For many, sadly, it may.

If women are forced to step out of school at whatever level in order to raise kids they would rather have had later, our nation and our economy will suffer, especially if we offer them no real way to step back in. At a time when a strong future depends on our rigorously educating all our people, it's not the time to throw away the real contributions that educated women make to our common wealth, both as moms educating young workers and citizens and as workers and citizens themselves.

At the same time, we have a group interest in supporting the family ambitions of our population. It's time to move toward a really family-friendly national policy, that combines real work/family balance options in business, mandating insurance coverage for existing fertility treatments and expanding fertility research, and honoring the decisions of those who choose to live childfree.

[This piece was first posted at huffingtonpost.com]

Fertility "Facts"

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 17:45:00 +0000

Have you seen this table

or the chart it's derived from it?

At several points in life and on the web I've encountered them, cited as evidence that the rate of age-based infertility in the US has risen over the past 100 years. Sometimes an attribution is given, to an legitimate article by researcher George Maroulis, and in fact that is the chart's source. But context means a lot, and this presentation leaves out key information. The table, which also cites Maroulis, seems to draw on the chart, but does so very selectively and inaccurately (among other faults, it conflates and misstates the pre-20th century lines [there is no 18th or 19th-century data in the chart], omits the Iranian and Hutterite lines and misrepresents "modern USA" in several ways).

In the essay this chart is taken from, it's clear that what's being compared here are pre-birth-control ("natural") populations and data from the US in which birth control of various kinds is employed--non-hormonal (1955 and 1981) as well as hormonal (1981). It's the effect of the use of birth control that this chart documents--not a decline in ability to bear. The latest data in the chart comes from very early in the new later motherhood trend (1981), so the representations of births to women in their forties in the chart tell us little about dynamics today.

As I note in Ready, while the table includes a footnoted comment that the "older data is likely to include substantial inaccuracies," no note appears on the huge inaccuracy created by the presentation of the modern data.

This kind of erroneously presented material amounts to a form of statistical fakery, and contributes to the high level of contemporary fertility anxiety.

Here's Maroulis's discussion of the charts:
"Data from the United States do not reflect natural fertility rates since the populations are, as mentioned earlier, practicing birth control. However, they are of interest since they are the product of a combination of biological and social inferences. . . . the fertility rates observed in natural cycles of historical populations may have a bias in that older women who have already conceived previously may not be as anxious to get pregnant. So it may be more appropriate to review data from populations in whom women purposely delay childbearing and try to get pregnant at older ages. . . . A considerable amount of data from such natural populations that delay childbearing and did not practice contraception existed from the late 1700s and early 1800s in Belgium, England, France, Germany and Scandinavia, where the mean age of marriage was over 27 and even close to 30. . . . Results [show] that women over 40 years are not, as often portrayed, hopelessly infertile but indeed can, in up to 48% of cases, achieve a pregnancy." (George B. Maroulis, "Effect of Aging on Fertility and Pregnancy," Seminars in Reproductive Endocrinology, 9, no. 3 [August 1991]: 168.)

Note that the "over 40" category he invokes at the end of the quote is not defined in terms of upper age limit, and so could involve a number of women over 43, who skew the information on women 40-42, who current data indicates are substantially more likely to be fertile than women 43 and over.

Happy Daddy Day

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Gregory) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 03:11:00 +0000

For the happy daddies everywhere, and their families, here's my post on the Father's Day centennial, called

"Morphing the Daditude"

Parents had a big year in 1908 -- our modern Mother's Day had its start that May in a church in West Virginia. Inspired by that service, and in the shadow of a mining disaster that killed many local dads, the first Father's Day followed fast, two months later and 15 miles away.

After that florescence of filial feeling one century ago, Mother's Day (which had an earlier post-Civil War pacifist moment) zoomed on and became an official national holiday in 1914. Father's Day had a slower momentum. In 1910 Father's Day reappeared, across the country in Spokane, backed up to the third Sunday in June. That date has been celebrated since then, but it didn't become an official holiday until 1972.

Why the 58-year gap? Difference in sentiment toward mom and dad? In our sense of what was appropriate? (Did the manly men of yore seek or even accept recognition for love -- or did that seem too Lear-ishly needy?) Difference in our levels of guilt? (Mothers have historically had to deal with lots more daily dreck while sacrificing other ambitions, and the special holiday served as a bit of a sop.)

The officializing of the father's day holiday might link to the start of a gradual shift in the nature of the relationship between dads and kids. Or maybe it was all about commerce... with the official holiday arriving just in time to grab some of the cash increasing numbers of women were just starting to earn.

Whatever the reason, the dads celebrated today have come a big distance from the dads of a hundred years back, a trip they've made in concert with today's moms: As the moms have moved out into the workforce and established themselves there, the dads have moved into the home life in new ways.

While dads have always loved their kids, they haven't always been encouraged to know them well. Gen-X and Gen-Y dads spend more than half again as much time with their kids each day as their dads did, and they do loads more laundry. Modern dads are often "dual-centric" according to the Families and Work Institute (meaning they are both work- and family-centric). Of course that's not every dad--some still operate in separate spheres from their partners, and some don't participate in their kids' lives at all. But overall a huge culture change is in the process of remapping the gendering of work and family. Employers (especially employers of middle class workers) are increasingly having to rethink their HR offerings to accommodate the needs of both working moms and family-focused dads (while also finding ways to ensure that their child-free workers don't get overloaded when the parents head home).

These changes don't come without complexities. We hear plenty about "mommy wars"--a divisive misnomer for our continuing dialogue around the recent big shifts in women's roles.

Though we hear less about it, those complexities affect daddies too. There's the isolation stay-at-home dads can feel, or the stress of the careerist who's also an involved father--staying up late and cutting corners to operate in both worlds. There's the effort of inventing the relationships with our partners as we live them (or of parenting solo) rather than going an established route. Sometimes there's pressure from other dads to do what they do, even if it doesn't feel like a fit for you.

It's not easy for any party to this change, but the rewards can be considerable and the scene is shifting. In the workplace, employers increasingly build in flex options, move to results-based rather than face-time models, and recognize that a few years out of the workforce don't mean a loss in brainpower. While these innovations evolved initially to meet the needs of moms, once in place they can't be denied to dads as well. These options benefit families, so parents can be there for their kids when needed, not just at a time set by the employer. The workplace benefits too, with more available long-term labor force participants, when those who dial down for child care are allowed to dial back up when the kids demand less time (especially important as we approach the big worker drain that the Baby Boom retirement wave will bring), and a deeper (and happier) national talent pool.

Not least among the upsides of this shift is the new daditude that lets fathers get to know both their kids and themselves in new and often unexpectedly positive ways, even when and maybe because it sometimes involves some dreck. Today's fathers discover what moms have known all along: that kid care and interaction has many pleasures. The kids raised with lots of dad input move forward into the next decades with a new sense of possibility for the kinds of roles they can take in society and for the relationships they can have with their own kids. I know my children are immeasurably enriched by their dad's involvement in so many parts of their lives.

The process of evolving all aspects of our work systems--both inside and outside the home--has been ongoing for at least the century since Father's and Mother's Day began. The development and enforcement of OSHA rules (still problematic--but at least mining disasters that kill hundreds are rare) and the changes in the current daditude are enmeshed, linked through a shared pressure to recognize the importance of care and to compensate it with more than a bouquet and an annual dose of sentimentality. There remain lots of problems still to resolve, but we are all living the ongoing change.

Parenthood has never been simple, and we all do our best where we are. These days we labor together--men and women, parents and non, to re-function the work world for the 21st century, while raising the next generation - of workers, consumers and citizens. Happy Daddy Day to you and yours!

[This post first appeared on huffingtonpost.com.]