Life as a Working Mom of Four

We just posted on comedian Tina Fey’s internal tug-of-war whether to have a second child as her career is hitting a peak. Here’s  WSJ editor Demetria Gallego’s take on a different kind of juggle: being a working mother of four close-in-age daughters.

“Excuse me,” said the lady, stepping past me gingerly on a snow-packed New York curb.

“Excuse us,” I said reflexively, even though I was alone.

That’s just what a mother of four says. We have the collectivized brains of bumble bees. Our hive mind keeps our eyes sweeping the perimeter of any restaurant for forgotten pacifiers or glasses or iPods.  It calculates our impact on any gathering — both the locust-like devastation of a buffet table that our family can wreak, and the peril of failing to RSVP.  And it keeps us speaking in the first person plural.

I was the youngest of six, and I loved growing up in a chaotic, loud and exciting household. Even though my folks were far from rich and say …

Breast Pumps Now Deductible, IRS Says

In good news for nursing mothers, the IRS just announced today that breast pumps and other “supplies that assist lactation” may be deductible medical expenses or can be reimbursed under flexible-spending accounts or health-savings accounts.

The ruling is effective immediately and expenses can be used for 2010 returns, an IRS spokeswoman said.

Until now, as we’ve posted before, nursing mothers couldn’t use flexible-spending accounts to pay for breast pumps and other nursing supplies because the IRS said that breastfeeding didn’t have enough health benefits to qualify as medical or preventative care.

Now, though, the IRS says that like obstetric care, nursing supplies are “for the purpose of affecting a structure or function of the body of the lactating woman.” Breast pumps and attachments and “other related equipment and supplies that are used in breastfeeding” may be eligible, the IRS spokeswoman said, but…

Tina Fey: Rudest Question for Working Parents?

This week is my first foray back into the office after six months of maternity leave. On Monday morning I held back a few tears on the daycare doorstep as I left my baby girl on a blanket as she (lovingly?) tried to roll over and grab another baby’s face with her chubby fingers.

As a reminder of the difficult situations working parents — well let’s be honest, especially moms – sometimes face, a thoughtful friend sent me comedian Tina Fey’s essay about motherhood and career in this week’s New Yorker, called “Confessions of a Juggler.” (Here’s the summary; the full text is only available online with a subscription.)

In the piece, Fey asks: What’s the rudest question you can ask a woman? No, it’s not “How old are you?” or “What do you weigh?” Instead, it’s…

First Comes Baby, Then Comes Disney

Despite some parents’ noblest efforts to shield kids from consumerism and invasive marketing, resistance is becoming increasingly futile.

That’s my pessimistic assessment after reading in the New York Times about the Walt Disney Company’s efforts to market Disney Baby, its infant line, to a captive audience: parents in hospital maternity wards. (The product’s tagline: “Creating magical moments right from the start.”) A marketing rep visits a new mother in nearly 600 maternity hospitals and offers a free Disney Cuddly Bodysuit. As the Times reports:

“In bedside demonstrations, the bilingual representatives extol the product’s bells and whistles — extra soft! durable! better sizing! — and ask mothers to sign up for e-mail alerts from DisneyBaby.com. More than 200,000 bodysuits will be given away by May…”

The model for Disney’s efforts is Disney Princess, which was created …

Do You Have a ‘Work Spouse’?

Everybody needs a friend at work. But many people go beyond friendship to find an “office spouse” – a worker of the opposite sex who shares not only office gossip and job woes, but confidences, loyalties and a close emotional bond. How do you form such a relationship without hurting your actual spouse or dating partner?

I explored that question in today’s “Work & Family” column. Nearly two-thirds of workers have, or have had, a “work spouse” – a close co-worker of the opposite sex who shares confidences, loyalties and experiences, according to a survey last July of 640 white-collar workers. Beyond talking about the office, more than half of these pairs discuss health issues or at-home problems, and 35% even talk about their sex lives, says the survey by Captivate Network, a digital-programming company.

The couples I interviewed say having a work husband or work wife can make going to the office a lot more fun. Sharing frustrations and stress over office politics and problems with bosses or co-workers eases stress.

But such relationships can easily cross the line into an emotional affair – a romance that hasn’t become sexual yet…

Flexibility vs. Stimulating Work?

A Juggle reader is wrestling with a perplexing question: How important is having job flexibility for family needs vs. having challenging, stimulating work? It is a kind of trade-off faced by countless jugglers, and the answer is never black-and-white.

The reader, a working mother, has an opportunity to step into a new job with her current employer that would allow her to work from home one or two days a week. The new job would give her flexibility to spend more time with her two young children.  She wrote the Juggle for help weighing the decision.

“The problem is, the job isn’t that exciting,” she writes, and she is overqualified for it. Taking it also wouldn’t help her resume much in any future job search, she says.

On the other hand…

Embracing the Snow Day

I live in Austin, Texas, where the winters are typically mild. Whenever I read about all the severe, juggle-busting winter weather in much of the country, I’ve been thankful that we’ve been able to avoid it.

Until now.  First, we had a severe freeze last Wednesday that resulted in state-wide rolling blackouts, causing our house to be without power (and heat) most of the day. Then, on Friday we got a rare snowfall. Only about an inch, but that was enough to close schools, day cares and most local businesses. (Yes, I know you hearty souls in the rest of the country are mocking us.) And this week we’re expecting even more “wintry mix.”

It was magical waking up early Friday morning, kids and husband and dog still sound asleep, and seeing the world blanketed in snow. But the wintry weather couldn’t have come at a worse time for me work-wise…

Do Dads Get Shafted on Invitations?

Paula just wrote about how when couples divide up work, “fair” doesn’t always mean “equal.” But what happens when other people, outside of your partnership, end up divvying up the work for you?

Recently, in a Facebook posting, a dad friend wrote that he felt shunned when his wife–and not he–received invitations for kid-centric events.

“I think it’s a little bit sexist when people email kiddie birthday party invites just to the mom and not to the dad (when they have both emails or can find them pretty easily),” he wrote. “Dads plan too, simple as that, so why not include us in the emails?”

It is true that women spend a bit more time than men doing calendar-keeping and other “household management” duties, such as paying bills, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. But the tallies show that there really isn’t a big difference between the sexes (0.16 hours a day for women, on average, vs. 0.11 hours a day for men.)

So why, in this day and age of “co-parenting,” are many invitations still directed to mom? Is it that …

Key to Happy Marriage: Mom Cooks, Dad Plays?

Among all the advice I got before my daughter was born, this was the only one that really stuck with me: Have your husband be in charge of bath time.

Giving dad a discrete task that he alone can master was supposed to be a) good for his relationship with the kid, and b) allow mom some much-needed time off.

It made perfect sense. I went with it. But no sooner had my husband put our week-old daughter in the bath did the system break down. I told him the water was too hot (did he test it first with his elbow, like the books said?) and also too high (one false move, and she’d drown!) and wasn’t he supposed to wash her hair last?

So I read with great interest this latest study on shared parenting, from Ohio State University. The research, published in the January issue of Developmental Psychology, found that couples where the father participates equally in traditional caregiving tasks, like  preparing meals or giving baths (!!), tend to clash more than couples where the mother does a bigger share…

As Self-Confident As Bloomberg?

How self-confident are you at the office? What about as a parent?

I thought about this yesterday after I got done reading the comments of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was featured in an illustration on the cover of this week’s New Yorker gazing adoringly at himself in a heart-shaped mirror. At a news conference Thursday, a reporter quizzed the mayor on his reaction to the cover, as the WSJ reported.

“I’ve said this a thousand times –- I like what I see in the mirror….  I thought [the New Yorker cover] was great…I get up in the morning and I work as hard as I can. And my kids have turned out great,” Mr. Bloomberg declared. “You know, I’m a lucky enough guy to have made a lot of money, and I’m giving it all away and making a big difference.”

“Bloomberg gushed with tremendous pride and happiness,” the WSJ reported. “In Yiddish it’s called kvelling.

After I stopped laughing at the mayor’s boasting, the whole thing got me thinking. …