According to The Tele, the police intelligence analyst – identified only as Sarah – was denied the use of morning and afternoon tea breaks and accumulated leave, after continued requests for hours that suited her childcare needs were rejected.

Reportedly, she was refused a private room and instead instructed to use a toilet cubicle or ‘unclean’ interview room to express milk. Sarah was left little choice but to express milk in her car, but eventually become so embarrassed that she drove home to feed her baby and was forced to make up for the time she was gone.

The Public Service Association claimed in a statement yesterday that Sarah is one of many new mothers in the public service being denied breastfeeding facilities in direct violation of the state Government’s own policy. The association will today launch action in the Industrial Relations Commission in an effort to force government departments to uphold the policy.

Was Sarah unfairly treated? Do you have any horror feeding-at-work stories of your own?

Researchers at the University of Chicago found that mums who put their kids in daycare were likely to have at least one more “good friend” than mums going it alone.

But I’m sceptical.

On the surface, the study makes sense – where there are kids, there are parents, and where there are parents running into one another, friendships are struck up (the study’s author says that centres with specific drop off and pick-up times help to facilitate meetings, and thus friendships). But having switched just recently to being a completely work-at-home mother after four years of sending my daughter to daycare part-time, I’ve encountered my first real taste of the at-home mum friendship ring.

They all know each other. And they all spend time together.

While being an at-home parent is not all baking cookies and throwing playdates, working full-time, I saw more friendships slip away because I didn’t have the energy at the end of the day for a phone call after dinner, bath, etc, and weekends were for hanging with my husband and daughter.

But what’s your take on the study’s results? Working parents, do you meet friends at daycare? Stay-at-homes, where do you pick up your bestest buddies?

Image: tips for moms

Source: University of Chicago

On a recent evening, after the kids had gone to bed, I hunkered down for a long painful conversation with Karel, my wife of seven years, about the quality of time she was spending with our nearly three-year-old son, Noah. I wanted to stress to her the importance of sharing time with our son, without me, in a situation that was Noah-centric.

Karel spends almost all of her free time with the family as a whole, but the number of one-on-one moments between the two of them in the last eight months can be counted on one hand, and they mostly consist of trips to Coles. I gently tried to explain to her that my fondest childhood memories of time spent with my mother do not usually involve purchasing Listerine and Sorbent.

It was an extremely unpleasant conversation, and unsurprisingly, to her ears it sounded like an accusation of neglect. She was defensive, as I knew she would be, and in many ways her anger was justified. There were extenuating circumstances for this lapse of mummy-and-son adventure time.

The trouble started during the later stages of her pregnancy with our second child, an abnormally large (even in utero) baby girl named Josefina. Karel’s third-trimester, whale-like proportions meant that she could not be left by herself to tend to the fruits of destruction caused by Noah, who since turning two had morphed into 20 kilos of elbows and knees in rapid and perpetual motion.

For painfully obvious reasons, Karel’s inability to handle the unintentional head-butts, very intentional belly flops, and wildly out-of-control pratfalls of our aspiring pro-wrestler/Buster Keaton impersonator increased ten-fold in the two months following her C-section. The gut-busting hilarity my son strives for with his acts of physical comedy and derring-do had almost become, literally, gut-busting.

By the time Karel’s body returned to a semblance of normalcy, it was time for her to go back to work. Toddler Madness overtook our house. We witnessed the new-baby regression other parents had warned us about. I became increasingly worried about Noah as he became increasingly sick of me. It was obvious that Noah didn’t just want Mummy to help with dinner and a bath at night, or a family trip on the weekend; he wanted her, without me, and definitely without his new sister. I tried to fill the void, but Noah would accept no substitutes. For her part, Karel, who was struggling to re-adapt to work, just couldn’t see what was going on at home. I felt as though I had all my fingers plugging the cracks in Noah’s emotional levee, and I waited in vain for Karel to come and lend me a thumb before our son turned certifiable.

The night I confronted Karel with my concerns about Noah, it quickly became apparent that he was not the only family member on the brink. Because of my focus on the kids, I didn’t realise how thinly Karel was stretched. She complained that she felt like butter spread over too much burnt toast. The idea of trying to find more time somewhere in her week for Noah wasn’t simply daunting; it was terrifying.

And not because of Noah’s recent moodiness, or because of lingering physical issues from the pregnancy, but because she was already balancing a full work week on top of a home life where her attentions and affections had to be split between three very needy individuals. Those three people of varying sizes and desires all missed her equally during the day, and wanted her complete focus during the few meagre hours between the moment she walked through the front door and bed time.

My wife doesn’t palm the kids off on me to go out drinking with her mates after work, she doesn’t leave me hanging on the weekends to watch football while the house gets progressively messier (we both watch Sea Eagles games while the house gets progressively messier). My wife goes from home to work and back again. Her free time consists of her daily commute (of which I am terribly jealous).

The resolution of our conversation was not that she needed to make more time in an already overscheduled week, but instead she needed to refocus some of her energy away from worrying about trying to please me and Josie, and instead redirect that energy toward the person in the family who needed it most at that particular moment. It is not a perfect resolution but it will keep the boat afloat for the time being, and sometimes as a parent that’s all you can ask for.

What I thought about most, though, during the course of our conversation, was that Karel’s story is the same for so many working parents, both men and women, and that it so often goes unappreciated. Their best is simply never good enough.

For all the ink spilled about the concerns, frustrations, and challenges faced on a daily basis by stay-at-home mothers, there is far too little written about the challenges of the working mother.

When your world shrinks to the size of a newborn baby nappy it’s easy to get tunnel vision, and while I’m not suggesting that stay-at-home parents don’t make very real sacrifices (I live those realities daily), I would argue that we sometimes forget that the same is true for our spouses.

As a dude who stays at home, I am acutely aware of what I’m giving up and my inner conflicts, but I should never for a minute imagine that my sacrifices and second guesses are greater than those of my wife. It’s sometimes hard to remember that when you’re staring at a mountain of laundry.

This generation of working dads balances domestic duties and child rearing in a way most of our fathers could never imagine. The tight rope between work and family that working parents walk on a daily basis goes unrecognised for the stress it causes them, and for the grace with which many of them manage it; often it is only acknowledged right before they are about to fall.

Between the stress of a bad economy and the increasing demands of the Australian workplace, it doesn’t take the chaos of a second child to cause working parents to falter. All we can do is try to hold each other up.

One mum gets scolded for not reading the school handbook. Another, the mother of one of Warner’s daughter’s classmates, hints to the girl that Warner isn’t loving enough. Plus, obligatory excerpts from Ayelet Waldman’s Bad Mother book.

I read this column just hours after my own humiliating experience, when a librarian informed me that I didn’t have to roll my eyes behind my daughter’s back — that the girl only wanted to participate in the stacking of books on the counter. Of course I didn’t have to roll my eyes but … back in the stacks, did the librarian see the fires I was putting out back in the stacks? … wait, the point is I shouldn’t have to explain myself.

Anyway, I settled in for a nice “rah, rah” we’re-in-this-together moment with Warner and her buddies. Mums — no matter who were are or what we do — we’re behind a one-way mirror and everyone’s an eyewitness pointing fingers. So true! Except Warner doesn’t think we’re in this together. She thinks she, her buddies and other “accomplished” women are set apart.

From the NY Times:

I don’t know if accomplished women like my tablemates, or mothers like Waldman and me who have, let’s say, an unfortunate penchant for hyperbole, come in for a greater share of mummy slap-down moments. I suspect that highly successful working mothers suffer a disproportionate amount of scorn when they fail to have the time or available space on their mental hard drives to do things like memorise school handbooks or master baking.

Really? She went there? The working mum thing?

From what she writes, does she think not-so-accomplished mums (read: stay-at-home mums, part-timers, mid-level managers) memorise school handbooks while waiting for a toothpick to come out clean from yet another just-baked, delicious cake?

Let me reassure Warner that those of us outside the “highly successful working mothers” group — the mediocre to incredibly unsuccessful working-or-not mums — we’re getting it from both barrels too. Not only do we fail to live up to the mothering expectations of  librarians, school secretaries and bitchy mothers, but we also get to feel like crap among the “highly successful working mothers” who we suspect (now confirmed!) are categorising us according to what we do (actually, what we don’t do).

Insult and injury, indeed!

While we’re at it, share your most recent “mummy slap-down moments.” That is, if you’re not too busy reviewing the new school handbook.

Photo: awildride.net

The report’s co-author, Jennifer Baxter, a research fellow at the Australian Institute of Family Studies, said: “This may be through mothers working hours that allow them to maximise the quality time they spend with their child. The other factor is the extra time the child spends with their father, or other relatives, or carers.

You mean babies of working parents aren’t locked in a cage all day and denied love and affection? Well blow me down with a feather!

The problem with studies like these — and reporting of said studies — is that they make a few assumptions.

1. That it is abnormal for women to work

2. That women should feel some guilt if they do work to provide for their families

3. That love and affection is a mother’s responsibility and a father’s responsibility is a paycheque.

4. That being a good mother is quantifiable by hours spent with child, or by a ‘cuddle count’

Do women really hate eachother so much that we need to start comparing how many times a day we hug our children?

And would we ever see a press release about how often working fathers cuddle or read to their babies?

The important thing is that a child is being nurtured, cuddled and read to. It is up to families to work out how to make that happen.

Michael Jackson’s Mother Awarded Temporary Custody Of His Children
Michael Jackson’s mother was yesterday awarded temporary custody of his three children as the family fired the first shots in the legal battle over his estate. Times Online

Babies Born By Ceasarean More Prone To Asthma, Study Finds
Babies born by caesarean section undergo genetic changes which make them more susceptible to developing diseases including asthma and diabetes, a new study shows. Telegraph

Online Pedophiles Blackmail Children Into Meetings
Online pedophiles are becoming more aggressive in their pursuit of children, often using suggestive photographs or inappropriate online conversations to blackmail their victims into face-to-face meetings. The Australian

Good Samaritan Finds Dying Victim Is Son
A man who stopped at a nasty motorcycle accident in Britain was horrified to see his son lying dying on the road. Ninemsn

Heath Ledger’s Confidants Speak About Actor’s Last Days
The professionals closest to Heath Ledger have revealed how the Hollywood star battled with fame, a failed relationship and incurable insomnia in the lead-up to his untimely death. SMH

Tragic End To Sleepover
The mystery death of a four-year-old Tasmanian boy has been declared a major crime investigation. The Mercury

Mother Knows Best – But Does Gina Ford Know Better
The queen of routine is back with another parenting manual — but do we still want to hear what she has to say? Times Online

A new U.S. study found the wage disparity between mothers and non-breeders could be as much as $US11,000 for the same position (per year). Providing fake resumes to employers for two women – one with kids, one without – the researchers working on a study since dubbed “Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?” found moms were ranked as both “less competent” and “less committed.”

Considering even the better-paid childless women are still earning seventy-seven percent of what a working man earns in America, working mums are truly getting shafted.

But before you start cursing those kid haters in the office, researchers found the exact opposite held for fathers vying for jobs. Dads were considered a better catch for employers – perhaps because they’re seen to “need” and “want” the job more in order to provide for their kids.

So it isn’t about the kids. It’s about that age-old assumption that women just want to be home changing diapers and watching Oprah while they nap and Dads want to be the big, strong providin’ man.

Yawn. When are they going to get the picture that women who are working are doing it because they “want” and “need” to be there too? That we like putting food in our kids’ tummies as much as the next GUY? And that we have this little thing called a mortgage/rent that we are pretty sure we’d like to see paid this month… just like the guy?

Image: BabySigns

via Savvy Sugar

Few parenting issues involve as much culturally inflicted guilt as when and how (and in some circles, if) a mother should return to work, with much anxiety surrounding the topic. Politics aside, working is a necessity as well as a desire for most mothers, and their babies tend to be none the worse for it. Some say mothers who’ve recently returned to work find that parenting and work skills are mutually reinforcing. Of course, parents can take turns at staying home with a baby. Many families find that a stay-at-home-dad situation can reinforce the father-child bond. Many mothers also believe that exposure to different caregivers benefits their child’s social development. There are also creative solutions for those lucky enough to have more open-ended job schedules and work environments. Some workplaces allow women to bring babies to work, while others provide the option of working from home.

Raising Children Network
Returning To Work

"Returning to work might make you feel a bit topsy-turvy now that you have an extra person to take care of. You might feel equally excited and daunted by the prospect, and you might be nervous about leaving your new little bundle in somebody else’s care… The excitement of working and spending time with adults again can get mixed up with nervousness about your child’s care and other feelings like guilt and sadness. Even if the adjustment takes time, things usually settle down." …read the full article

BabyCenter Australia®
"Working At Home"

"Being a work at home mum, or WAHM, can be a great way to bring in some extra money and still be around for your children. All it takes to be successful is forward planning and good organisation. " …read the full article

About.com
"Back to School = Back to Work"

"Whether you decide to work full time or part time is a very personal decision, similar to the one you made about staying home in the first place. You and your family must make the decision based on the needs of everyone involved. [. . .] When you decide that it’s the right time to return to work you must determine whether you want to return to the same career." …read the full article

Careerone
"Mums Returning To Work"

"If there’s one rule of thumb when it comes to making a comeback, it’s that persistency pays. It can take time to find a role that strikes the balance of flexibility and challenge that many parents returning to work are looking for." …read the full article

Children, Youth and Women’s Health Services
"Separation Anxiety?"

"All children have to learn to deal with separations. It is part of learning about life. If the first separations are managed well, it helps children with the separations they will have to deal with all through their lives." …read the full article

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
BabyCenter Australia®
"Deciding Whether To Return To Work"
Human Resources Leader
"How To… Return To Work After A Baby"

At its heart, I think I understand what she was trying to say – that there is no cookie cutter solution for the trials and travails of the working parent. If you think a “10 Easy Tips to Wrangle Your Kids” list is going to solve your struggles, more power to you.

But in accusing mothers who write for a living of being “profoundly disconnected from its real trials and tribulations,” she betrays her own lack of understanding of the life of a journalist.

We work, generally far above the forty-hour work week – and not all of us from home. In fact, a fair number of journalists work out of an office, rather than as freelancers. I consider myself lucky that I spend a few days working from home, but it’s somewhat of a misnomer – working from home often means packing my daughter in her carseat and heading off with her to do an interview in the middle of a barn with a farmer concerned about milk prices, keeping one eye fixed on her at all times to make sure she doesn’t end up UNDER a cow. It means leaving my daughter with my husband at 6 p.m. to head to a five-hour-long town board meeting where I’ll listen to politicians sniping at each other about a whole lot of nothing instead of enjoying books before bedtime.

I know what it’s like to juggle the sitter’s schedule with my own, to go rushing around to find someone to watch my daughter on a random Monday when my daycare provider has a doctor’s appointment. I know what it’s like to call my boss and say, I’m sorry, I can’t go report on that fire right now because I don’t have daycare, and to hear him sigh and know that I just lost favour that the non-parent reporters automatically curry.

I also know what it’s like to try to work from home, to sit at a computer and try to write a story about parenting while my daughter screams from the bathroom or shoves a cup of juice in my face and asks
for more. I know what it’s like to be this close to missing a deadline and have to go clean up a water spill across the kitchen floor. I chose this, I know, but that doesn’t make it any easier. And for those who would say, well, hire a sitter on those days, I counter – where will I get the money?

Because as a writer mum, I also know what it’s like to struggle to make ends meet. Newspapers are closing. The paper where I work has cut staff, and that’s meant more pressure on the rest of us to produce, produce, produce. But where do I find the time? Where do I find the supplemental income when one of the magazines I write for shuts down, when the new editor decides she doesn’t like my style as much as the old editor?

No, I don’t know what it’s like to be a factory laborer, Mama Bee. I don’t know what it’s like to have regular hours, when I can punch in, punch out. News doesn’t happen nine to five – and daycares don’t take kindly to you showing up at 7 because a late breaking story kept you in
the newsroom. I don’t know what it’s like to be a corporate drone either, Mama Bee, to know exactly how much my paycheck will be week in and week out, to know I can make the mortgage and the phone bill.

But I do know how to write their stories. And that’s how they end up in the newspaper, on the Web, in magazines. Because the lady working at H&R Block might be a whizz-bang at my taxes (while I can’t make heads or tails of a tax form), but she can’t write a news story.

So I write, Mama Bee, because that’s my job. Which makes me a working mother.

Image: Medway

So what’s to be done, and can the playing field ever be truly even? Or is an anti-mummy (or anti-child) bias just built into our sexist society, never to be overcome? I know that better maternity — and paternity — leave would be one solution, if only to help mothers maintain a consistent paycheck and pay history. But even if men and women were treated more equally in this regard (and in dividing their home duties — I know, this is a pipe dream, and also a presumption of heterosexual couple-dom that I regret but can’t seem to shake when thinking about this topic), where would that leave those with children versus those without? Perhaps we need to widen the scope even further, to seek not just gender parity but also some awareness that family responsibilities don’t always come in the cute little form of a child. Workers caring for aging parents, or ailing partners, also need protection and respect.

Once we start talking about workers being treated with respect by big corporations, I know I’m in the land of fantasy. Still, the reality is so difficult that at times it can be hard to face. My own salary history is so uneven, what with staying home to care for two children, that I’ll probably never again make as much money as my husband (we were on par when we met). I’m not even trying to get back to full-time work yet, but I wonder what limitations I’ll face, and how many of them come down to the parenting choices I have made. Do I regret staying home with my kids? Not for a second. But do I wish mothers and fathers had better options? That’s a no-brainer.