Coveting Not a Corner Office, but Time at Home

Ms. Uttech, like many working mothers, is a married college graduate, and her job running member communications for an agricultural association helps put her family near the middle of the nation’s income curve. And like dozens of other middle-class working mothers interviewed about their work and family lives, she finds climbing a career ladder less of a concern than finding a position that offers paid sick leave, flexible scheduling or even the opportunity to work fewer hours. The ultimate luxury for some of them, in fact (though not for Ms. Uttech), would be the option to be a stay-at-home mother.

“I never miss a baseball game,” said Ms. Uttech, uttering a statement that is a fantasy for millions of working mothers (and fathers) nationwide. (This attendance record is even more impressive when you realize that her children play in upward of six a week.)

Ms. Uttech wants a rewarding career, but more than that she wants a flexible one. That ranking of priorities is not necessarily the one underlying best-selling books like Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In,” which advises women to seek out leadership positions, throw themselves at their careers, find a partner who helps with child care and supports their ambition, and negotiate for raises and promotions.

Ms. Uttech has done some of those things, and plans to do more as her children (two sons, ages 8 and 10, and a 15-year-old stepdaughter) grow older. Already she has been raising her hand to travel more for trade shows and conferences; last year she made four trips.

But probably the career move she is proudest of — and the one she advocates the most — is asking her boss to let her work from home on Fridays.

“People have said to me, ‘It’s not fair that you get to work from home! I want to work from home,’ ” she said. “And I say, ‘Well, have you asked?’ And they’re like, ‘No, no, I could never do that. My boss would never go for it.’ So I say, ‘Well you should ask, and you shouldn’t hold it against me that I did.’ ”

Not everyone aspires to be an executive at Facebook, like Ms. Sandberg, or to set foreign policy, like Anne-Marie Slaughter (a former State Department official and another prominent commentator on what’s holding women back in the workplace), especially when the children are young. Unaccounted for in the latest books offering leadership strategies by and for elite women is the fact that only 37 percent of working women (and 44 percent of working men) say they actually want a job with more responsibilities, according to a survey from the Families and Work Institute. And among all mothers with children under 18, just a quarter say they would choose full-time work if money were no object and they were free to do whatever they wanted, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll.

By comparison, about half of mothers in the United States are actually working full time, indicating that there are a lot out there logging many more hours than they want to be.

Up Early, Always Moving

Ms. Uttech, a trim, chipper 42-year-old with short brown hair and a communications degree from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, has worked for the Alliance of Crop, Soil and Environmental Science Societies for about 11 years. She has also become an increasingly important breadwinner to her family, particularly in the years since the housing bust battered her husband’s construction business. She doesn’t have access to nannies, in-office nurseries, personal assistants or drivers, so she has had to be resourceful to financially support her family while still doing everything that is important to her as a parent.

Step 1 was to help persuade her children’s school to start an affordable after-school program ($2.50 per half-hour for the first child; $1.25 per half-hour for each additional sibling), which allowed her to continue working full time rather than dart out for pickup by 3:15, or pay to have them bused to a day care center across town.

Step 2 has been to just be really, really productive in her hours both inside and outside the office.

On a recent Tuesday, which she said was broadly representative of most workdays, she rose at 5:45 a.m. and did a load of laundry before everyone else awoke. Soon she was wielding the hair dryer in one hand and a son’s permission slip in the other; running to the kitchen to pack lunches and help one of her sons make dirt cups (pudding and Oreo crumble) as part of a book report presentation; and then driving the children to school at 7:15 a.m. before commencing her 40-minute commute to the office, where she arrives a little after 8. She heads back out — often directly to the baseball diamond — at 4:30 p.m.

On Sundays, she teaches at her church, and then prepares most of the meals for rest of the week, making great use of two wonders of modern cookery: the slow cooker and the freezer.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/08/business/coveting-not-a-corner-office-but-time-at-home.html?partner=rss&emc=rss