Voices
sing Barry Manilow nonstop
while bouncing on one foot while
your hip is pressed against the
dryer. (Hypothetically.)
That sometimes happens at
about two months. How old is Macallister again?
We are not saying this will happen to you. We don’t wish you any
problems, just as we don’t really
wish bad things for the woman in
Mommy and Me whose jeans are a
size smaller than before she gave
birth. It would be petty of us to
hold that against anyone.
It’s not your fault you are one of
the lucky ones. You already knew
that about yourself — that’s why
you were so sure you could work
through a maternity leave so short
that many other new mothers
wouldn’t have enough time to take
a shower. After all, being extraordinary is what got you where you are.
That worries those of us who
are just ordinary, because it’s not
just the women for whom work and
motherhood is “easy” who should
have a shot at the top. It’s the women for whom it is messy, and daunting, and hard. Women who need
more than two weeks of maternity
leave. Who are dynamite at what
they do, but who don’t necessarily take the rocket-powered route
LISA
BELKIN
HUFFINGTON
12.09.12
toward doing it, because they work
for companies who understand that
careers don’t have to be linear.
Yes, we understand this is partly our fault. You didn’t ask us to
watch your every move. You never
declared yourself the standard in
working mommydom.
It’s just that we don’t have a
lot of other pregnant Fortune 500
superstars to look to, so we held
you up as a role model, and now
Putting ‘baby’ and ‘easy’
in the same sentence makes
us feel (more) inadequate;
starts us wondering (again)
what we are doing wrong.”
we worry that you’re modeling the
wrong thing. When there are dozens more of you, we will probably
stop paying attention.
Until then, you said you’ve decided to stop telling us quite so
much. “I haven’t been talking,”
you said, of how you juggle life
and work, “and I’m going to go
back to not talking.”
That will probably be best.
But should that boy get colicky,
we would be more than happy to give you some advice.