Moms and career



I picked my son up early from school recently for a doctor’s appointment and noticed something interesting.

The school had me sign him out using a sign out sheet with maybe 20 or 30 names on it already. One of the spaces on the sheet was for who was picking up the student. As I quickly scanned down the sheet, I noticed that in almost every case it listed “Mom” as the person who picked up the student. Two blanks said “Dad”, and one blank said “Grand”, which I assumed was short for grandparent, but the rest all said “Mom”.

For this instance at least, that means that somewhere between 85% and 90% of the time, it was the mom who came to take the child somewhere.

I realize that I only have anecdotal data (and life experience) to back this up, but I wonder about the impact of this kind of thing on a woman’s job. You know that a lot of those moms had to leave work early in order to do this. If they don’t have a flexible schedule chances are that they may encounter some issues regarding needing to leave work early like that.

They may be seen as less reliable, less productive, or less committed to their job, which means that they may not be counted on as much as their male counterparts. (Even if they take work home, come in early, stay late, or skip lunch to do so.) I suspect it’s as though mentioning that “hey, I need to go to an appointment” carries more (negative) weight than doing equal (or more) work despite needing to leave for an appointment. This is probably reflected in women’s pay and chance for promotion as well.

I don’t know, maybe I’m way off base, although I don’t think so. What do you think? Have any of you ever experienced anything like what I’ve described?

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Posted in Financial health on Feb 03, 2009

5 Responses to “ Moms and career ”

  1. # 1 dogatemyfinances Says:
    February 3rd, 2009 at 7:11 am

    Anecdotally, I see this too. All the fancy SUVs dropping off kids at the private school near my condo are driven by women, probably moms or nannies.

  2. # 2 Stephanie Says:
    February 3rd, 2009 at 4:31 pm

    Yes – I’ve had to mention my childfree status in interviews, because many employers are accustomed to being asked to accommodate women’s schedules (and then assume that woman = Mom). And in my field that would greatly limit my hirability and promotability.

  3. # 3 Jenn Says:
    February 4th, 2009 at 6:51 pm

    In our community there is a fairly high incidence of stay at home mothers, so that’s part of the reason you see more moms than dads. Still, out of all the families I know, easily more than half with 2 working parents, mom does ALL the appointments – dentist, dr, orthodontist, etc. Why don’t the dads do it? In the last two years I’ve started asking my DH to carry some of these chores. I only work part time, but have a website to manage and a web design business to run. His job (sales) is very flexible, nobody cares if he’s in or out. Makes more sense for him to do it. He’s not giving me a hard time, but it’s still up to me to ask.
    So Dads – step up! Be aware of upcoming dentist and dr. visits and offer to take the kids. Once we have more men doing this, it will lose it’s stigma and bring us closer to parity.

  4. # 4 Rebekah Says:
    February 4th, 2009 at 6:57 pm

    We are absolutely paid less and taken advantage of because of this. We don’t feel like we can ask for more because we know that they’re flexible (even if we make up the time). It’s easier for a male to tell his spouse “I just can’t get out of the office.” Females don’t have that advantage.

  5. # 5 thebaglady Says:
    February 5th, 2009 at 6:25 pm

    @Stephanie: Employers can’t technically ask if you have kids or not. That’s actually an illegal interview question. They’re not supposed to be discriminating based on gender, but unfortunately it still happens.

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