Kittens –
Sorry I’ve been MIA the past few days. I was on vacation – a nice long weekend with darling daughter and husband and some dear friends. It was fantastic.
Unfortunately work continues to think that I should be, ahem, WORKING, all day when I am here. SO sadly, I don’t have much time today to blog. But because I am always thinking of you, I wanted to check-in real quick and give you a little piece of me. And something to think about.
Being a full-time working mom, work and how I manage it and try to maximize my time with my daughter, is always top of mind for me. I like to joke that I’ve mommy track’d myself. And to a certain extent, I really have. We have meetings here that begin every night around 6pm, sometimes they last until 9pm. Every single night.
Have I ever stayed for one?
HELL NO.
Am I the ONLY one in my department and really, the only director level position that is involved in the issues being covered in those meetings, that isn’t present?
You got it.
Making the situation all the worse is the fact that my two colleagues are men, and they are here for the meetings. One is married with a wife and daughter at home. His wife works part-time and has a full-time nanny at home. The other is single.
We are very different people. We have very different responsibilities. I am the wife. I still don’t seem to have one at home despite all my classified postings looking for a wife, earlier this year.
But my point in all of this is that I leave with no qualms. I couldn’t give a rip how it appears to our new CEO, how it impacts my job here and what others think. Because at the end of the day, I churn out tons of work and have to get home to my daughter. No topics that need to be discussed starting at dinner time are more important to me than bath time.
Seriously. While this is a HUGE personality change for me – it is one that I have made and I am comfortable with.
No one is “mommy tracking” me without my consent. No one is pegging me as someone who doesn’t work as hard, who shouldn’t be given difficult assignments. And if they are, I am blissfully unaware and well, don’t care.
But that is the important distinction. It’s about me making this decision for myself.
The decision the Supreme Court made in Ledbetter vs. Goodyear, however, puts many working mom’s in a very vulnerable position and gives them little protection from work place discrimination that is very real and very present in this country.
And so, I urge you all to log onto MomsRising and take one second to send a letter of support to your Member of Congress, to vote ‘Yes’ on H.R. 2831 to reverse the Ledbetter decision. MomsRising is right, working mom’s need all the workplace protection they can get. As do our daughters down the road. So clicking a link and sending the letter is a no brainer and will take all of two seconds of your time because MomsRising did all the work.
