Work or stay home?
If college degrees put women on a professional career track, adding a baby to the mix instantly confers a Ph.D. in motherhood.
Today honors the mom side of life, but for millions of college-educated women with young children, that role is laden with economic dilemmas and business basics.
In West Michigan, 63 percent of women with children under 6 hold a job, either full or part time. Nationwide, well over half of mothers with preschoolers work for pay.
At the heart of their decision to go to work is this: Is the effort worth the cost?
"It's an expensive hobby, to stay home," Kelly Sleeper said.
But the cost goes beyond money. "When I was at work, I felt I should be with Samantha, and when I was home, I felt I should be working," said Diane Wing, a former cancer-data researcher.
For an employed woman, it means carving up a day between job and family, racing in the morning, kissing her children goodbye, stepping in and out of her career, and surviving on little sleep.
The cost? Thousands of dollars for someone else to tend the kids, qualms over leaving them, and a potentially frazzled family life when the role of homemaker and breadwinner collide.
But career-track women who choose to stay home with their preschoolers also pay a price.
Days start early and run long, marked by playtime, nap time, eating time, playtime, and over again. Status rests in the work of mothering, as her other career waits in the wings. Or not.
The cost? Day-care savings are offset by the lost income of $30,000 to $80,000 each year a professional sits out.
For these women, the new term is "sequencing," from career, to baby-raising, to some blend of the two.
To re-enter some high tech specialties may mean starting over, at lower pay, lower status and fewer responsibilities than their peers.
Other women who are accountants or finance pros might find their professions hungry for their help, and will ease back into jobs more flexible, and more home-based, than the ones they had before.
"A lot of (accounting) firms are attracting sequencing moms," said Sonia Dalmia, associate professor of economics at Grand Valley State University. "They're offering them flexible hours to retrain them, because they're having difficulty finding a skilled work force."
Flexible or not, the demands of the job market and the stroller set pull women in all directions.
"This work-life balance is always going to be a dilemma for women," said Dalmia, 38, mother of two.
She launched her GVSU career just two weeks after the birth of her first child, now 7. The baby was late, and the school year wasn't.
Her young family survived with a few months of live-in grandparents.
In her research, Dalmia sees women returning to work sooner than they once did.
Resuming a career is one motivation. So is financial hardship.
"For most women, the longer the break, the harder it is to restart at the same position. Lots of women are returning to work after three or six months. It's harder to get longer off," Dalmia said.
Flexibility is key, said Wing, a 30-year-old Cascade Township woman who holds a master's degree. She resumed her career as a cancer data researcher with the Michigan Public Health Institute three months after daughter Samantha was born.
"My boss let me telecommute a few days a week," Wing said. "She was wonderful working with me, but it was still too much."
Next, Wing tried working part-time for the institute, mostly from home. But last November, Wing resigned. Now 30 and pregnant with her second child, she said the family-career equation became too complicated.
"Honestly, it's really hard to work from home with one child, and to have a brand-new baby..." Wing said
Instead, she and her husband used the 18 months she worked part time to pay off their debts as they prepared to live on one income.
Ready to go back
Tami Pierce is one of the women who took her maternity leave and returned to work.
Six weeks after her son Dalton arrived, Pierce was back on the job as portfolio manager at Priority Health, a Grand Rapids health insurance company.
For one thing, she needed the income, she said, but other factors swayed her, too.
"I was ready to go back to work," said Pierce, 36. "I had my routine down with him, and I have to work. I'm just one of those people."
For the first six months, she worked at the office for four days and was home one day.
Her son's daycare center was so close, she often joined him for lunch. She also saw the environment as healthy for her son.
"I wanted very early for him to be comfortable, whether he was spending the day with my mom or the day-care lady," Pierce said. "It's just a lifestyle choice."
Many of her neighbors are stay-at-home moms. "That's their choice," she said. "I think it's great. I don't think they look at me and say, 'You're a terrible mother.'"
When Stacy McGinnis took maternity leave for the birth of her twins, Shurman and Shanelle, she did not have the luxury of a choice. She's a single mom.
With a master's degree and a good job as a Kent County juvenile probation officer, McGinnis, 37, said she still was troubled when the day came to return to work. The twins were born prematurely in late July and spent seven weeks in the hospital.
By November, McGinnis had burned through her vacation time, sick leave and maternity leave, but her babies still were on monitors.
"Because of that, sitters were reluctant about taking them," McGinnis said, until a caregiver "came out of the blue." Next, a friend's in-home day care center worked until the twins were 3.
"In the long term, there's some perks and some downfalls to it," McGinnis said of her children's life in day care and hers at work.
"They love being around other kids, and were never scared to go to other people," McGinnis said. "But I kind of got robbed of that bonding time.
"The first time my son walked, I didn't see it. I came to pick him up, and they said, 'We've got a surprise for you.' He took five steps for me when I got there."
She does not resent other mothers who are economically able to work part time or stay home.
"The way I look at it, it's a blessing if you're able to do that," McGinnis said.
Her career is zooming along. She won promotion to supervisor in the Circuit Court Family Division.
"Even with my education, being a mom is just going to be hard. There's no perfect answer," McGinnis said.
Women who teach college students face special pressures: a break in service would stall that career, but teaching offers some inherent flexibility.
After earning her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Suzeanne Benet now chairs GVSU's department of marketing at the Seidman College of Business.
Although her children are 14 and 12, she knows what her students who have their own children are going through. Her children were born after she came to GVSU.
"I certainly couldn't take the chance of quitting," after her children were born, said Benet, 44. "I had just put in too much time and energy to earn that Ph.D."
She knew she could structure her days, but the schedule also meant less sleep. Time with her children in the evenings was followed by "working late into the night, grading papers," Benet said.
"You're very tired. But just about any working mother is," she said.
Entrepreneurial time
When the family or job changes, more and more women are choosing to become entrepreneurs, GVSU researcher Dalmia said.
"Women are starting businesses at twice the rate of men," Dalmia said. "Maybe because they're having a hard time finding a job after planning to re-enter the labor market, they're taking things into their own hands."
Toni Scholten, who graduated from Baker College in Muskegon, turned to Web site design after the birth of her son, Brandon.
Formerly with Haviland Enterprises Inc., she planned to go back part time. Then Brandon was diagnosed with a visual impairment, a condition that requires extra care and attention.
"We had to try to find a way for me to stay home and still make money," the 34-year-old Walker mother said. She realized grandrapids.babyzone.com was languishing.
"We ended up starting it from scratch. All the resources on there are entered by me," Scholten said. She and Brandon also walk a daily newspaper route and she handles e-Bay sales for customers, as a power seller.
"I'm self-employed," she said. "The taxes are a pain, but I'm making my own way, contributing to the household." Her income is supplemental, but it's a "really good fit."
She also is comfortable being home. "If Brandon is needing me, I'm available at any point of the day," she said.
Home, sweet home
For some women, the pendulum swings heavily toward staying home.
Sleeper said she loves manufacturing. At her last job, she worked in consumer services at Bissell Corp.
"I was hoping to advance because I liked the marketing aspect of the business," said Sleeper, 32. Instead, she met her husband there, and they agreed on one big family issue: their future children deserved a full-time mom at home.
When they went house-hunting, they bought a place they knew they could afford on one income.
"We planned that within five years, we would have kids and 50 percent of our income will be gone," Sleeper said. "It's still not an easy life. Sometimes, I look at it (her lost income) in despair: it's $50,000 a year."
Her children are 3 and 1. In her spare time, Sleeper is a co-president of Mothers and More, a group of women with and without their own paychecks.
Whether a career is an option or an imperative, professional women are making waves as they chart their own course through motherhood.
But finding the right balance is neither easy nor uniform.
"This is one thing that is not going to go away for women," Dalmia said. "It is very important for (company) policies to step up to the plate to help women have the best balance possible."