The Daddy Dilemma A father reflects on the hidden costs of being the family's primary breadwinner.
Daughters of the Supermoms Stanford undergraduate women prepare to enter the mommy maze.
Working Inside the home
A typical day in the life of Wendy Petersmeyer, '76, a Menlo Park resident and mother of three girls, Hilary, 11, Kristin, 9, and Molly, 5. Her husband, David Bagshaw, '76, works in Silicon Valley.
5:10 a.m. First alarm goes off.
5:30 a.m. Drive to fitness workout.
6:30 a.m. Shower, wake kids. Help them get ready for school with breakfast, bag lunches, projects, permission slips, sports paraphernalia.
7:30 a.m. Drive Hilary to school in Palo Alto.
8:15 a.m. Drive Kristin to school in Menlo Park.
8:45 a.m. Walk Molly to neighborhood bus stop.
9:00 a.m. Clean up kitchen, return phone calls and organize projects for the week.
10:45 a.m. Go to doctor's appointment in Palo Alto. Do a few errands.
12:20 p.m. Meet Molly's bus. Eat lunch at home. Help Molly with art project.
2:00 p.m. Go to local fruit market to get the week's supply of fruit.
3:00 p.m. Pick Hilary up from school and take her to orthodontist.
3:30 p.m. Pick up Kristin and her carpool and retrieve Hilary at orthodontist. Snacks and down time before the afternoon sports brigade.
4:30 p.m. Drive soccer carpool to South Palo Alto and head to Los Altos to deliver Hilary to her volleyball game. Sort through a grocery bag full of mail.
6:30 p.m. Game canceled. Head to the nearest restaurant with Grandma and three tired and hungry kids.
8:00 p.m. Return to the house for baths, homework and reading with David's help.
10:00 p.m. Moment of rest and conversation with David.
Working Outside the Home
A typical day in the life of Kathleen Peterson, '82, a partner in a small law firm in Irvine, Calif. She is the mother of Jess, 6, and Will, 5, and is married to Mark Peterson, '83, a lawyer.5:30 a.m. Get up.
6:15 a.m. Play with Jess and Will. Pay bills and go through the mail.
7:00 a.m. Start the boys in the shower, pick out clothes and let my live-in babysitter take over while I get dressed. Eat breakfast together.
8:00 a.m. Steal 10 minutes reading school notices while Will finishes breakast. Read to Jess until Will is ready.
8:45 a.m. Drop off Will at school; go to Java Hut for a drive-through cappuccino.
10 a.m. Read a case on standards for granting summary judgment in age discrimination suits.
11:30 a.m. Edit motion to comply with court rules.
Noon Lunch with clients.
2:30 p.m. Respond to birthday
invitation for Jess. Have conference call with Mark and neighbor to
figure
out carpooling problem.
5:00 p.m. Leave office for 20-minute commute home.
6:00 p.m. Change clothes and relax until babysitter goes off duty. Make phone calls to confirm the boys' schedule and weekend plans.
7:00 p.m. Eat dinner with Mark while boys finish dessert.
8:00 p.m. Clean the kitchen and try to steal a half hour at the piano while Mark plays with the boys.
8:30 p.m. Get boys ready for bed, which includes reading aloud and lots of questions about monsters in the closets and why they can't watch Seinfeld. Take last requests for water.
9:30 p.m. Finally get to talk and
watch a movie or television with Mark. Go to sleep by 11.
With a Stanford degree and a high profile career as
an advertising executive, Wendy Petersmeyer used to be the very model
of a successful '80s career woman. Boarding the train in Menlo Park at
7 each morning, she would put in at least 12 hours a day at her San
Francisco office overseeing a $30 million account for Sprint
telecommunications.
When the client needed her to work weekends, she did it. When commercials needed to be produced, she would jet off to studios in New York or Los Angeles.
Petersmeyer, '76, still puts in long hours on the job. But these days her meetings focus on the local school budget, and her clients are likely to be wearing Brownie uniforms and sipping chocolate milk. "I'm just amazed--I've been at home full time with my children now almost as long as I was in the work force," says Petersmeyer, the mother of three daughters, ages 5, 9 and 11. Sometimes she wonders how far she might have gone if she'd stayed in the corporate fast lane. "I just couldn't figure out how to combine that kind of a job with a family life," she says. "I was unwilling to delegate my mothering."
Like many Stanford alumnae who graduated in the past 20 years, Petersmeyer never thought she would have to choose between her career and family life. She'd be Supermom, balancing a stack of advertising copy on one hip and a baby on the other; after all, that's what was expected of women in her generation. Yet now, years later, even the most accomplished women are questioning whether the costs of doing it all are just too high.
A national survey published by the Pew Research Center this past Mother's Day shows that only 29 percent of American mothers believe parents can often do a good job of childraising if both mom and dad work. In a 1995 survey, Juliet Schor, author of The Overworked American, found that 28 percent of her respondents recently had made voluntary lifestyle changes that involved significant financial sacrifices, including moving to less stressful jobs, turning down promotions or refusing relocation. And while two-income families are still the norm in much of the country