The U.S. workplace is not the only area where parents are feeling “torn” between the responsibilities of parenthood and work. The foreign rights to TORN were recently sold to a Taiwanese publishing house, the Heliopolis Culture Group, which will translate the book into Complex Chinese and publish it in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau in early 2013.

According to the recently published Gender Diversity Benchmark Report for Asia, work-life balance is the greatest concern of Asian working women today.

Through a series of in-depth interviews with women working in multinational companies in Asia, the study shows that over 80% of the women interviewed aspire to senior leadership positions. The biggest concern for them to move up is work-life balance, particularly whether they could meet their families’ needs and still do a good job when taking on a more senior role.

Unlike their counterparts in the U.S. or Europe, women in Asia face the additional challenge of working global roles over different time zones.

When asked about obstacles to career progression, almost all interviewees cited family factors such as childcare and elder care. While child care is generally more affordable in Asia than in the U.S., enabling working mothers to return to their jobs after having babies, this ready availability of domestic help can also be a double-edged sword. Employers tend to assume that women are relieved of their parental duties, so do not need to rush home to see their children.

Elder care is also a concern in Asia, as many families tend to live with and care for their aging parents, rather than putting them in nursing homes or assisted living facilities.

While the work-life juggle in Asia isn’t just a women’s issue, a recent report by Catalyst, Expanding Work-Life Perspectives: Talent Management in Asia, found that, while both women and men cite long hours, stress and the inability to attend to other life priorities as significant challenges, these challenges were especially likely to affect women’s long-term career aspirations.  In addition, more women than men believed that their company did not provide enough flexibility for them to manage their work and personal lives.

In a recent interview with Paris’ Metro magazine, 78-year-old designer Karl Lagerfeld, creative director and mastermind of the fashion powerhouse Chanel, said of the pop sensation Adele:

“She is a little too fat, but she has a beautiful face and a divine voice.”

He’s since apologized, but talk about a backhanded compliment. Still, It doesn’t come as a surprise in a world where women are judged first and foremost not by their talent, their intelligence or their contributions to society — but by their looks.

Read the rest of this article and my other posts on the Huffington Post.

I was honored to have Mom’s Homeroom fly out to Denver to interview me for a recent segment titled “The Balancing Act” (November 15, 2011). A collaboration between MSN and Frosted Mini-Wheats, Mom’s Homeroom is an online resource to help parents learn ways to empower their kids to succeed in school, and in life. This segment discusses what I’ve learned by talking with hundreds of women across the country– and around the world– about their daily struggle to balance motherhood, marriage and career.  Take a peek! 

I was intrigued by this recent article in The Times of India about how women in India, similar to women in the U.S., are putting off motherhood to pursue careers.. The issue of motherhood and work-life integration is clearly a global issue.

It’s no secret to me. I was depressed back in the day when I had little kids at home and was pulling long hours at a Silicon Valley software company. The juggle of motherhood and career– the impossibility of “doing it all”– was driving me mad. So I quit. And I found that staying at home with kids was even harder. What’s a smart, educated, career-driven mother to do to keep her wits about her?!

A new study by Katrina Leupp, a University of Washington sociology graduate student, has found that stay-at-home moms have more depression symptoms than their working counterparts. But among working moms, she found that those with a “supermom” attitude—who as young adults consistently agreed that women could easily combine work and family responsibilities—were at a higher risk for depression than those who thought that it would be more challenging.

“Employed women who expected that work-life balance was going to be hard are probably more likely to accept that they can’t do it all,” Leupp said. These moms may be more comfortable making tradeoffs, such as leaving work early to pick up kids, not taking on certain work projects or being less involved in school activities. But women who expected that being a working parent would be a breeze were more likely to feel like they were failing if they didn’t live up to that ideal.

Leupp analyzed survey responses from a national sample of 1,600 married mothers. The women were participants in a Labor Department longitudinal study, and as young women, they had previously answered work-life balance questions measuring whether they agreed with such statements as “Working wives lead to more juvenile delinquency” and “A woman is happiest if she can stay at home with her children.” When the women reached age 40, Leupp measured their levels of depression.

Read more about the study here. Watch Fox News Tampa Bay discuss TORN (9/6/2011).

TORN Contributor Darcy Mayers did a wonderful job fielding questions from Hoda and Kathie Lee on this morning’s Today Show on NBC (8/17/2011). The segment discussed a recent study out of the U.K. that showed that when moms work outside the house, kids turn out just fine. So, working moms, stop feeling guilty. The kids are all right.

Watch the segment here.

I am proud to announce that the Mom’s Choice Awards® has named TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood a Gold Medal winner for 2011. The Mom’s Choice Awards® (MCA) is an awards program that recognizes authors, inventors and companies for creating quality family-friendly products and services.

The esteemed panel of judges responsible for choosing TORN included: Dr. Twila C. Liggett, ten-time Emmy-winner, professor and founder of PBS’s Reading Rainbow; Julie Aigner-Clark, Creator of Baby Einstein and The Safe Side Project; Jodee Blanco, New York Times best-selling author; Priscilla Dunstan, creator of the Dunstan Baby Language; Patricia Rossi, host of NBC’s Manners Minute; Dr. Letitia S. Wright, D.C., host of the Wright Place™ TV Show; and Catherine Witcher, M.Ed., special needs expert and founder of Precision Education, Inc.

If you haven’t had a chance to join the online discussion of TORN on the New York Times’ new Motherlode book club, I’ve posted the topics and comments that we’ve been discussing for the past few weeks below.  It’s been an honor to have been chosen as the 1st selection for this new online book club, and the response to TORN has been overwhelming. Whether you liked TORN or not, you all had a lot to say about the book and about the topic of motherhood and work-life balance.

Thank you, Lisa, for taking over where Oprah left off with your new “Lisa’s List” of books to read.

Here are the NY Times Motherlode Book Club discussions about TORN:

• Introducing the Motherlode Book Club (6/7/2011)
• Should Women Be Doctors? (6/13/2011)
• Are Moms and Dads Interchangeable? (6/20/2011)
• Talking about TORN (6/21/2011)
• Preparing to be TORN (6/24/2011)
• TORN Around the World (6/28/2011)
• The Doubts of a Stay-at-Home Dad (6/29/2011)
• Do GenX Women Choose Work Over Kids? (6/30/2011)

Recent research done by the New York think tank the Center for Work-Life Policy, headed by economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett, has found that almost half, or 43 percent, of Generation X women (those born between 1965 and 1978) are childless.

The women surveyed, who ranged in age between 33 and 46 years old, were born during the height of the feminist movement. They grew to consider motherhood an obstacle to having a successful career. So they’ve put off having children — or avoided it entirely.

The strategy seems to be working, at least from a professional/career standpoint: 19 percent of those who participated in the study said they earn more than their husbands or partners, and 74 percent characterized themselves as ambitious. Though a number of women aren’t interested in having children, many do want to be moms but just find it too hard to balance raising kids with work. And many are afraid that once they get pregnant, their jobs will be affected.

Lead author Lauren Leader-Chivee studied 3,000 female and male college graduates in the U.S. and also looked at their counterparts in Britain. “We have found very similar trends in both countries,” she said.

Deborah Fryer, a 44-year-old documentary film maker and contributor to my book, TORN, has followed a path similar to the women surveyed and agrees with the findings.

“When I was in my twenties, I was only focused on finishing my PhD.  In my thirties, I dated a lot, but my true love was my new career as a documentary filmmaker, which took me all over the world,” says Fryer. “I thought I had all the time in the world.  I met my husband when I was 42.  I finally feel ready to have children now, but it’s just not that easy any more.  Some days I feel incredibly sad about it, and other days I feel incredibly free.”

Deborah’s story in TORN, “Birth Mark,” examines the decisions she has made regarding career and motherhood and the consequences of those decisions. Although TORN focuses primarily on the motherhood-career juggle, I felt it was important to highlight the stories of a few women who have made the choice NOT to have children because they can’t see a way to combine motherhood and career.

Which leads me to my question: Why is it that women still feel forced to choose between kids and career– today, in 2011?

Continue reading →

The NY Times announced yesterday (6/7/2011) the launch of a new online book club to be hosted and moderated by NY Times Motherlode Columnist, Lisa Belkin (read full article here).  The 1st book they will be discussing? TORN.

** Watch my interview with Lisa Belkin of the New York Times (6/14/2011).

Last time I looked, there were 86 reader comments on the announcement, most by excited readers who now have a new outlet for “gathering” with an online community to discuss important books on parenting. The concept of an online book club is brilliant, in my view. How many times I wish I could join my girlfriends for an evening “book club” night out, but can’t because life gets in the way. Now I can share my thoughts online, on my own time, with a wonderful group of readers from around the country.

Thank you, Lisa, for making the Motherlode Book Club a reality. Now we don’t even need Oprah’s Book Club. We have Lisa’s List. Hoorah!

Here is a snippet from the announcement Lisa made, with a short “review” of TORN:

“[TORN] is filled with the voices of women trying to solve an impossible equation, all doing the best they can. These nearly four dozen writers include a wide swath of the real world — attorneys and professors, software designers and social workers, soldiers and stay-at-home moms. They live on good incomes, and reduced incomes, and, in one case, on welfare. They are married, divorced and single. They are, as a group, far more educated than average, but so, too, I have learned, are Motherlode readers. They write about big things (cancer, depression, regrets, teen pregnancy, readjusting to being a mom after being a soldier in Iraq) and small (worm bins, cupcakes, speeding tickets, Dora the Explorer, dirty diapers.)

All of them have one thing in common — they have all compromised. Whether theirs is a compromise they can live with is the central question.”

So buy TORN, read it, and join us for a lively discussion online at the NY Times.

Read the NY Times Motherlode Book Club discussions about TORN:

• Introducing the Motherlode Book Club (6/7/2011)
• Talking about TORN (6/21/2011)
• Preparing to be TORN (6/24/2011)
• TORN around the world (6/28/2011)
• The Doubts of a Stay-at-Home Dad (6/29/2011)
• Do GenX Women Choose Work Over Kids? (6/30/2011)