As I sit here afraid to breathe on my laptop because it is within kilobytes of crashing, it occurs to me the leaders of today’s consumer products companies need a little slap in the head…er…feedback. “Attention companies, what will it take to get products that work, consistently, at what they were made for, for more than a couple of years?”

I’ll start with my laptop. Purchased 3 years ago for a whopping $2500, my IBM Thinkpad is not working properly. In fact, it has not worked properly for most of the last year. Somehow the hard drive is full, yet when I look at how much space my programs and files take up, it comes to about 10% of my 15 GB hard drive. I’m guessing it is the thousands of Microsoft and McAfee updates that occur daily and/or the basic system files (most of which I really don’t use) which also slow my boot-up process to a whopping 8 minutes. (I should send IBM an invoice for my cumulative invested time, I think, so I can retire.) There is also some kind of corrupted area of my hard drive, which prevents me from using that area and also from deleting files located there. I call it my own personal black hole. So, to remedy this, I am told I must backup all of my files somewhere, reformat my hard drive, and re-install everything. Assuming I could pull this off without any data loss, (Outlook files are NOT automatically stored in one’s documents area, for example, but are hidden elsewhere in the ether and are, in fact, “hidden files”, which you must unhide before you can even see them.) I’m guessing this process is going to cost me some time and cash or just a lot of cash.

Then, there is my dishwasher. 5 years ago for about $1000 we purchased a high-end Maytag. It was claimed to be very quiet and able to “sanitize” dishes because it adds extra heat to the water. Sounds good, right? At 3 years we had a new pump installed and lately we have found unidentified rubber parts on the floor outside of the dishwasher. Nothing on the top shelf comes out clean anymore and running the beast is louder than having a conversation in the kitchen, which is strangely what I like to do in my kitchen after dinner. The prospect of buying a new dishwasher is aggravating to me because ASSUMING we find one to fit the exact space again, I will have to spend time buying the product, arranging installation, and supervising the installation.

I recently traded in a Honda Odyssey after a 4 year lease. In less than 4 years I replaced a battery (after several calls to AAA to jump start my car) and tires, as well as responded to a recall notice to replace something with the transmission. One of the automatic side doors was temperamental, working only on even days, I think. The air conditioning was also sporadic and seemed to work opposite to what was needed. Again, in addition to money, resolving these issues cost me TIME.

In every case I made purchases of high-end, high-priced products from industry-leading brands. I did not load up on gizmos and gadgets to do anything special – I just wanted a laptop to run basic office applications, a dishwasher to clean my dishes, and a reliable bus to transport my family. What I though I paid extra for was quality, reliability, and service. While what I got was probably better than what non-industry-leading brands provide, I personally think this is just not good enough.

My parents had the same washing machine for 25 years. (My 7 year old washer and dryer have both had new motors this year.) They drove the same car for at least 10. The toys we played with were stored, gifted to my children, and are now stored again. While I can appreciate technological advances have reduced the purchase cost of these items today and increased the features, assortment, and availability, I cannot help but ask, “What will it take to use technology to create BETTER quality products than those our parents had?” Because you know what, my TIME has a cost as well.

So, to any of you market researchers visiting this website to tap into the trends, feelings, views, and preferences of professional moms, “Listen up! We want functional products that work. Period. We DON’T want refrigerators with TVs that can’t keep the milk cold, cars with IPOD connections that can’t tote kids around town, computers that can zap the latest viruses but can’t get an internet connection, coffee pots that can sense the room’s ambient temperature but can’t make any coffee, or bicycles that make motorcycle noises even after the non-replaceable plastic pedals have broken off.

And guess what, WE ARE WILLING TO PAY MORE FOR THEM!!!”

This past weekend I joined 20 other women for our semi-annual scrapbook retreat. We leave our families for two nights and drives four hours away to a gorgeous bed and breakfast where we are pampered, fed gourmet meals, and sleep in luxurious surroundings. While we mostly talk about our families as we paste photos of them in our albums, we also bond, share girl-talk, and celebrate milestones of womanhood. (“Celebrate” is a loose term.)

In most cases our husbands call only a few times to ask where the toothbrushes are kept or to determine the exact moment of our expected re-entry to the real world. My husband is really good – he usually doesn’t call at all, so when he does, I know something big happened. On Saturday morning I got a note on my Blackberry that my youngest daughter had a fever of 103.4 degrees. He just wanted me to know they had already administered Motrin and he was going to keep a chart of her temperature throughout the day. Some of my colleagues reacted. “Wow, that’s amazing. He is really a great husband to look after three kids like that, especially with one so sick. Are you sure you don’t need to leave the retreat? My husband would be panicking, etc. etc. etc.”

Now, pardon for a moment the rant I am about to have. WHAT?????? Attention women everywhere – we do NOT have an exclusively female gene for raising kids, cooking, cleaning, and taking temperatures. Nowhere on the second x-chromosome is there an indication for making beds, brushing children’s teeth, checking homework, sending thank you notes, or arranging play dates. And husbands who do these things are not miracles or genetic mutations who need to be showered with accolades for simultaneously wiping chocolate off a preschooler while picking legos out of the dog’s bowl. (Sorry, babe!) These are things all men can do, though they may not readily volunteer like we do.

We all need to understand that when husbands screw up something to do with child-rearing it is intentional. It is called, “feigned incompetence” and it is effective both in the workplace and at home for getting out of doing anything dirty, demeaning in its appearance, or just plain not fun. They also seem to have a much better perspective than we do about what is truly important and what is only considered “necessary” because we want to look better than someone else or meet someone’s ideal of the “perfect mother”. (What is that, anyway?)

Whew! Thanks for that. But seriously, if we are going to be successful as executive mothers we all need to expect our husbands to equally match what we do in the home. My husband and I recently came to the realization that our frustrations with the workload had to do with the workload and not so much with how much each one of us was doing. The reality is that, in our household, there is more work than two people can do. So, fighting over who wasn’t doing 50% was counterproductive: Neither of us was capable of doing 50%! At that point we seriously looked at our goals, what we were willing to let go, what absolutely needed to get done, and what we could outsource. In addition to our gardeners and housekeeper, we hired a “Household Assistant” who runs errands, mails packages, make doctor’s appointments, buys groceries, and shuttles the kids to their after-school activities. We also know we can back each other up on any task at any time, if necessary, because there are no exclusively “boy jobs” or “girl jobs”. I can take out garbage and he can brush the kids’ hair like a pro. We both still work like crazy and fall asleep exhausted, but it is comforting to know if something ever happened to me, my family is in good hands.

The crazy thing is that we mothers are often the enablers. We contribute to the problem by creating the magic black box that is mothering, and we belittle men whenever they attempt to participate in the process. My sister recently chastised her husband because she felt he was holding their firstborn infant incorrectly – how on earth would she know any better than he does? We then perpetuate the problem of husbands feigning incompetence by letting them off the hook. Instead we should hold the line and if it is truly important, they will step up. They aren’t going to do something that puts their family in danger, at the end of the day. Finally, we absolve them of their fair share of the work when we reward insignificant contributions. “Oh, good job for changing a poopy diaper! Nice work matching that pink shirt with those butterfly pants! Isn’t he awesome for administering cough medicine!” If men are smart enough to be at our level in the workplace, they are certainly capable of figuring out how to pull a Cheerio out of someone’s nose. I don’t know how insecure we must be if we feel the need to differentiate ourselves from men by being self-appointed household experts. But, if we want to be successful as equals in the workplace, then it’s time for us all to expect more equality at home.