Working Moms Redefined
Skee OuiZy
We’ve all heard the adage "the more things change, the more they stay the same."
Plenty of things have changed since women started heading back to work in the 1970s, about the time that the Equal Rights Amendment was passed in Congress and sent to the states for ratification. Ironically, it never passed; at the 1982 deadline it was still three states shy of the 38 needed to become law. Despite the defeat, women’s wages went up proportionally. In 1975, women earned 59 cents to every dollar men did. Today, that figure has risen to 77 cents, according to Anne Ladky, executive director of Women Employed in Chicago.
But other critical advances many women sought were far more personal, like getting husbands to help with the housework and kids. Back then, most women with children did not work outside the home. In 1975, eight percent of women with school age children (6-17) and 15 percent of women with children under six worked, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
I got my first professional job in the late-1970s, and back then, most of my friends - even those with medical degrees - took time off to raise their families when they had their second child. This may explain why more women with young children worked than those with school-age children in the statistics above. Today, we call the practice of taking employment breaks the "mommy track."
But many of us didn’t have the luxury of being on that track. In my own case, my income was a necessity; yet at times, it was also a wash because of childcare costs. And for me, and many of my peers, the issues of working full-time weren’t necessarily the high childcare costs. The real problem was what to do when the kids got sick…stay home, or go to work? The same thing happened with school programs. How often could we steal away from the office mid-day for assemblies and report card conferences?
Today, according to figures Women Employed culled from government data, 77 percent of all mothers with school age children (6-17) and 67 percent of all women with children under the age of six work. With such numbers, things should be easier for working moms.
That’s not necessarily so, as we can confirm after talking to a roundtable of Chicago mothers. The numbers have changed; more moms work and earn higher wages. But many fundamental issues have remained the same, from childcare to stretched schedules. Perhaps not surprisingly, over half of our moms are lucky enough to be able to rely on their own mother, or other family members, to help out. Or, they’re successful enough to be able to spend what it takes on childcare. Even Michelle Obama cleaves to this paradigm. According to myriad news accounts, her mother, Marian Robinson, 71, cared for Malia, 10, and Sasha, seven, while their parents campaigned, and has since moved to Washington, D.C. with the First Family.
Here’s how modern moms cope with work, packed schedules, childcare issues and more.
Kim Kamin, 37
"My Blackberry is my best friend," quips Kim brightly when we meet at Starbucks, where I found her scanning it for messages and emails while returning calls on her flip-phone. A wispy beauty in spare slacks and a sleek sweater set, she looks like a 20-something law student rather than a partner in the prestigious Chicago law firm Schiff Hardin LLP, where she practices estate planning. "To be efficient, you need both, since you can’t read the Blackberry and call on it at the same time," she explains.
Kim is warm, animated and always multi-tasking on both gadgets simultaneously - when not directly engaged in a face-to-face conversation. They allow her to keep up with her workload, stay in touch with clients and check in on son Grayson, now five and in kindergarten. "I work a lot," she admits. And her husband, UGL Equis real estate executive Greg Schementi, "works a lot too, and also travels."
Being a partner in a top-ranked law firm, and having a full life, is tough - and Kim has major loads in both arenas. Besides doing about 100 hours of pro-bono work yearly, she’s also an adjunct professor at Northwestern University Law School, serves on the Board of Trustees of Francis W. Parker School and is on the Professional Advisory Council of The Chicago Community Trust.
But here’s the real kicker: Grayson has severe food allergies and asthma - issues that require constant vigilance and have landed him in the hospital frequently. "We’ve spent a lot of nights at Children’s (Memorial Hospital)," Kim observes.
How does she cope? Kim has worked hard, made thoughtful life decisions and is an efficiency expert in every aspect of her life. After earning a BA from Stanford University, she came home to attend The University of Chicago Law School because "my family was here." She married Greg Schementi right out of law school (whom she met while vacationing in Hawaii), and within a year they moved to a Gold Coast townhouse across the street from her parents.
Kim joined Schiff Hardin after "shopping the legal market" and deciding it was the best place for her. "They don’t force associates to pick a practice area immediately, so I tried everything," she explains. She gravitated to estate planning. "It’s complex, stimulating and involves so many areas of the law," she explains.
Kim also planned to have Grayson at an optimal time in her career. "I wanted to master my subject matter and be well established. It’s not good to juggle a family when you’re low man on the totem pole," she observes. And since Grayson came along, Kim has arranged a work/life set-up that is exacting yet carves out together-time for mother and son. "I see him every morning, at least four nights a week and usually pick him up from school on Friday afternoons. It’s our special time together," she notes. They often consist of visits to Costco, the zoo, the nature museum, the playground or the East Bank Club, a frequent family destination for food, exercise and relaxation.
Having her parents nearby allowed Kim to hire a come-and-go nanny when Grayson was a baby. "They’re anchors for me," she says. Today, she uses a primary sitter when he’s not in school, and relies on back-up sitters and her parents for emergencies.
"Being able to keep up things at this pace is all about your support system," Kim observes, then quickly amends the comment to include one more critical point: "You have to make the most of technology." Besides mining her sidekick gadgets, she buys everything possible online to give her more precious hours with Grayson.
Julie Rodrigues Widholm, 34
"I never thought I’d leave the city and buy a house with a white picket fence," says Julie Rodrigues Widholm, admitting with a laugh that colleagues and friends have teased her about the 1939 blue cottage in Brookfield she and her husband, landscape designer Timothy Widholm, bought last spring. Given her post as the Pamela Alper Associate Curator at Chicago’s cutting edge Museum of Contemporary Art, neither can we.
But the urbane Julie, mother to Maya, three, and Miles, nine months, had good reason to move to the quaint Western suburb from a Ravenswood Manor condo. "I had my second child and we needed to be closer to my parents," she explains. "My mom watches the kids two days a week, and the trip to the city was getting to be too much."
Now three days a week her children go to a nearby nursery school that incorporates daycare into its program, and her mother comes to her home the other two days. Still, "daycare is almost as much as our mortgage," she admits. "Even though we both work full-time, we can’t afford full-time daycare." Indeed, daycare costs are hefty in Julie’s world. "The going rate for nannies is about $2,000 a month, and our school is $75 a day per child," she says. That means the couple is already spending $450 a week for childcare, which tops $23,000 a year. Plus, the move has had two silver linings for the family.
The first was expected. "I was very conflicted about Chicago Public Schools because the system is so confusing and convoluted. It takes a lot of work to get into a good one," she points out. With both Widholms working full-time, applying to many different programs and taking the risk that their children could potentially end up at different places was daunting. "My life is already complicated and busy enough. Now I know they have a good public school to go to," she reasons.
The second came as a surprise. "I find it hard to leave a job I love and switch gears every day, but find I really like going home and living this quiet, peaceful life. It’s been a nice balance," says Julie. Thanks to the proximity of her parents and the promise of good, free schools, "Now I really understand why people choose the suburbs when they have kids."
Robin Jackson, 44
Robin Jackson likes to say that her son, Austin Washington, 4, covers three bases: "He’s my first, my last and my only." The thoughtful product manager for digital map company NAVTEQ wistfully adds, "If I had a child before 40, I would have had a second one, because I love being a mother." In fact, Robin, a single mom who lives in Kenwood, is so dedicated to the role that she gave up her dream job as global marketing manager for NAVTEQ to make sure Austin has the best care possible. The position took her years to attain and involved travel to all five continents, a perk she loved. But then her mother died of heart disease last year. "She was my back-up," Robin says. "When your mom is helping you, you can go anywhere."
No longer. "I knew I couldn’t continue at that pace without her help," she explains. Robin and her partner, pharmaceutical sales executive Houston Washington, parted ways shortly after Austin was born. He lives five blocks away and helps out with Austin, but she has primary custody.
Austin goes to a tuition-based public school pre-K program that he was accepted into around the time Robin’s mother passed away, which also has a daycare component. The program is play-based, which Robin likes because he is active. But Robin make sure he gets plenty of exposure to academics, sports and the greater community, strategically seeking out programs to fill in gaps she perceives.
To fulfill the first two needs, she takes him to the Kumon Math and Reading Center in Chinatown weekly, plus karate, baseball and swimming programs at the park district and two local universities. But giving Austin a sense of belonging was harder for Robin, whose father is also deceased and three siblings are scattered and busy with their own jobs and children. Two years ago, she discovered Jack and Jill of America through friends, a national organization for African American mothers. The Windy City chapter gets together monthly and has family activities. "I’ve met other mothers and teens who can baby-sit, and Austin has met other children. It’s become a foundation for us and extended our village," explains Robin.
Yet Robin still has other hurdles to mount that are basic but challenging. They include getting Austin into a good local public school with daycare; finding the time to see her friends and exercise - without having additional babysitting expenses; and getting over her mother’s death. "I miss her. She was our rock," she says. Given the determination that has gotten her this far, ingenious solutions are sure to be forthcoming.
Stacey Kraft, 36
What do you do when your baby sitter is sick three days in a row? Or the vice versa - your child is sick and you’re at a conference out-of-town?
"(A few years ago), I was mid-way through a big three-day meeting in Los Angeles, my son, Dillon, got pretty sick, my husband was also traveling and there was no one to take him to the doctor," recalls Stacey Kraft, HR director for Hubbard One (a Thomson Reuters business). "It got too complicated," she says. "I was over-burdening too many people and I realized whatever I did wouldn’t be ideal." So she went home. In retrospect, she teases, "It passed." More seriously, she points out having a family involves "a constant struggle for balance, and I’ve come to the conclusion that you aren’t going to get that balance everyday. You have to accept that when you make a decision to be there for your kids, it may be a bad decision professionally."
Today, she has two children: Dillon, five, and Mia, two. And Stacey says the situation "hasn’t happened again recently, or maybe I’m more comfortable with it." Given the hectic yet hyper-organized life this energetic, hard-charging mother leads, we’re betting it’s the latter.
We caught up with Stacey while she was at the airport waiting for a flight to Boston, and got a whirlwind recap on her life right now. She and her husband, Chris Kraft, work for the same company, where he is senior director of product management; Chris travels much more than she does; Dillon goes to Frances Xavier Ward and Mia starts pre-kindergarten there this fall; the family is currently renovating their Lakeview condo and living with Chris’s brother and sister-in-law nearby; and they’ve had the same nanny for five years, though she had her own child a year and a half ago and brings him to work daily.
Fortunately, the couple has forged an ideal work relationship: "We come and go together, but are so busy we never talk during the day," admits Stacey. And they’re both able to put in extra hours at home after the kids are asleep, which allows them to have frequent family dinners. It doesn’t hurt that the two brother’s families are best friends, often back each other up in emergencies and have enjoyed living together the past six weeks. And most importantly, their babysitter is fantastic and the situation has worked out.
But the challenges ahead for the family are daunting. Their childcare costs are $15 an hour; for an average 50 hour work-week, that adds up to $750 a week. When both children are in school, that figure will drop, but their tuition costs will double. With their busy work schedules, it’s hard to find time to plan family vacations; for now, they take a lot of long weekends. Because Chris travels, Stacey has to handle more of the load at home. And Stacey has a bit of trepidation about the kids and school.
"I thought things would get easier when they started school, but now I’m finding there are so many things to get involved in, except I can’t," she says. "Dillon wants me to chaperone a field trip, but I have a hard enough time getting home from work at a decent hour." And there’s more: next year, homework starts. "It’s hard to fit anything else in, but I guess we’ll have to figure this one out," she concedes.
Kali Evans-Raoul, 37
"I always thought I couldn’t have an affair and start a new family at the same time," muses Kali Evans-Raoul. With her model-prefect looks and stature, it’s easy to get the wrong impression. But she’s not being racy; she and her husband, Illinois State Senator Kwame Raoul, have always had a rock-solid relationship. Instead, she’s referring to working in a field that she’s passionate about - the personal care service industry - while, at the same time, having her first child.
Ever since childhood, Kali wanted to be a chemist for SoftSheen-Carson. She achieved her goal in pretty short order after earning a BS in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, but quit when she became pregnant with her son Che, now 11. "I loved the job so much that I was a total workaholic and knew it was to time work less hours for more balance," she admits.
Her solution was to take a job at Kraft as a research engineer for Velveeta cheese, but it was a long commute to the company’s research center in Glenview from her Hyde Park home, and she longed to start her own personal care business. She decided to take the plunge when she was pregnant with her second child, resurrecting and refining a business plan she had written when she worked for Dudley Products in North Carolina right out of college. Her daughter Mizan, now eight, was born four weeks before she opened The Image Studios, an image communications firm and consultancy in the West Loop.
As she suspected, the business has been all-consuming. And successful - Kali has seen 15 to 40 percent growth each year. But much to her surprise, and despite the long hours, it’s also given her much more flexibility and time with her children than her previous positions did. She was able to work a split shift from 6AM to 11AM each day and go back to work from 2PM to 7PM when the kids were in pre-school and would come home for lunch then nap. And today, she is able to have them come to her office after school regularly, especially since they attend nearby Frances Xavier Ward School.
Yet there are still plenty of challenges for Kali. Her business has been holding its own in the shaky economy, but childcare is expensive and Kwame is often in Springfield. The family had a come-and-go nanny until he took office, replacing Barack Obama in the State Senate in 2004, and had to spend four days a week in the Capital. So they switched to an au pair, which actually ended up being more economical. "Come-and-go childcare costs about $20,000 to $30,000 a year once you add in the employment benefits and taxes, and the au pair program costs families only about $16,000 a year," says Kali.
Now Kali knows that concept of balance she had when her first son was born is a myth. "It’s a perpetual juggle, not a balancing act," she points out. "And the more balls you put in the air, the more likely it is something will drop." But she’s come up with a guilt-assuaging tactic: "The trick is to accept that something’s going to drop, and know which ones you really can’t let fall."
We’ve all heard the adage "the more things change, the more they stay the same."
Plenty of things have changed since women started heading back to work in the 1970s, about the time that the Equal Rights Amendment was passed in Congress and sent to the states for ratification. Ironically, it never passed; at the 1982 deadline it was still three states shy of the 38 needed to become law. Despite the defeat, women’s wages went up proportionally. In 1975, women earned 59 cents to every dollar men did. Today, that figure has risen to 77 cents, according to Anne Ladky, executive director of Women Employed in Chicago.
But other critical advances many women sought were far more personal, like getting husbands to help with the housework and kids. Back then, most women with children did not work outside the home. In 1975, eight percent of women with school age children (6-17) and 15 percent of women with children under six worked, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
I got my first professional job in the late-1970s, and back then, most of my friends - even those with medical degrees - took time off to raise their families when they had their second child. This may explain why more women with young children worked than those with school-age children in the statistics above. Today, we call the practice of taking employment breaks the "mommy track."
But many of us didn’t have the luxury of being on that track. In my own case, my income was a necessity; yet at times, it was also a wash because of childcare costs. And for me, and many of my peers, the issues of working full-time weren’t necessarily the high childcare costs. The real problem was what to do when the kids got sick…stay home, or go to work? The same thing happened with school programs. How often could we steal away from the office mid-day for assemblies and report card conferences?
Today, according to figures Women Employed culled from government data, 77 percent of all mothers with school age children (6-17) and 67 percent of all women with children under the age of six work. With such numbers, things should be easier for working moms.
That’s not necessarily so, as we can confirm after talking to a roundtable of Chicago mothers. The numbers have changed; more moms work and earn higher wages. But many fundamental issues have remained the same, from childcare to stretched schedules. Perhaps not surprisingly, over half of our moms are lucky enough to be able to rely on their own mother, or other family members, to help out. Or, they’re successful enough to be able to spend what it takes on childcare. Even Michelle Obama cleaves to this paradigm. According to myriad news accounts, her mother, Marian Robinson, 71, cared for Malia, 10, and Sasha, seven, while their parents campaigned, and has since moved to Washington, D.C. with the First Family.
Here’s how modern moms cope with work, packed schedules, childcare issues and more.
Kim Kamin, 37
"My Blackberry is my best friend," quips Kim brightly when we meet at Starbucks, where I found her scanning it for messages and emails while returning calls on her flip-phone. A wispy beauty in spare slacks and a sleek sweater set, she looks like a 20-something law student rather than a partner in the prestigious Chicago law firm Schiff Hardin LLP, where she practices estate planning. "To be efficient, you need both, since you can’t read the Blackberry and call on it at the same time," she explains.
Kim is warm, animated and always multi-tasking on both gadgets simultaneously - when not directly engaged in a face-to-face conversation. They allow her to keep up with her workload, stay in touch with clients and check in on son Grayson, now five and in kindergarten. "I work a lot," she admits. And her husband, UGL Equis real estate executive Greg Schementi, "works a lot too, and also travels."
Being a partner in a top-ranked law firm, and having a full life, is tough - and Kim has major loads in both arenas. Besides doing about 100 hours of pro-bono work yearly, she’s also an adjunct professor at Northwestern University Law School, serves on the Board of Trustees of Francis W. Parker School and is on the Professional Advisory Council of The Chicago Community Trust.
But here’s the real kicker: Grayson has severe food allergies and asthma - issues that require constant vigilance and have landed him in the hospital frequently. "We’ve spent a lot of nights at Children’s (Memorial Hospital)," Kim observes.
How does she cope? Kim has worked hard, made thoughtful life decisions and is an efficiency expert in every aspect of her life. After earning a BA from Stanford University, she came home to attend The University of Chicago Law School because "my family was here." She married Greg Schementi right out of law school (whom she met while vacationing in Hawaii), and within a year they moved to a Gold Coast townhouse across the street from her parents.
Kim joined Schiff Hardin after "shopping the legal market" and deciding it was the best place for her. "They don’t force associates to pick a practice area immediately, so I tried everything," she explains. She gravitated to estate planning. "It’s complex, stimulating and involves so many areas of the law," she explains.
Kim also planned to have Grayson at an optimal time in her career. "I wanted to master my subject matter and be well established. It’s not good to juggle a family when you’re low man on the totem pole," she observes. And since Grayson came along, Kim has arranged a work/life set-up that is exacting yet carves out together-time for mother and son. "I see him every morning, at least four nights a week and usually pick him up from school on Friday afternoons. It’s our special time together," she notes. They often consist of visits to Costco, the zoo, the nature museum, the playground or the East Bank Club, a frequent family destination for food, exercise and relaxation.
Having her parents nearby allowed Kim to hire a come-and-go nanny when Grayson was a baby. "They’re anchors for me," she says. Today, she uses a primary sitter when he’s not in school, and relies on back-up sitters and her parents for emergencies.
"Being able to keep up things at this pace is all about your support system," Kim observes, then quickly amends the comment to include one more critical point: "You have to make the most of technology." Besides mining her sidekick gadgets, she buys everything possible online to give her more precious hours with Grayson.
Julie Rodrigues Widholm, 34
"I never thought I’d leave the city and buy a house with a white picket fence," says Julie Rodrigues Widholm, admitting with a laugh that colleagues and friends have teased her about the 1939 blue cottage in Brookfield she and her husband, landscape designer Timothy Widholm, bought last spring. Given her post as the Pamela Alper Associate Curator at Chicago’s cutting edge Museum of Contemporary Art, neither can we.
But the urbane Julie, mother to Maya, three, and Miles, nine months, had good reason to move to the quaint Western suburb from a Ravenswood Manor condo. "I had my second child and we needed to be closer to my parents," she explains. "My mom watches the kids two days a week, and the trip to the city was getting to be too much."
Now three days a week her children go to a nearby nursery school that incorporates daycare into its program, and her mother comes to her home the other two days. Still, "daycare is almost as much as our mortgage," she admits. "Even though we both work full-time, we can’t afford full-time daycare." Indeed, daycare costs are hefty in Julie’s world. "The going rate for nannies is about $2,000 a month, and our school is $75 a day per child," she says. That means the couple is already spending $450 a week for childcare, which tops $23,000 a year. Plus, the move has had two silver linings for the family.
The first was expected. "I was very conflicted about Chicago Public Schools because the system is so confusing and convoluted. It takes a lot of work to get into a good one," she points out. With both Widholms working full-time, applying to many different programs and taking the risk that their children could potentially end up at different places was daunting. "My life is already complicated and busy enough. Now I know they have a good public school to go to," she reasons.
The second came as a surprise. "I find it hard to leave a job I love and switch gears every day, but find I really like going home and living this quiet, peaceful life. It’s been a nice balance," says Julie. Thanks to the proximity of her parents and the promise of good, free schools, "Now I really understand why people choose the suburbs when they have kids."
Robin Jackson, 44
Robin Jackson likes to say that her son, Austin Washington, 4, covers three bases: "He’s my first, my last and my only." The thoughtful product manager for digital map company NAVTEQ wistfully adds, "If I had a child before 40, I would have had a second one, because I love being a mother." In fact, Robin, a single mom who lives in Kenwood, is so dedicated to the role that she gave up her dream job as global marketing manager for NAVTEQ to make sure Austin has the best care possible. The position took her years to attain and involved travel to all five continents, a perk she loved. But then her mother died of heart disease last year. "She was my back-up," Robin says. "When your mom is helping you, you can go anywhere."
No longer. "I knew I couldn’t continue at that pace without her help," she explains. Robin and her partner, pharmaceutical sales executive Houston Washington, parted ways shortly after Austin was born. He lives five blocks away and helps out with Austin, but she has primary custody.
Austin goes to a tuition-based public school pre-K program that he was accepted into around the time Robin’s mother passed away, which also has a daycare component. The program is play-based, which Robin likes because he is active. But Robin make sure he gets plenty of exposure to academics, sports and the greater community, strategically seeking out programs to fill in gaps she perceives.
To fulfill the first two needs, she takes him to the Kumon Math and Reading Center in Chinatown weekly, plus karate, baseball and swimming programs at the park district and two local universities. But giving Austin a sense of belonging was harder for Robin, whose father is also deceased and three siblings are scattered and busy with their own jobs and children. Two years ago, she discovered Jack and Jill of America through friends, a national organization for African American mothers. The Windy City chapter gets together monthly and has family activities. "I’ve met other mothers and teens who can baby-sit, and Austin has met other children. It’s become a foundation for us and extended our village," explains Robin.
Yet Robin still has other hurdles to mount that are basic but challenging. They include getting Austin into a good local public school with daycare; finding the time to see her friends and exercise - without having additional babysitting expenses; and getting over her mother’s death. "I miss her. She was our rock," she says. Given the determination that has gotten her this far, ingenious solutions are sure to be forthcoming.
Stacey Kraft, 36
What do you do when your baby sitter is sick three days in a row? Or the vice versa - your child is sick and you’re at a conference out-of-town?
"(A few years ago), I was mid-way through a big three-day meeting in Los Angeles, my son, Dillon, got pretty sick, my husband was also traveling and there was no one to take him to the doctor," recalls Stacey Kraft, HR director for Hubbard One (a Thomson Reuters business). "It got too complicated," she says. "I was over-burdening too many people and I realized whatever I did wouldn’t be ideal." So she went home. In retrospect, she teases, "It passed." More seriously, she points out having a family involves "a constant struggle for balance, and I’ve come to the conclusion that you aren’t going to get that balance everyday. You have to accept that when you make a decision to be there for your kids, it may be a bad decision professionally."
Today, she has two children: Dillon, five, and Mia, two. And Stacey says the situation "hasn’t happened again recently, or maybe I’m more comfortable with it." Given the hectic yet hyper-organized life this energetic, hard-charging mother leads, we’re betting it’s the latter.
We caught up with Stacey while she was at the airport waiting for a flight to Boston, and got a whirlwind recap on her life right now. She and her husband, Chris Kraft, work for the same company, where he is senior director of product management; Chris travels much more than she does; Dillon goes to Frances Xavier Ward and Mia starts pre-kindergarten there this fall; the family is currently renovating their Lakeview condo and living with Chris’s brother and sister-in-law nearby; and they’ve had the same nanny for five years, though she had her own child a year and a half ago and brings him to work daily.
Fortunately, the couple has forged an ideal work relationship: "We come and go together, but are so busy we never talk during the day," admits Stacey. And they’re both able to put in extra hours at home after the kids are asleep, which allows them to have frequent family dinners. It doesn’t hurt that the two brother’s families are best friends, often back each other up in emergencies and have enjoyed living together the past six weeks. And most importantly, their babysitter is fantastic and the situation has worked out.
But the challenges ahead for the family are daunting. Their childcare costs are $15 an hour; for an average 50 hour work-week, that adds up to $750 a week. When both children are in school, that figure will drop, but their tuition costs will double. With their busy work schedules, it’s hard to find time to plan family vacations; for now, they take a lot of long weekends. Because Chris travels, Stacey has to handle more of the load at home. And Stacey has a bit of trepidation about the kids and school.
"I thought things would get easier when they started school, but now I’m finding there are so many things to get involved in, except I can’t," she says. "Dillon wants me to chaperone a field trip, but I have a hard enough time getting home from work at a decent hour." And there’s more: next year, homework starts. "It’s hard to fit anything else in, but I guess we’ll have to figure this one out," she concedes.
Kali Evans-Raoul, 37
"I always thought I couldn’t have an affair and start a new family at the same time," muses Kali Evans-Raoul. With her model-prefect looks and stature, it’s easy to get the wrong impression. But she’s not being racy; she and her husband, Illinois State Senator Kwame Raoul, have always had a rock-solid relationship. Instead, she’s referring to working in a field that she’s passionate about - the personal care service industry - while, at the same time, having her first child.
Ever since childhood, Kali wanted to be a chemist for SoftSheen-Carson. She achieved her goal in pretty short order after earning a BS in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, but quit when she became pregnant with her son Che, now 11. "I loved the job so much that I was a total workaholic and knew it was to time work less hours for more balance," she admits.
Her solution was to take a job at Kraft as a research engineer for Velveeta cheese, but it was a long commute to the company’s research center in Glenview from her Hyde Park home, and she longed to start her own personal care business. She decided to take the plunge when she was pregnant with her second child, resurrecting and refining a business plan she had written when she worked for Dudley Products in North Carolina right out of college. Her daughter Mizan, now eight, was born four weeks before she opened The Image Studios, an image communications firm and consultancy in the West Loop.
As she suspected, the business has been all-consuming. And successful - Kali has seen 15 to 40 percent growth each year. But much to her surprise, and despite the long hours, it’s also given her much more flexibility and time with her children than her previous positions did. She was able to work a split shift from 6AM to 11AM each day and go back to work from 2PM to 7PM when the kids were in pre-school and would come home for lunch then nap. And today, she is able to have them come to her office after school regularly, especially since they attend nearby Frances Xavier Ward School.
Yet there are still plenty of challenges for Kali. Her business has been holding its own in the shaky economy, but childcare is expensive and Kwame is often in Springfield. The family had a come-and-go nanny until he took office, replacing Barack Obama in the State Senate in 2004, and had to spend four days a week in the Capital. So they switched to an au pair, which actually ended up being more economical. "Come-and-go childcare costs about $20,000 to $30,000 a year once you add in the employment benefits and taxes, and the au pair program costs families only about $16,000 a year," says Kali.
Now Kali knows that concept of balance she had when her first son was born is a myth. "It’s a perpetual juggle, not a balancing act," she points out. "And the more balls you put in the air, the more likely it is something will drop." But she’s come up with a guilt-assuaging tactic: "The trick is to accept that something’s going to drop, and know which ones you really can’t let fall."
Kelly Redmond, 40
Kelly Redmond is an activist at heart, which help explains why she’s now the director of operations at the Institute for Diversity in Health Management at the American Hospital Association after careers in journalism, politics and marketing. She was drawn to the calling in college at Drake University, when she signed up for a meeting with the school’s president to bend his ear about the deplorable state of the Black Cultural Center on campus. By the time she graduated, there were diversity training programs on campus and she was the first student to do complete a minor in race relations.
But it took Kelly a while to ‘come home’ to the calling, ironically in her hometown of Chicago. Before that, she had a series of jobs in Cincinnati, Atlanta and finally Racine, when she had daughter Jada Elise seven years ago. At the time, she was just starting a new job at SC Johnson, dealing with a crumbling marriage and having a baby. She managed to make it work for two years, grateful for the great corporate childcare center, but tired, budget-crunched and lonely. "I worked long hours and had a newborn baby," she says. "The daycare was awesome, but still about $900 a month. And I was getting divorced and felt isolated from my support system."
When her father, who had congestive heart failure, took a turn for the worse in 2002, she packed up and moved back to the home where she was raised in Hyde Park to help with his care, and worked as an independent consultant. Her parents helped care for Jada, who started pre-school when she was three. In January 2008, Kelly got an offer from the Institute that she couldn’t refuse; the job was a perfect match. And living near her mother has made it possible for her to go back to work full-time, using the childcare option at Jada’s current school, Frances Xavier Ward (where Kelly went in its former incarnation as Cathedral High School). After-school care "is pricey, but it works," she explains. "And I’ve tried the formal childcare route with agencies and baby sitters, and haven’t had much luck. So my mother and friends help me out."
And ever the activist, Kelly started a local support group for single parents called Strength, in 2003, which meets at members’ homes. She is also very active in her Woodlawn church, where she serves with the choir and is a charter member of the youth advisory council. For now, Kelly reports she feels grateful to have achieved a good balance of work, family and personal life.
Diane Primo, 53
One thing sticks in Diane Primo’s mind about her first maternity leave 12 years ago from Ameritech when her daughter, Franchesca, was born. "I remember thinking, ‘Why do these people keep calling me?’" she recalls. It turns out they were promoting her to president of product management for the whole company. At the time, she and her husband, Quintin Primo, lived downtown, close to Capri Capital, the real estate investment company he founded. Her office was in Hoffman Estates. "The two hour commute each way was killing me," she admits. "They were all taking bets in the office about how long I would work after I had the baby."
She showed them. "We moved to Barrington Hills, which cut down my travel time to 15 minutes," says this whip-smart mom, admitting mischievously, "Now Quintin has the long commute."
Since that time, Diane has had two other significant jobs, first as CEO of a start-up that was acquired by ServiceMaster, and then as chief marketing officer for CDW. Her family has grown with the births of two more children at five year intervals: Quintin, now seven; and Reid Preston, now three. And the family has moved to a rambling Lake Forest home. "Quintin commutes," she laughs.
But the anecdote illustrates a steely can-do resolve that has kept her perennially employed in challenging positions, and perennially on top of the working mother routine.
One of the luxuries success has brought is excellent childcare, and Diane has always opted for a live-in nanny. "It’s more cost-effective if you have the space," she says, as this arrangement maximizes a resource some families already have in place. She has relied on professional services such as www.nannies4hire.com and www.4nannies.com, and says salaries can range widely. Options run from $450 to $1,000 a week. "Structure your deal based on the going rates in your area," she advises. "I’ve found it best to pay a bit above that number," a tactic to decrease turnover. Yet her mom also helped out the first year of Franchesca’s life, when Diane was dealing with that dreadful commute. "It’s ideal to have your mother, but her health started failing and my sister takes care of her," she says.
Today she is busier than ever with three gigs. The first is executive advisor to Capri Capital; the second is co-chairman of the Primo Center for Women and Children in West Garfield, an interim housing program for mothers and their children that was founded by her father-in-law, Chicago’s Episcopal Bishop Quintin Primo Jr.; and the third is as CEO of Hope’s Chance a new social enterprise that will devote 50 percent of its profits to homeless mothers and children. For this last project, she has two partners - Deronda Williams and Anne McAveeney - and reports that it’s consuming most of her time right now as Michael’s Chance, the company’s first product line, debuts this month.
Clearly, Diane has no time to waste, and she doesn’t. Given her soignée personal appearance and accomplishments, it’s easy to wonder how she keeps up. "You have to plan your kid’s schedules and time together just like you do your business," she confides. "As they get older, it gets more complicated." Her solution? See our tips below.
Chicago writer Lisa Skolnik has four children.
Tips from the Front Lines
Here are some tips worth sharing from our moms.
Kim Kamin
*Find a special time with your child each day, and each week, that is sacred, and make it part of your family’s routine.
*Try to reduce your commute or have a work-at-home option. Even sporadic working days at home help for doctor appointments, school performances and sporting events.
*Maximize time with technology (from smartphones to laptops to keep up with messages); the Internet to buy supplies and staples (especially diapers); and pick-up and delivery services for groceries, dry cleaning and more.
Julie Rodrigues Wildholm
* Belong to an online/virtual mom’s group. If you work long hours, it gives you a way to set up play dates. If you have questions, someone is always available to give advice/support. That way you can use the cumulative knowledge of real moms to figure things out. Or if you are new to an area, it can be helpful to navigate your way in a new community.
Robin Jackson
*Enjoy all your time together; play games, read books, take walks and talk about your childhood. My son finds it so interesting that I was a child once.
*Keep them active. Put them in various programs to see what they like and what they are good at.
*Remember to be a parent; balance the yes’s and no’s; and don’t buy a toy every time you go to the store. I teach my son to save change to buy something on his own.
Stacey Kraft
*Take a family vacation - trying to do it all every day is flat out exhausting. A week off with your family away from work and home is great for your sanity and soul.
*Find other working moms in your company that you can learn/seek advice from.
*Focus on the quality (not quantity) of time that you spend with your kids. Twenty minutes may be just as valuable as two hours if you spend the time together in a quality way.
*Don’t forget about you - if you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t be able to take care of your kids/family. Kids take their cues from you; if you’re happy, chances are, they will be, too.
Kali Evans-Raoul
*Stay spiritually grounded. I try to begin and end each day with meditation for direction. And have faith that the sum of the parts will take care of the gap between "your best" and "perfection." *It’s not a balancing act, it’s a juggling act. Accept imperfection and expect a ball to drop occasionally. Don’t beat yourself up about it. *Delegate and ask for help! Most of us are not good at this and need to grow in this area. I try to find creative ways to delegate responsibilitiesKelly Redmond
*You have to take care of yourself, or you can’t take care of your child. It’s the analogy of putting on your own oxygen mask first if the plane is in trouble.
*Find the right organization to work for, the right person to report to and the right benefits.
*Get involved with the charitable and volunteer organizations of your company. It allows you to give back to your community with the help of your employer.
Diane Primo
*Plan your kid’s schedules and time together; as they get older, it gets more complicated and you don’t want to risk missing something important like the assembly at school everyone else’s mother attended. Overlay their schedule on yours.
*Have a contract with your childcare giver, and give them reviews. You are contracting a service, and don’t want misunderstandings or tension. You want them to understand your expectations, and vice versa, so spell them out from the start.
*Tell your children you love them every time you talk to them. Just keep doing it because you never know what can or will happen.