It's Not News That Working Mothers Feel Guilty

Tomorrow the majority of American mothers with young children will hug their little ones goodbye and rush to full-time jobs they wish could be part-time.

Only 13 percent of these mothers think this is an ideal life for their children, but most of them feel they have no choice. Most of them feel they are rushing through their lives some of the time; 4 in 10 say they are rushing all the time.

When it comes to whether they're making a difference in the world, an equal number of working mothers are divided between those who think their employment is good for society and those who think it has been bad. Another 31 percent think they've made no difference at all.

Stay-at-home moms hold a harsher view of their counterparts. Forty-four percent say the increase in working mothers with young children has been bad for society. The general public isn't any gentler. Four in 10 say part-time is better than full-time work, but 42 percent of people insist that these mothers should not be working at all.

Still, most working mothers who are married say they are just as happy and satisfied with their families as stay-at-home moms and working dads.

This is a partial snapshot of a big chunk of women's lives, presented by a Pew Research Center study titled "The Harried Life of the Working Mother."

As is the case with most studies of women, there are some noteworthy caveats. Working fathers feel less stressed than any group of mothers, and 79 percent of them prefer full-time jobs. There's an exception with those happy working moms, too. Only 27 percent of single mothers say they're very happy, compared with 41 percent of married mothers.

We've seen quite a flurry of studies in the past couple of years trying to quantify women's happiness. One study said flowers keep a woman happy for three whole days. Another said women who gossip are happier. Yet another said women have become increasingly unhappy since the 1970s, regardless of their education, income or employment.

These attempts to gauge a woman's happiness would be amusing if they didn't trigger so much angst in the women who have time to pay attention to them.

Ask any woman whether she's happy and, once she recovers from the shock that someone cares, she typically rattles off the reasons she should be. There is, after all, no reward for a woman willing to admit she's anything less than ecstatic about her life.

With a little coaxing, she may admit to flaws in the game plan, which she typically identifies as no one's fault but her own. We constantly are reminded that we've got all kinds of rights and privileges that were denied our sisters less than 100 years ago. If you don't think that matters, just set your dial to AM talk radio and listen to wails over how no one wants to cook for the menfolk anymore.

Wouldn't it be nice if just once we could read about how the overwhelming majority of women agree that life's journey is tumultuous and roiling for all of us and that the best way to navigate one's ship is to welcome everyone on board?

Instead, we always are asked how we feel about "the other side" of our own gender. Brings out the worst in so many of us, including a pretense to a superiority we don't really feel.

The thing is Super Moms make lousy girlfriends. All that perfection? Exhausting. How could I be myself with any mother who has a toddler and a clean car at the same time? For me, a few Cheerios crushed into the carpet or a sippy cup spackled with fingerprints went a long way in connecting the dots to sisterhood, and I was willing to do my part.

The problem with these studies is they don't encourage us to support one another in our missteps. Instead, we get yet another glimpse into just how unkind we can be to one another — and to ourselves.

So, this latest study tells us the majority of America's working mothers rush to jobs and feel guilty for leaving their children.

What I want to know is why anyone thinks this is news.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House, "Life Happens" and "... and His Lovely Wife." She is a featured contributor in a recently released book by Bloomsbury, "The Speech: Race and Barack Obama's 'A More Perfect Union.'" To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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