Happy Mothers Day — to all of you who meet that description. Even those of you who do not, it is likely that one day you will, so this is also for you.
Motherhood is a source of great pride no matter who you are, but it takes on a slightly different meaning when you are also a working mother. It is those of you, the working mothers, that I think of today, on the heals of Mother’s Day.
Being a woman who works has taken on much greater significance in recent years. According to an article in Politico, women make up nearly half the country’s workers. Women are the heads of almost 15 million households in America, and women serve as both the primary caregivers and sole or co-breadwinners for two-thirds of our country’s families. Those are mind boggling numbers when you compare them to the situation just twenty years ago before we even had a thing called the Family and Medical Leave Act to protect women in the workplace in their quest to have both family lives and work lives.
You know by now that my mission is to keep women lawyers in practice—one way or another—for their own personal benefit and for the benefit of the legal profession. I believe that most women lawyers desire to continue to practice even after they have family and childcare responsibilities IF they can work out some suitable way to do that. The IF is a big contingency, and it is often the deal breaker. Accomplishing the IF often depends on the availability of part-time practice and other alternative work schedules, willing management and law firm leadership, who can see the long-range benefits of retaining talent, and life partners, who share the responsibilities of home and family. Those can be big IFs.
And, even if a suitable arrangement can be found, it is not easy. You all know this if you have read my book, Best Friends at the Bar: What Women Need to Know about a Career in the Law, or if you have experienced it yourself or have been close to someone who has. The years of caring for a young family while maintaining some degree of professional involvement are very challenging, and it really does not become perfectly clear until it is your challenge. It is hard to explain just how tired you are after staying up all night with a sick child and going to work the next day. It is hard to explain how fragmented your life feels when you are being pulled in so many different directions. It is hard to explain the types of choices you have to make that nearly break your heart. These are the realities of a working mom, especially a working lawyer mom.
However, you also know that it gets easier over time. Children grow up. What was barely possible at one time in your life becomes much more realistic. Circumstances change.
However, the one thing that does not change is who you are. You are a lawyer. You are a mother. You are a working woman. You are a working woman-lawyer-mom. In essence, you are very versatile and many things to many people. AND you should be wildly proud of that.
So, celebrate yourselves and each other. Please know how much we value you. Please know that every day is Mother’s Day for you!
