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Week in the Life of a Working Mom: Family Law Attorney in Minnesota

06/21/2018 by Guest Poster 23 Comments

For this week’s installment of our Week in the Life of a Working Mom series, I’m happy to introduce CorporetteMoms reader C, who lives in Minnesota with her husband and three kids and works as a family law attorney. Our usual caveat applies: Please remember that this is is a real person who has feelings and isn’t gaining anything from this, unlike your usual friendly (soul-deadened, thick-skinned, cold-hearted, money-grubbing) blogger — so please be kind with any comments. Thank you! – Kat

If you’d like to be featured (anonymously or otherwise), please fill out this form! You can see all posts in this series here.

First, Some Basics About This Working Mom…

Name: C
Location: live and work in outer-ring Twin Cities suburb
Job: family law attorney for small town firm
Age: 34
Home Situation:

My husband is a middle school guidance counselor in the town we live in, who just completed his administration license to become a principal and is currently writing his dissertation to complete his doctorate in educational leadership. We have three kids, a 5-year-old boy who is starting kindergarten in the fall, a 3-year-old girl who is starting preschool in the fall, and a 5-month-old boy. We live in the same neighborhood as my family — my mom and dad, sisters and their husbands and children, my brother and his children, two grandmothers, and many aunts, uncles, and cousins and their children. We are a very close family that support each other endlessly. My father has been an attorney in town for 36 years and my mom is a newly retired autism specialist for a local school district, who is now busier than ever consulting for school districts across the state.

Childcare Situation:

During the summer, my children stay home with my husband (yay school hours!) and during the school year, I bring them to my older sister’s house at 8:00 a.m. and my husband picks them up at 5:00 p.m. I work from home on Fridays year round and keep the kids home with me to save on childcare costs. We pay about $1,600 per month for four days of childcare a week, then another $150 per month for private preschool.

A Week in My Life

Family Vacations and Coworker Jealousy

06/12/2018 by Kat 45 Comments

Here’s what is perhaps an odd question: Do you ever feel like there is coworker jealousy surrounding your family vacations? What are your best tips for how to take family vacations without instilling coworker jealousy? (AND: How many “buffer” days to you take off to prepare/recover from your family vacation?)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a vacation with kids is a trip — not a vacation! Still, as we’ve talked about before, many parents schedule regular family vacations, which means it may “feel” to coworkers like you’re going on lots of “fun trips.” (I vaguely remember feeling like this when I was a single girl working in BigLaw — and I think there’s definitely a difference to be made in “messaging” around the vacation.) Furthermore, because you may already know the upcoming dates and schedules for school and so forth, you may book the vacation and have it calendared FAR in advance — and that may make coworkers feel like you’re “taking” the best vacation dates.

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Filed Under: Career, Family Travel Tagged With: family vacations, posts, vacations

Do You Let Your Kids Play With Water Guns (or, What Toys Don’t You Let Your Kids Play With?)?

06/07/2018 by Kate Antoniades 43 Comments

It’s the season for outdoor water fun — swimming, running through sprinklers, etc. — so we thought it would be a good time to ask: Do you let your kids play with water guns and other toy weapons, such as Nerf guns? For his birthday last year, my son got one of those giant, Super Soaker-type of water guns (from a classmate), and this year for his birthday he received a Nerf gun (also from a friend — not us). He’s been asking for a Nerf gun for a long time and was so excited to get one. The kids’ parents didn’t know that we hadn’t given him any toy guns (I’m not a big fan), and in the end, we’ve let him play with the gifts (although we do have rules, such as “Don’t ever aim them at people or animals”).

If you want to keep your kids away from toy guns, a total ban seems impossible. If you prohibit them from playing with water guns and other weapon-like toys, won’t they just go and use them at a friend’s house and/or get invited to a “Nerf Wars” type of party for a friend’s birthday? (My son, who’s in primary school, has gone to two so far.) Or does it make a difference if you personally show your disapproval? Some parents just give up and go along with with the (stereotypical) reasoning that “Boys will turn anything into a gun anyway.” If we give our kids water guns and so on, should that enter at all into our conversations with them about, for example, why their school has lockdown drills? Do kids really look at violence or guns any differently when they play with toy guns.

I’ll admit that I haven’t been motivated enough to do any Googling about the effects of playing with toy guns, and whether my uneasiness is warranted — and when I finally did, er, today, I learned that research hasn’t found a link between violent play as a child and violent behavior as an adult. Many studies have drawn conclusions like that of this one, as summarized by Slate: “[W]hen kids incorporate violence into their pretend play, they may learn how to control real violent impulses and regulate their emotions.”

So, do tell: Do you let your kids play with water guns and other toy weapons? If not, why — and if so, what are your ground rules (and the conversations you’ve had with your kids about them)? Have you bought things like water guns or Nerf guns for your kids’ friends? If you prohibit toy guns at home and your child receives one as a gift (or gets one in a party favor bag) what do you do, and how do you explain it to your child?

Week in the Life of a Working Mom: Contract Negotiator in the Midwest

05/31/2018 by Guest Poster 13 Comments

For this week’s installment of our Week in the Life of a Working Mom series, I’m happy to introduce CorporetteMoms reader Lala, who lives in the Midwest with her husband and two sons and works as a contract negotiator. Our usual caveat applies: Please remember that this is is a real person who has feelings and isn’t gaining anything from this, unlike your usual friendly (soul-deadened, thick-skinned, cold-hearted, money-grubbing) blogger — so please be kind with any comments. Thank you! – Kat

If you’d like to be featured (anonymously or otherwise), please fill out this form! You can see all posts in this series here.

First, Some Basics About This Working Mom…

Name: Lala
Location: MCOL town in the Midwest
Job: contract negotiator at a large company
Age: 31
Home Situation: I live in a 1,800-square-foot, 3-bedroom/2-bath house with my husband (35-year-old programmer), our sons P (3 yrs. 11 mos.) and J (1 yr. 8 mos.), and our large dog. The kids share a room.
Childcare Situation: full-time daycare center, $2,300 per month

A Week in My Life

The Best Maternity Dresses for Work

05/24/2018 by Kate Antoniades 9 Comments

If you’re far enough along in your pregnancy that you’ve outgrown your regular-sized, old-standby work dresses and have realized you need to expand your maternity work wardrobe to actual maternity wear, fear not — today we’re rounding up the best maternity sheath dresses for work, many of which we’ve included over the years in our regular maternity workwear recommendations. We’re featuring options from the more affordable end of the spectrum (a possible strategy if you’re planning to be one-and-done) to higher-quality maternity dresses that will last you through two or three (or more) pregnancies.

What are your favorite maternity dresses for work? Do you ever choose double-duty styles that are meant for pregnancy and nursing? When you buy maternity dresses, do you tend to buy a few that are higher-quality or buy a bunch of less expensive ones? (Does it depend on how many kids you plan to have?) Which of your “regular” dresses have been particularly pregnancy-friendly? What do you think are the best maternity dresses for work?

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Filed Under: Fashion for Working Moms, Maternity, Pregnant Professional Style Tagged With: posts

Week in the Life of a Working Mom: Business Manager in Boston

05/17/2018 by Guest Poster 25 Comments

For this week’s installment of our Week in the Life of a Working Mom series, I’m happy to introduce CorporetteMoms reader K, who lives in the Boston suburbs with her husband and son and works as a business manager in tech. Our usual caveat applies: Please remember that this is is a real person who has feelings and isn’t gaining anything from this, unlike your usual friendly (soul-deadened, thick-skinned, cold-hearted, money-grubbing) blogger — so please be kind with any comments. Thank you! – Kat

If you’d like to be featured (anonymously or otherwise), please fill out this form! You can see all posts in this series here.

First, Some Basics About This Working Mom…

Name: K
Location: Lives and works in a Boston suburb
Job: Business manager in tech
Age: 32
Hours worked in a typical week: 35–44
Home Situation: I live in a 2,500-square-foot house with my husband (engineer in biotech); our 9-month old son, C; and our cat.
Childcare Situation: $1,200/month. We have a unicorn childcare situation: a licensed, in-home provider in our neighborhood who watches C and two other babies his same age. It is essentially a nanny share, but at a fraction of the cost.

We asked K about how she arrived at her “unicorn” arrangement for childcare:

Mostly by luck, sorry to say, there is no magic secret. We toured several big-name centers, one independent center, and two in-home providers — in our area there is no shortage. I do recommend checking with your state’s child care licensing agency when looking for in-home providers, because many do not advertise. That’s how we found ours, but it was purely luck that all her kids were “graduating” to pre-K and she was starting with two other babies C’s age. And because of mandated ratios, she can’t take any more kids right now. We also got lucky that we click really well with the other families and the kids all have similar temperaments.