All the talk of whether or not the increase of teenage pregnancies in a Massachusetts town was a coincidence or a result of a formed pact between the teenagers got me thinking about a pact I made with a friend when my son was a baby and I was deciding whether or not to return to work.

My friend and I had our sons just one month apart. We lived within walking distance of each other and took maternity leave together. We both loved our careers and couldn’t imagine leaving the workforce to stay at home full time. Somehow, we both managed to wrangle flexible, part-time opportunities from our employers and worked the same three-day work week. Essentially, we made a pact to go back to work. We were working mother partners in crime.

But then, one day, she decided to quit to stay at home. And our pact was rendered null. As I said before, there’s safety in numbers. I think it’s much easier to work when all of your friends work, or stay home if all of your friends stay home.

Rachel Emma Silverman touches on this topic in her blog post about a recent study that claims that the opting out revolution is a myth.

Silverman says,

Often our own “anecdata” becomes more significant than large-scale studies in shaping our perceptions of what our peers are doing

In the case of the Massachusetts teenagers, according to one of the girls, it was just a coincidence that 17 girls got pregnant at the same time, and there was no pact, but rather all the girls “decided to help each other make the best of their situations.” Whether or not they all got pregnant on purpose, or if it was just by chance as they say, they drew together to help each other out during a difficult time.

I always have a feeling of comfort when I forge a common bond with a mom going through something similar to me, whether it be heading back to work, struggling with breastfeeding or deciding to quit. Sometimes I feel that many parts of my week are spent making mini-pacts with my friends - I’ll sign up for soccer if you do too. I’ll volunteer for that event if you will. And so on and so forth.

What the data, interpretations of the opting-out myth study and the pregnant teen pact reminds me is that we all gravitate towards news we want to hear, read into studies the way we want to see them, and find common bonds with those in similar situations to ourselves. What I need to try harder to do is worry less about what pacts of mine will be broken this week and more about making an unbreakable pact with the only people that really matter: my family.

Moms out there, have you made a “working mom” pact or other pact in your life that you’ve had to break? What were the consequences?