Working Moms

Dear Byron,

These days you get up around 6:00 a.m. to leave with your parents for the child care center near your Daddy's office. The place is called Bright Horizons. It is connected with Chevron Corp. and available to all the parents who work there, people like your Daddy. You spend your day there while Mommy and Daddy are at work in downtown Houston. Here at our house we don't see you again until sometime after 6:00 p.m. in the evening.

When you get back you are hungry, but happy. From the written report Bright Horizons gives to your Mommy and Daddy, it looks like you have a full day playing with the other kids your age, eating your snacks and lunch, playing in the sandbox and riding around on the stroller outside. Mommy and Daddy tell us that they feel you are learning lots of things. Already we can tell that you are about to walk. You love to hold our hands and try that skill at our house as well.

These days we're getting ready to elect the next President of the United States. As the candidates tell their stories and share their ideas, one of the much discussed topics is moms like yours who work outside the home. Believe me, there are many, many mommies who do. The U.S. census estimates that there are well over 85 million. That's better than half of the mommies.

Here's what one study reports about working moms:

American working mothers spend one hour and 34 minutes on 'primary' childcare each day, including feeding their children, helping them with homework and changing diapers. They still spend far more time on childcare than their counterparts in Japan and South Korea, who manage only 53 and 31 minutes respectively, and slightly more than British working mothers, at 81 minutes. 

American fathers spend more time each day looking after their children than nearly any country in the developed world, new research suggests. But before any dads get too excited, they look positively lazy next to the nation’s mothers.

And here's some surprising news.

800,000 more women than men were on payrolls in January 2010


The milestone has at last been cleared: More women than men were on payrolls in January 2010, according to US Labor Department statistics for the month. That month, there were 64.2 million women receiving a paycheck compared with 63.4 million men.

That's quite a huge change from when I was growing up, Byron. Of course I grew up on a farm where my Mommy worked very hard from morning to night. Its just that she didn't leave the farm. Instead she had over a hundred chickens to feed, her own big garden out back, all the washing and ironing for us kids, my Daddy and the hired men and the task of making the meals. As I remember it, she hardly rested at all from the time she got up around 6:00 a.m. until she fell into bed around 9:30 in the evening.

According to the 1930 census almost eleven million women, or 24.3 percent of all women in the country, were gainfully employed. Three out of every ten of these working women were in domestic or personal service. Of professional women three-quarters were schoolteachers or nurses.

As you can see, things have really changed. There is lots of talk about whether this is good or bad. There is no one answer to that question. One thing is certain in your case, Byron. Your Mommy and Daddy really love you and they are going to do everything they can to see that you are cared for in the right way as you grow up.

We all love you very much,

GGPa