Comeback Moms Part 5

"Well, I stay home with my daughter," Donna answered going into female defensive mode. "Altogether, I think I have a full-time job."

Donna could sense that the doctor wasn't impressed, so she decided to share a bit more personal information she was sure would please her physician.

"You'll never believe this," Donna started with a laugh, "but in my previous life I was a research scientist for ten years. I have a PhD in physiology specializing in proteins affecting the heart muscle."

As the words left Donna's lips she sensed that the doctor was not impressed. In fact, she appeared furious. She roughly ripped the blood pressure cuff off of Donna's arm. For a split second, Donna feared that the doctor might be thinking about putting the cuff around her neck.

"I can't believe you're wasting your education," the doctor spit out.

Donna didn't know how to respond. She diffused the situation the best she could by mumbling something about tough decisions and kids, glad that the doctor took her blood pressure before the conversation became heated.

"I couldn't believe it," Donna told us. "I went there to get my blood pressure checked and change some medicine. I didn't go there for career counseling or a guilt trip."

Now you know. This is what you're up against: lots of resentment and hostility. There are people waiting for you to fail and if you do many of them will be there to comfort you in ways that will leave you feeling like you need to shower: "It's okay. This type of thing usually doesn't work out."

Who are these people? That's the tricky thing. They could be anyone. Your mother, mother-in-law, boss, old mentor, best friend, tennis partner, etc., could have a vested interest in seeing you fail. Perhaps your mother worked and raised you and she feels like your need to stay home is a comment on her mothering skills not being up to snuff. Ditto your mother-in-law. Maybe your boss didn't have kids and deeply resents other women who do because they can't tough it out in the workplace. Maybe your mentor isn't a fan of affirmative action and views you as one of the repercussions of it. Your best friend could be a new mother or doesn't have kids yet and doesn't understand why they are rearranging your life. Perhaps your tennis partner has always been a stay-at-home mom and she doesn't support going into and out of the workforce.

You have to think about other people's motivations and how they play into how they react to you. It's not all about you. It's also about their own internal struggles and issues.

When someone acts hostile toward you over what they view as you wasting your degree or ruining your child's life, figure out what else is going on. They probably have some baggage that you can help them unpack if you talk to them frankly about the issue.

You should also look carefully at who you're dealing with. If it's your mother, sister, or mother-in-law, that's one thing. If it's the teller at the bank or the dental a.s.sistant, that's something else entirely.

As one psychologist told us, "There are certain people you can easily dismiss and let them have their own opinion."

If it's a person whose opinion you value, start by trying to discern how much they're willing to even hear you. Their opinion may be set in stone and driven by factors entirely out of your control. For example, they may be secretly jealous of what you're doing and wish they could do it too. Or they could hold a firm belief that if you're not working you're freeloading and no amount of persuasive argument on your part is going to change that opinion.

Success in changing their ideas will come in large part from you. If you feel comfortable with the fact that you're staying at home, you'll be able to respond with confidence. You can honestly share with them how happy you are in your new role and how your kids love it. On the other hand, if you secretly harbor self-doubt about your decision or have your own personal belief that most stay-at-home moms are indeed freeloaders, that sentiment will come through too.

Many times you'll find that no matter what you say or who you're talking to it won't have any effect. What do you do then?

The best advice is to do nothing. Don't argue, cry, or vow never to speak to or visit that person again. Instead, simply say, "I respectfully disagree, but I understand," and leave it at that.

Jane shared an experience she had at a dinner party where an older male doctor went on a ten-minute tirade about female doctors. He resented women getting into medical school, graduating, completing residencies and internships, and then never practicing because they have children. He fumed that at least half the women who go to medical school don't work. He ranted and ranted until the circle of people in the room was quiet. It was an awkward dinner. Jane learned to walk the other way whenever she saw the doctor headed in her direction for the rest of the evening.

A few weeks later she learned that the doctor worked for a female doctor and the relationship wasn't a good one. Perhaps his philosophy on women entering medical school had a connection with this relationship. You never know what's going on with the other person.

Though, in fairness to the intolerant doctor, we must admit we do have a couple of friends who became pregnant in their residencies, proceeded to have children, and haven't been back to work since. It's been years. We also did an informal poll of the women who were on the law review with Monica in law school. The majority of them are staying home with their children. There is some truth to the argument that these women aren't using their training.

But Nicky, a businesswoman with an MBA and a stay-at-home mom, pointed out that at the time she went to business school she wasn't married and didn't know if or when she would be, so she needed a way to earn a living. She also points out that if she married someone different she might not have had the choice to quit working. Plus, she plans on going back to work and using her degree in a few years.

Women shouldn't be denied a way to make a living because they may decide at some later date to take a few years off. As most of our girlfriends say to us, yeah they're taking five or ten years off now but they're going to go back to work and they'll be working well into their sixties, G.o.d willing, into their seventies. They say this is their retirement. They also say only a man would devise a normal career trajectory of fifty years of working with no time off.

YOU STILL DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE COOKIES FROM SCRATCH There's another kind of discrimination that the former working mother is vulnerable to.

There's a tribe of women out there known as the Martha Stewarts on steroids. They try so hard to outdo one another that they end up staying up all night to create a diorama made from toothpicks and tinfoil. They look at you scornfully when you bring homemade chocolate chip cookies to the school bake sale instead of individual creme brulees with sugar caramelized by a mini blowtorch.

Don't keep up with the Marthas. Keep up with yourself. Your children will not in any way be scarred from your inability to use a mini blowtorch. You might get physically scarred if you try to learn how to use one.

We found over and over again this paradox among neoworking moms. They all had the self-confidence to risk their careers to spend time with their kids, yet they frequently suffered from bouts of self-doubt inside their new peer group, as though expertise on creme brulee or dioramas were a surrogate ego.

Monica went through this when she began staying home. Since she wasn't quite sure of the protocol among the stay-at-home moms, she tended to overdo everything. For her son's birthday parties, for example, she ordered professionally printed invitations and handed out basketb.a.l.l.s and miniature football helmets as party favors. The low point came during her son's third-grade cla.s.s's Valentine's party. The party planning committee a.s.signed Monica the job of purchasing cups for the party. Monica was on her way to the party store to order specially engraved party cups when her mother set up an intervention for her. She explained that no one, not one child in the cla.s.s, would know or care whether those cups were engraved or not. Monica snapped out of it. She's now resolved to simply be herself and not worry about keeping up with anyone else.

THE OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY.

It comes around every year and so does the dread for many women. This is the time of year that lots of us get dressed up so we can feel inadequate for hours on end. We thought we left that level of social awkwardness behind us along with the braces and training bras.

Women have told us a myriad of horror stories. One was cornered by a coworker of her husband's who told her about all the young women he slept with since his divorce. He described his pick-up strategy in detail, which involved late night drinking and leaving his Porsche key visibly on the bar. He said the "ladies" really responded to that. Yeah, he was the kind of guy who used phrases like "the ladies."

Serena was given a drink and ushered to a corner of the room where the wives were congregating. She said it felt like segregation of the s.e.xes. She stayed in the corner of the room all night with the rest of the women until her husband came to pick her up. It was wife night care.

When Hattie tried to talk about business with her husband's coworkers, one of them laughed, put his hand on her shoulder, and said, "Sweetie, it's okay. Let's get you another drink." He led her toward the bar and went back to his conversation. She was in a conversation time-out.

Yet another woman was accidentally locked out of the party and on the patio for most of the night. Fortunately, the Christmas party was in Houston and it was unusually warm that year. But for your absence not to be noticed for an hour is a little hurtful.

The ultimate bad party incident happened to one of the brightest women we know. Miriam was talking with a woman at the event when the subject of colleges came up. When Miriam mentioned that she held two degrees from Stanford, the other woman looked stunned and nearly dropped her drink. She searched for something to say.

"Oh, you used to be smart" was all she could think of. The conversation ended shortly after that.

Let's not forget the clothes comments. For the past few months, the most fancy thing you've put on is a pair of jeans. You have no idea what to wear. You pull a dress out of your closet that has always been a tried and true friend for you. It makes you feel pretty good, real skinny. As soon as you step into the party you notice no one else is dressed like you. It's one of those moments where you pray you can keep your coat on and not look weird for doing so. But you can't and almost the moment you check your coat another woman says something like, "What a quaint outfit" or "Don't listen to what anyone else says. I love your style. It's unique." It hurts.

Even if your outfit is appropriate it may not be the pinnacle of style. We have folded our arms over our shirts and retreated into the corner of the room as we watched other, more fashionable women float by. We imagine their more glamorous lives and instantly feel inferior.

We've prepared you for some of the bad things that may befall you at the office Christmas party. Now let's help you with some defensive action.

A week before the party, start studying up. One woman reads Newsweek Newsweek, listens to NPR, and has CNN on in the background at home most days. She says she's one of the most informed people she knows. All that knowledge helps her make small talk at parties.

Serena reads advertising trade journals. She can talk industry trends with the best of them.

The day of the event arrange for your mother or friend to look after the kids. Make an appointment to get your hair done. Have it done the day of the party so your great blow out doesn't go to waste. At the same time, make an appointment for a manicure and pedicure.

If you want to spring for a facial too make sure you get it done a couple days before the big event so any redness you have will fade.

Start shopping for a dress a week in advance. Are we suggesting buying a new dress for the event? Yeah, we most definitely are because if you have something you're excited about wearing it will make you more willing to go to the party. New shoes? Why not. Get a great outfit that makes you feel young, sophisticated, and slim. Bring a girlfriend along and use her as your personal shopper. Ask the sales staff what's currently in style. Make this event something to look forward to.

If you're watching money, go to the outlet stores, shop the sales, or borrow from a friend. Many nationally known retailers have great outlets. You can find their locations by visiting their Web sites. Here are a few:

Neiman Marcus (www.neimanmarcus.com)Saks Fifth Avenue (www.saks.com)Nordstrom (www.nordstrom.com)Talbots (www.talbots.com)Ann Taylor (www.anntaylor.com)

Turn on some music that pumps you up and get ready.

Having a good day before the party is crucial to your mindset at the party. You know how it is, the night your child decides to paint the kitchen walls with spaghetti sauce is the night that you are more tense than a rubber band stretched around the Sunday paper. But the day you've had a ma.s.sage, a nap, or a good hour to read, you can handle anything.

When you go to the party there's strategy as well. Whenever anyone at her husband's events asked Darlene what she did she told them she was a writer. Their eyes would brighten. It sounded so exotic to them. They would ask tons of questions. She would tell them what she was working on and they would be enraptured. What Darlene said was the truth and it wasn't.

Darlene was a stay-at-home mom who wrote in her spare time. It was her eventual goal to get something published, but she wasn't actively pursuing it. Darlene says she told people what they'd be most interested in and what they respected. Darlene used to work in public relations and she says she used her experience to help her understand her audience.

"I wanted them to view me as a peer, not someone who was hard for them to comprehend."

Kate had a different strategy. She found the other people in the room who were standing awkwardly alone, went up to them, and made conversation. She made the people feel more at ease and gave herself something to do. She says she also made many friends because the people were so grateful that someone talked to them. It was a strategy her mother used to employ whenever she went to events.

One more piece of advice-never drink more than two gla.s.ses of wine at an office Christmas party. We know everyone else is drinking more, but they work there. They have more leeway than you do. They have next Monday and every work day after that to make up for their slurred impersonation of the boss. (Though even they shouldn't be slamming down the shots.) Don't put yourself in the position of Lana. She spent a good fifteen minutes listing all the alcohol she consumed at the party and earlier in the day with the CEO and his wife. She kept repeating, "I'm so drunk." We think they noticed that before she said it. Her husband tried to pull her away from his boss but to no avail. He's still employed at the company; she doesn't go to the parties anymore.

You don't want to be tipsy. You don't want to slur. You will be mortified the next day if you remember speaking too loudly and repeating things you said. You don't want to be what everyone else remembers about the party. Your husband's colleagues may serve as future networking partners or mentors when you want to go back to work.

BEWARE THE SELF-INFLICTED IDENt.i.tY CRISIS.

We've talked a lot about the impact others can have on your ego as you move from working woman to stay-at-home mom. Now let's talk about you. In making the transition, can you become your own worst enemy? This is important because your success in returning to work will depend in large part on your confidence in your next job search. Don't become a shadow of your former professional self because your ability to project confidence to a prospective employer will suffer.

Areas to Watch Out For * Sweats aren't a uniform. There's no mom handbook that mandates mothers must wear shape-obscuring, badly mismatched cotton clothing or a shirt with an applique of a flower on it. Keep up with the latest fashions, so that the day you do decide to return to work you will have more important things to think about than what to wear.* Remember the "freshman ten" when you entered college? Well, the same thing can happen when you stay at home with the children. At lunch, you order yourself a salad with fat-free dressing and your child a cheeseburger and French fries. Being a small child, finicky in her eating habits, she barely eats a bite. Nevertheless, when the meal is over, every morsel of food is gone. Where did it all go? You ate it. You get the picture. Food is without a doubt one of the biggest pitfalls to becoming a stay-at-home mom. When you decide to return to work, you don't want to have to add "drop thirty pounds" to your to-do list.* Hanging out solely with other stay-at-home moms. Make the extra effort to maintain contacts with friends who work. Get a babysitter, dress up, and meet them for c.o.c.ktails occasionally. It gets you out of your comfort zone.

CEO Mom Syndrome There is another self-defeating behavior to watch out for when you become a stay-at-home mom. We call it CEO Mom syndrome. It arises when you have an epiphany that if you can't be CEO of a Fortune 500 company because you put your career on hold, perhaps you should nurture junior to the top spot.

Monica knows CEO Mom syndrome all too well. As soon as she didn't have a staff to give direction to she began monitoring her son Jared's homework a.s.signments and critiquing his projects and reports. She invested at least half her daily energy into educating Jared. She bought every workbook and program she could find in almost every subject imaginable and worked daily with him at the kitchen table. When she and her husband were looking at kindergartens in Washington, D.C., and it looked like Jared might be behind, she doubled her efforts and spent five hundred dollars on a math program. She created an incentive system where Jared would earn points for each page of any workbook he completed. By finishing a predetermined number of points, he could earn toys and games he wanted. Her system worked so well that by the end of kindergarten, he was reading well and had more toys than would fit in his room.

In second grade, he expressed an interest in learning multiplication because a couple friends were taught how to do it over the summer by overachieving parents. When we say "an interest," let's just say he might have mentioned it in pa.s.sing one day. Monica jumped on it. She hired a tutor to instruct him once a week for the entire school year to help him to master the multiplication table. His second-grade teacher wasn't real enthusiastic. Jared was a straight-A student and already excelling in math; hiring a tutor seemed to be overkill.

Monica finally got the message when she threatened to take away Jared's video games because she thought his grades were slipping from A's to A minuses. He was near tears when it clicked for Monica that she was punishing her son for being an A-minus student. Most parents would give their children ice cream for such a feat.

Jared is now a fourth grader and remains a straight-A student. Monica makes sure he gets his homework done and keeps up with his projects, but she is reformed...okay, she's trying. She bites her tongue when he proudly leaves home with a cla.s.s project that looks like, well, like a child made it.

You know how a kid draws three blue scribbles on the top of the page to suggest a blue sky? In the old days, Monica made Jared sit there and neatly color it all in. Each time he had a project to turn in she gave him coloring lessons. Now, she just lets him take it to school, and he still gets good grades.

Monica's initial response to her son's academic activities upon her departure from the workplace is typical. Another reformed professional mother we know bought all workbooks and teaching aids she could find and set up workstations in her car so that her children could be learning no matter where they went. She had two clipboards, two binders with various types of paper, two pencil holders with pencils, tape, crayons, erasers, and glue sticks, and an expandable folder with activity booklets.

Why is this a problem?

First, it places incredible pressure on your child. As Dr. h.e.l.len Streicher, a child psychologist, told us, "When you set the bar so high for your child, you are setting him up for failure. As a result, you'll oftentimes end up with a depressed and anger-p.r.o.ne child."

"Your children are not your coworkers. They are not your equals," says Dr. Streicher. "If you find yourself living vicariously through your child, stop and get your bearings as to where your child is. Pull yourself back and remember that this isn't corporate America, it's your child."

She notes that most times parents find themselves behaving in this manner because that's what they're accustomed to doing at work. They may even subconsciously bring the traits that made them successful in the workplace into their child rearing, but the two rarely go together. To combat this, Dr. Streicher suggests that stay-at-home moms educate themselves as much as possible about child development.

Focusing all your energy and ambition on your child is detrimental to you as well because it inhibits your ability to further your own personal and professional goals. Your time could be better spent volunteering and networking, after all it's not like your personal ambition died when you decided to stay at home. Finding more appropriate outlets for your ambition will be better for you and healthier for your child.

THE DIVISION BETWEEN STAY-AT-HOME AND WORKING MOMS.

Be warned there is a sharp division between stay-at-home and working moms. Each group has its stereotypes of the other and from what we've observed neither particularly likes the other-it's been called the mommy wars.

We used to be the working mom who had a glamorous career and loads of intellectual stimulation. Admit it. We were also the ones looking down our noses at the mom in sweats with unwashed hair pushing her kids through the grocery aisles in a stroller. Part of us envied her and the other part thought, have some pride. We're the moms, whether we know it or not, who made some comment to another mom that was offensive to her. We didn't intend it, but that mom has probably told a couple other moms about our faux pas.

These stay-at-home mothers have been in the trenches together for the past few years or months. They've bonded like war veterans. They've confessed to one another their frustrations when they couldn't stop their baby's crying. They have felt snubs and slights, whether imagined or real, when they're at the grocery store pushing a mammoth cart full of string cheese and baby food jars and a woman in a business suit whisks by them with her basket full of imported cheese and wine. Most of them love their lives, but they all have a nagging need to justify their existence to some extent, which can come out in some weird ways. Monica knows-she's done it herself.

One new stay-at-home mom told us, "I woke up one day and realized I had a lot of respect for women I used to roll my eyes at."

We're preparing you for some of the coldness you may feel from other mothers when you first embark on making friends with them. It may be tough going for a while. Stick it out. Be upbeat and remember, just because you are all mothers doesn't mean you'll all get along or like one another. You have to find your circle. It may take a while, but it'll happen so don't feel depressed if you meet some resistance initially. In more ways than are comfortable, it's like high school all over again. You have to find your clique.

Don't become a stay-at-home mom sn.o.b yourself.

Stop yourself whenever you're tempted to scoff at the bag of Chips Ahoy! cookies your working mother counterpart brings to the cla.s.s Valentine's party as you cart in the material for the handmade heart-shaped picture frame craft. Lower your nose about two inches, missy.

6.

One Foot In, One Foot Out How Can They Miss You If You Don't Really Go Away?

Keeping up your contacts and gaining new ones is easier than you think and an absolute necessity if you want to return to work.

Don't roll your eyes and think, Yeah, that's for the women who organize their recipes in categories and laminate them. We don't even vacuum our houses once a week but we build up contacts. You probably do too but you don't realize it.

How? We deliberately make the time in our schedules because we know that ultimately having lunch with our old boss a few times a year is more important than a clean rug. We also volunteer and do things we love like working on a political campaign and Pilates. It's surprising how far the contacts we make doing the simplest activity can take us.

It's all about keeping yourself in front of people. Don't shut down your professional side because you're staying home.

Karen Hughes sure didn't.

Karen is President George W. Bush's former counselor in the White House. She quit midway through his first term because her son wanted to go back to Austin, Texas, for his final years of high school and because she wanted to spend more time with him. She stayed at home but she did her version of it, which included writing a book, giving speeches, and serving on councils.

You'd think that taking yourself out of the White House and moving to another state would exile you from working with the administration, but Karen found a few ways to maintain a toehold. She used her interest in the women of Afghanistan to continue conversations with her contacts. She also served on the U.S.Afghan Women's Council.

Her interest in Afghanistan ensured that her conversations with her former colleagues advanced an issue instead of rehashing old ground. It also showed she could be an a.s.set outside of her known area of expertise, public relations.

"It's important to find something you're pa.s.sionate about and keep current. If you're staying home devote one or two mornings a week to an interest of yours and develop it. Make it something that isn't attached to your children but is yours," Karen says.

That strategy turned Karen's pa.s.sion for politics into a paying job and ultimately a nationally coveted political job.

She says she's never consciously networked. She's never been one of those people on the make at events. You know the guy who shakes everyone's hand, flashes a two-dollar smile and a card while scoping out what others can do for him.

Karen went into politics because she loved it. She built up a base of friends who shared the same interest. It was easy for her to keep up her contacts when she moved from job to job because she liked her contacts.

The beginning years of her political career didn't show any signs that she was White House bound. She struggled with piecemeal jobs and unglamorous a.s.signments like handing out leaflets in parking lots.

She kept at it because she truly enjoyed what she did. In those lean years, she met regularly with a group of political people on Sat.u.r.day mornings for breakfast. They hashed out problems and gave each other job leads. They grew up together professionally and now are some of the most prominent political leaders in Texas and the nation. Not a bad group of friends for a woman who hates to network.

Pam worked as a pharmaceutical sales representative and manager for more than a decade. No joke-she loved her job. She enjoyed accomplishing concrete goals and felt that she was, in an indirect way, helping people.

When her husband's job relocated him to Tennessee from Pennsylvania she had to quit. But she didn't let her contacts wither. She read trade journals and business magazines because she was still fascinated by the industry. It didn't feel like work to her. Whenever something concerning her coworkers or old bosses was in the news she e-mailed them.

"I wrote one note to the guy who used to run our division. I'd heard he'd gotten a promotion so I wrote to congratulate him. Even though I hadn't had that much contact with him directly when I was working, he responded to me," she said.