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Oh FFS (work related)
So, one of the more successful female partners was in the area (visiting from CA) yesterday and so stopped by to give a quick lunchtime presentation on business development at the firm. Afterwards she asked for questions and, when no one had any, she started answering the "unasked" questions that she was sure we all had. The first of which was "how she does it all" between her 3 kids and work. (She says all of this looking "knowingly" at me, as if I was just dying to get the inside scoop on the wonder that was her.)
So, her big secret? "Don't pretend you can do it all!!" She then goes on to explain how she has an au pair to cart around her older kids, a live in nanny to be with her baby and a full time housekeeper. Because, "if your job is important to you" you just need to accept that you're going to "need some help." So, apparently, the secret to making this shizz work is having a full time staff to raise your kids and take care of your house.
Re: Oh FFS (work related)
BFP#1: 01/10, M/C 6w -- BFP#2: 06/10, M/C 5w -- BFP#3: 09/10, DS born June 1, 2011
BFP#4: 07/12, M/C 5w3d -- BFP#5: 12/12, EDD 08/18/13
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Yeah - there's a grey area in there somewhere but I think this woman clearly crossed over it and landed firmly in "my kids barely know me" territory, like, yesterday. No thanks, lady. If that's the solution, I think I need to reposition myself out of the problem.
lovelylittleworld
BFP#2 1/12/12 ~ Missed M/C 8w2d
yikes. no thanks.
although i do dream about a full time housekeeper and personal chef sometimes.
Wow. That's obnoxious on several levels.
1. Pretty sure nobody was sitting there thinking "wow! how does she do it all?!" with stars in their eyes.
2. Sure, it's easy to do it all when you actually are just paying somebody to do half of it.
3. She's essentially a celebrity mom at this point. Like how celebrity chefs start new restuarants, hire staff to run them, and then just take off to star in their TV shows and go to book signings. Bobby Flay is not actually cooking at any of those places more than 2 special nights a year. Same deal. those kids just have her name, and her occasional appearances for PR purposes. And that's it. But hey...maybe they're better for it. Their au pair can't be nearly as self-important as she is.
I'm gonna bust right out with the good old nest favorite: I feel sorry for her children.
And I'm sorry that somebody high up in your firm thinks that this is the "right" way to do it Rags. That SUCKS. I'm know that this balance is a constant struggle for you and it's crap that this is the example you get.
My Goodness...another food blog. Featuring: Macarons from a old post with a photo taken by my mom for a break from my crappy food photos!
This is what gets me--because when you struggle with those choices, you'll constantly be compared to her and how she "does it all".
Reminds me of a research professor who was put on a pedestal because she was back in the lab a week after having her baby. After that, every other woman in the department who took longer was less committed and less competent.
I'm so sorry you had to sit through that, for all the reasons Wawa mentioned.
Our Share of the Harvest:How a couple cooks from a CSA share. Pick Up Day Week 15
DD is in daycare every day for about 9 hours; does that mean somebody else is raising my kid?
Lol. Hardly.
lovelylittleworld
BFP#2 1/12/12 ~ Missed M/C 8w2d
I think it's funny in an obnoxious way that she just assumed the people there (mostly you apparently) had these burning questions to ask her but felt you couldn't so she was just going to jump right in. It's also obnoxious how the way she 'does it all" is to not really do anything at all when it comes to her children.
NOW, that said, I do think her initial point has merit - I think sometimes the healthiest thing for working parents (men or women) is to acknowledge that they can't do it all. My mom commutes 2.5 hours a day and is raising an extremely troubled young child, is over 60, and is losing her eyesight gradually and has to get monthly shots in her retina. She gets incredibly stressed out over things like cleaning the bathrooms. I've said to her repeatedly to bring in a housekeeper twice a month to take some of the pressure off, but she won't because she views cleaning the house as part of her responsibilities. The same way my father always does all the work aroudn the house himself until my mom insisted they hire a plumber when they wanted to move the washer and dryer a few months ago - my dad was ticked because he CAN do the plumbing work, but in my mind sometimes isn't it worth it to pay some money to not have to worry about it, if you can afford it? (and in the end, the only reason he brought in the plumber was because he was their neighbor's brother and my dad wanted to give him some work.) But I look at my parents who stress themselves over things that could really be solved by bringing in help for relatively chepa- pay a neighborhood boy 20 bucks a week to mow the lawn, hire a babysitter once a week to pick zack up from school so you dont have to bust your butt getting back to St Michaels from Bethesda, and so on and so forth. .
Now I realize bringing in help once a week is different than what the partner is doing so I'm kind off on a tangent, but as a basic idea, I think sometimes "not doing it all" is hard one for people to kind of tackle, you know what I mean?
this post is making me feel very defensive. Assuming this chick's kids are happy and healthy, why does it matter if she hires someone to drive them to soccer or ballet?
This is what I meant by "at some point" a line is crossed. As Lisa said, it's a gray area and where exactly the line is will vary person to person. Some people do think that putting your kid in daycare at all is over the line. I certainly don't think that and I would guess that most people don't, but I'm sure someone does.
I agree with everything Wawa said. And I agree with Becky that we need to get help in some areas, but getting someone to clean the bathrooms every so often is not even on the same page as hiring someone to raise your kids.
BFP#1: 01/10, M/C 6w -- BFP#2: 06/10, M/C 5w -- BFP#3: 09/10, DS born June 1, 2011
BFP#4: 07/12, M/C 5w3d -- BFP#5: 12/12, EDD 08/18/13
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I don't know why it is making you feel defensive. Having a live in nanny and full time housekeeper is a tad different than having your child in daycare 9 hours a day and someone to clean your house a couple times a month.
I don't think it's that as much as she is telling everybody else what her "big secret" is like that is just automatically everyone's solution. She sounds obnoxious. Why would you feel defensive? To my knowledge you don't have a full time staff working to take care of your home and children-you are a busy working mom like a bunch of us here.
I think it's making Kathryn feel defensive because we are all drawing a line in the sand as to what is "raising your kid" and what is "paying someone else to do it," and that's okay in this post because the line is wayyyyyyy over there.
But my SIL is a SAHM and she thinks daycare is paying someone else to raise your kids (as she has told me, which is just lovely) so for her the line isn't that, you know?
BUT I do think this woman does sound like she is barely involved and so I am comfortable sayiing that I think she is paying someone else to essentially raise her kids, which may be hypocritical when compared to what I said above but I'm okay with that ;-)
This. Kathryn, you're hitting the crack pipe if you think I'm the woman who's going to wander over here and judge daycare. Or a nanny. Or whatever else you need to make it work. This was a post about a tool who thought she was answering all of my unasked questions by offering up the solution of a full time staff of 3. I'd take a cook, a pool boy, a gardener, a housecleaner - and some help with DS! - any day of the week. But I'd just as soon offer that up to someone else as a solution as I'd send an extremely budget conscious bride to Kleinfeld because I think they have lovely dresses.
As for someone else raising your kids - it's like pornography - I know it when I see it. And I've only ever seen it, in person, in the most successful female partners at my firms. And that pretty much blows. Not for their kids. But for them and for the firms that would benefit a lot more from a lot of brilliant women if they had a better solution to "work life balance".
lovelylittleworld
BFP#2 1/12/12 ~ Missed M/C 8w2d
Ha I like this! So true.
Totally, totally agreed. I've learned a lot about asking for help over the years. That's a good lesson for anyone. But her solution is like a modern day Marie Antoinette. "Let them have staff!!"
lovelylittleworld
BFP#2 1/12/12 ~ Missed M/C 8w2d
Kathryn - There's daycare 9 hours a day - and then there is 24/7 care from hired help. Which is what we've got here. An au pair, plus a live-in nanny for the baby, plus a housekeeper. That's three people working at least 40 hours a week (or more, particularly for the live-in) to care for this woman's kids and house. This is a whole different planet from 9 hours of daycare a day.
Aaaaaaand now I'm really curious what dad does for a living and if he's workign the same insane lawyer hours as mom, or if he's home with his feet up on the couch while the housekeeper cooks and cleans and the au pair and nanny take care of the kids. Honestly - I'll judge either way.
My Goodness...another food blog. Featuring: Macarons from a old post with a photo taken by my mom for a break from my crappy food photos!
LOL. This made me giggle too.
Oooh so am I. Rags - do you have any idea - does he work?
Everyone I know that has/had "nannies" that didn't just work 9-5 in place of sending the child to daycare has had some sort of job that requires "off" hours - two doctors who work night shifts, one Big Law lawyer and one surgeon, etc.
Ditto this, there's a HUGE difference between daycare and having 24/7 live in help. I mean, really, does it seem at all like the same thing? Doesn't to me.. I think Rags point is that this woman made it seem like 1- Everyone wanted to know how she's superwoman and 2- The other working moms in the room should be doing the same thing. I don't think it has anything, at all, to do with taking your child to daycare for 9 hours/day.
Damn. I didn't ask. But she moved to CA for him - so I'm thinking he had something keeping him there at least at some point. Oh - and he's British. That's all I've got.
But I'd put money on his working similar hours. She doesn't seem to have the sort of personality that would mesh well with a SAHD. She seems more like the "crazed ambition is sexy" type.
[Edited for obsessive compulsive grammar corrections.]
lovelylittleworld
BFP#2 1/12/12 ~ Missed M/C 8w2d
Preach! For most industries finding the work-life balance for families (mom's and dad's) would really benefit.
and obviously she isn't doing it all. If anyone could truly do "it all" seriously, they would never sleep. I'm all for hiring a house cleaner, a dog walker, a personal chef-like I could ever afford it-and even child care for working hours. Having a live-in nanny AND an au pair, somewhere in the equation something gets the shaft, and it sounds like it's her kids.
I'm hiring Becky as my spokeswoman.
I think my issue is that I take exception to the idea that delegating childcare means a person is not raising their own child. I see that this woman has ALOT of help, but she also has 3 kids, at least one of whom is a baby and she makes a pretty decent living as a partner in a law firm. Would it be better if she worked less or only had one kid so she wouldn't need as much help? I don't really know why this up to anyone else to decide for her, her family.
The office manager for one of our offices is a single mother and has one child, who's 10ish. She has a nanny for her daughter, she takes her to after school activities, does the daily housework while the daughter's at school, runs errands, supervises homework and does meal prep before mom comes home or stays late if mom's working late. They've had this set up for a long time. Does this mean the nanny is raising the daughter? M-F she probably spends more waking hours w/ the nanny than her mom. The mom is a widow too, does that make a difference?
The longer I'm a mom, the more convinced I am that it takes a village to raise a child and sometime you have to pay the villagers. I don't see my role as one of doing everything for DD or my house. My job is making sure it all gets done - if that means I have to hire a housekeeper or send DD to daycare or hire someone to drive her to after school activities, I don't really see that it equates w/ not raising my child. There are days - especially when DD was very young - where I literally saw her maybe 30-45 minutes in teh mornign and maybe 30 minutes at night. Was I not raising her those days? I still made the bottles and did the laundry myself, so I guess it was ok?
I agree this woman's behavior of giving out unsolicited parenting advice is obnoxious and if that's what we're all distressed about then, I'm on board, but I don't equate outsourcing some of the care of your kids to not raising them.
this makes sense to me. My two best friends from college are a doctor and a lawyer. The doctor is married to a doctor. The (big-law) lawyer is most likely going to marry her (big-law) lawyer boyfriend. Both of them would have no choice but to go the nanny/au pair route just because daycares that can handle TWO of those kind of unpredictable schedules don't really exist. that doesn't mean they're never home - they're just never home the same time two weeks in a row.
Just to be 100% clear again (mostly for Kathryn and anybody else feeling snubbed) I don't judge daycare, nannies, cleaning people, pool boys or personal chefs.
I do judge deciding that the best way to balance your home life and your work life is just to throw all of your energy and time into your work life and hire people to run your home life - and then (and this is the real kicker) hold yourself up as a great example of somebody who's managed to find a balance. That's not finding a balance. That's choosing one over the other.
for the record - and just to piss off the other side too whle I'm at it - I also side-eye moms who do nothing but "be a mom" Dude - get a hobby. Go out with your friends. Take a vacation and leave the kids with grandpa. Have a life outside of your kids. it's healthy - for you and them. (obviously not talking about those first few little baby months. You gotta do what you gotta do. But if your kid is 3 and youv'e never spent more than 2 hours away from them? That's not healthy)
Balance is good.
My Goodness...another food blog. Featuring: Macarons from a old post with a photo taken by my mom for a break from my crappy food photos!
I hate whenever someone basically says, "I have the magic formula for life."
It would have been one thing for her to say, "know you can't do it all and ask for help," rather than to give a full on prescription for how to live.
Now that I'm getting closer and closer to thinking about kids I'm picking up on more of this stuff and it sucks. I hate that when one of my co-workers took more than 3 weeks off after having her baby people kept saying, "well co-worker X was working part time after 3 weeks."
No one - at least not in MY thread, dammit! - is saying that delegating childcare means that a person is not raising their kid. Listen, I'm the queen of sensitive subjects and taking things personally that really don't have squat to do with me - but really, Kathryn, there's a grey area here that this woman left years and years ago. If you've ever gotten close with one of the female (or male, for that matter) partners at your firm, you must have gotten to a point where you looked at what Big Law thinks it takes to make it work and given it a big WTF. This isn't about who spends the most waking hours with your kid. It's about being so firmly entrenched in a fcuked up work culture that you think that going back to work 2 weeks after you have your third kid and hiring full time staff to cover all of your bases while you work 100 hour weeks is a "solution" to pass along to the new moms at the table.
lovelylittleworld
BFP#2 1/12/12 ~ Missed M/C 8w2d
I
you.
If I knew how to insert a clip I'd put that B&W guy clapping here. Woman, I knew I had a girl crush on you for good reason.
lovelylittleworld
BFP#2 1/12/12 ~ Missed M/C 8w2d