Leadership Begins at Home, Part 3

If You've Raised Kids, You Can Manage Anything
by Ann Crittenden

(Page 3 of 6)

Those are the big lessons learned; the major insights the parents I interviewed said they had gained. Obviously not all parents learn all these lessons, and some parents may not learn any. This isn't about people who simply have babies; it's about the people who conscientiously raise children. And even conscientious parents are not necessarily equipped to take on serious managerial responsibilities - although many are.

Nor do I want to claim that the only way to acquire these life skills is by having children. These lessons can be learned from any number of profound personal experiences, including serious illnesses and other crises that put one in touch with one's deepest self. As a rabbi I interviewed eloquently put it, "I don't want anything I say to be construed to imply that those who are not parents don't have access to the same lessons I've learned from my children. You can learn this wisdom as an older sibling caring for a younger, or as an aunt or godmother or stepfather, or by caring for a sick parent, or simply by growing older. Parents don't have a monopoly on the lessons learned from caring for others."12 I couldn't agree more.

So, let's just stipulate at the outset that this book is not about glorifying motherhood per se, or reconceptualizing leadership as maternal or parental behavior. It is really a book about people who believe that children did make a positive difference in the way they conduct their work lives, recognizing that this is not everyone's experience.

Above all, this book is simply about giving credit where credit is due. As the Wellesley study put it, "Crediting good mothering with leadership qualities has been overdue."

A final section examines how far we've come in recognizing parenting as relevant work experience. The answer is important to the millions of women whose primary job is raising their kids, but who will be reentering the work force in the future. A recent article in the New York Times Magazine warned that "...[i]t is unclear what women like these will be able to go back to. This is the hot button of the work-life debate at the moment.... For all the change happening in the office, the challenge of returning workers - those who opted out completely, and those who ratcheted back - is barely even starting to be addressed."14 This book addresses that question of re-entry.

On the one hand, there is a growing recognition that a so-called female or benevolent management style is highly effective, and the beginnings of an inkling that the skills associated with that style are very similar to parenting skills. "There is an awakening," says Martha Brest, "but it's been long in coming. It should have happened years ago."

On the other hand, most employers still don't take child-rearing experience seriously. When I was working on this book and told people what it was about, their first reaction was to laugh. Their second take was often, "Oh! It's so true! " So why the laugh? What's so funny?

Why does the notion persist that the job of raising children is easy, unskilled, and not even real work? Why do we have management books gleaning lessons of leadership from whale trainers, Winnie the Pooh, even Jesus Christ, and not one book on the teachings of Mom, our original leader, guide, and mentor? Why do employers assume your brain goes on holiday when you take time out for children? (I spotted this headline in the Daily Telegraph in London: BOSS SAYS MOTHERHOOD TURNS WOMEN'S BRAINS INTO JELLY.)

And why, when you mention you've been a stay-at-home mom or dad to a job interviewer, do you run the risk of ridicule?

A few years ago, I was on a search committee charged with selecting a new executive director of an environmental organization. One highly qualified man had a so-called mother's resume. He had been out of the job market for seven years as a stay-at-home father of three children. In that period he had also served on a school's board of directors, and worked on at least four grassroots environmental campaigns. I thought he sounded like a credible candidate, but a male member of our committee, looking over his resume, snickered, "A househusband." We didn't even interview the guy.

In the end, we gave the job to a woman who had more than fifteen years of uninterrupted experience as an officer at a major environmental organization. She had two school-aged children who were never mentioned during the interview process. We pretended that she had a surrogate wife to take care of that side of life, and we took it for granted that her experience as a parent was utterly unrelated to her ability to run an organization.

Several months after she was hired, she told me that she had learned many of her management skills in a Parent Effectiveness Training course. She had wisely left that out of her resume.

Research has revealed a significant cognitive bias against housewives that apparently extends to men who spend any time raising children. This bias - that those who care for children are close to incompetent - is so strong that it can rear its ugly head in the most unlikely situations. Nancy Segal, a former Senate staffer and an expert on discrimination against parents in the workplace, in 2003 applied for a job at the Labor Department. The man conducting the interview asked her if she was good at juggling different projects, handling interruptions, and the like.

"Are you kidding?" she blurted out. "I'm the mother of two kids!" Oops. She immediately realized that was the wrong answer.

"Now that you bring it up," the clueless bureaucrat continued, "and I hesitate to say this considering the kind of work you do, but do you really think you can handle this job?"

Segal was momentarily speechless. She recovered enough to assure him that she was up to the task, and she was eventually offered the job. She didn't take it.

The persistence of these negative stereotypes poses a real dilemma for women and men who want to be active parents. We look at some of the ways mothers have handled this dilemma, particularly the tricky question of whether to put child-rearing on a resume.

Finally, the book summarizes two of the more interesting and unexpected findings that came out of my research. As someone who has written about the obstacles confronting mothers in the workplace, I was pleasantly surprised to discover just how many mothers have managed to combine engaged parenting with a highly successful career. I found mothers at the top of every kind of institution, from defense contractors to the National Science Foundation, and in every profession, from movie production to the ministry. Moreover, I learned that high-achieving women are no less likely to be married and have children than the average full-time working woman.

Secondly, the presence of all these mothers in high places is already changing the workplace. The language of power is definitely changing, to include metaphors based on childbirth and children's books. Talking about one's children in the office is no longer a liability, but can even be an asset, according to several female executives.

I also heard numerous stories describing how mothers at the top of organizations have made them more congenial places for parents to work. I predict that we will see more of this as women come to run institutions, as opposed to being merely high-ranking females in male-dominated environments.

This is not to say that mothers are or will be any nicer or more caring or better managers than anyone else as they come into their own. As Marjorie Scardino, CEO of Pearson PLC, observed, at a conference for women in business several years ago, "We've all seen difficult, authoritarian women running organizations and feeling, participatory, collegial inclusive men. We musn't fall into stereotypical thinking." I whole- heartedly agree.

But one thing, it seems to me, is very clear. When mothers and others with different life experiences attain leadership positions, they introduce new ideas, find new ways of doing things, and discover innovative solutions to problems that no one even realized were problems before. In the stories I heard, mothers and involved fathers were introducing change, from a better-designed diaper to a more creative way of managing engineers to a fresh way of thinking about international "relationships." They were expanding our human repertoire. For that reason, acknowledging their skills, listening to their voices, and heeding their wisdom will enrich us all.

Copyright © 2005 Ann Crittenden

About the Author

Ann Crittenden is an award-winning journalist and the author of three previous books, including The Price of Motherhood, a New York Times Notable Book of 2001. Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, she has written for Fortune, The New York Times, Newsweek, and many other national publications. She lectures before dozens of diverse organizations each year and is on the board of the International Center for Research on Women.