I am not shy when it comes to stating that I am an ambitious woman. My goal is to be the executive director of a non-profit organization that works on behalf of girls and/or women. I also would love to have my own op-ed column syndicated in newspapers…or whatever people are reading in the future. In order to do those two kinda related things, I work my butt off on learning how to run an organization and on my writing. This also means that I put in an eight-hour work day and then put in another 2-3 hours at home on my other activities (mostly writing and reading). I also know that I married an equally ambitious man. Luckily his current job is far more 9-5 than mine and his extracurricular activities are not as numerous as mine (he is much better at saying no than I am).

When we graduated from college we decided that whomever found a job first, that’s what we would do. My husband won and we stayed in Chicago. Since then we’ve both made enough friends and contacts that Chicago, where we were born & raised, has become OUR home. Yet I know that as we progress in our careers a job in another state might land in my lap or a more high powered position will come knocking on his door. If I were to take a job that moved us to Seattle, I think many people would applaud my husband for being the “trailing” partner aka the partner who moves for the benefit of the other partner. But would they do the same for me if he was offered an amazing job that required me to pull back from work, community work, or heck, even quit my job? Given the reaction that Michelle Obama received when she resigned from her high powered job to campaign for her husband, I highly doubt it.
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A former boss of mine liked to comment on every decision she made in my presence because she sincerely felt that as a mentor she needed to explain it all to me. One of the trueisms was that you have to manage and make rules according to the lowest denominator. My concern that day happened to be that we didn’t get access to our sick days until after six months of employment. As a new mom, I knew how valuable sick days were, especially when we also had no access to vacation days until that magical six months.

I return to her advise when I hear story after story of mothers or pregnant women being discriminated against. On the surface I can understand how a supervisor “burned” by a new mom who picks up and leaves for stay-at-home-paradise would hold a grudge against other women. Women like Linda Hirshman would say that this proves that women “opting out” is ruining it for the rest of us hearty women who stay in the workplace. Of course, I’m never that eager to blame other women, but would rather look at the system to see what could change.
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I’ve Veronica and I’m a mom with a lot of issues. Every other week I’ll share some of them with you and I hope we have a great discussion. While I will focus my issues around the media’s portrayal of working moms, I won’t limit myself to that either.

My stance is that as a society we are all still adjusting to the idea of working mothers aka women who have small children and work outside the home, either part-time or full-time. Because our society moves at a snail’s pace in reacting to the rapid change that has happened, it confounds a lot of people, especially those in the media, about whether we are selfish or Superwomen. That said, the fact that every mother is a working mother also confounds people. What do you mean that cleaning and nurturing your child is work? That’s what you are built for right? Well, yes…and no.
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