Last year it was the "opt-out" myth, and this year the story is about opting back in. Both tales defy the hard evidence.In recent years the media has obsessed over a storyline about highly educated mothers "opting out" of employment. These stories are not only wrong -- the reality is that there is no increase in recent years in women, even women with advanced degrees, choosing to be stay-at-home mothers over working mothers -- they also imply that most mothers have a choice to work or not. This couldn't be further from the truth. Wives typically bring home a third of their family's income and single mothers often have no option but to work. While the choices of professional upper-class women might be interesting to read about, they certainly are not representative of the economic reality facing the majority of families.
But there is another serious problem with the media's fixation with the opt-out myth: Most stories on opt-out mothers gloss over the difficulties that many women have getting back into the job market after taking time out. It does a grave disservice to women to tell them that it's easy to transition back into work when it isn't. When reality hits and they can't find someone to hire them for a suitable job -- one that might offer the flexibility or part-time hours or whatever they need to balance their job with their life -- they may feel that it's all their fault. But really, is it?
Recently, a couple of stories have appeared arguing that it's actually not that hard to get back into the work force, especially now that employers are supposedly making it easy for women to balance work and family. Lisa Belkin writes in the New York Times ($$) that there is a "growing acceptance" of nonlinear careers and that corporations are developing new, innovative strategies to lure opt-out Moms back into jobs. And Leslie Morgan Steiner, the author of Mommy Wars, told Newsweek that in her research, she "did not find a single college-educated, aged 35 to 55, home with kids for three to 10 years -- who had significant trouble returning to full-time work."
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