Working Mothers Feel Double Demands

You can hear the frustration in Joyce Curry’s voice.

“I feel really stretched,” said Curry, a ‘90s kind of mom who seems to do it all.

She teaches sociology classes three mornings a week, then runs home to put in a couple of hours of secretarial duties for her lawyer husband.

In between, Curry runs her own business. She assists clients who need help choosing a school for their children. She also teaches parenting skills and runs workshops on family-related issues.

Then she’s responsible for getting her three children to school on time, goes grocery shopping, does the laundry, cooks the food, drives the kids to their social events, coordinates three sets of soccer schedules and runs a Girl Scout troop.

“I don’t have enough time to get everything done,” Curry said.

Consequently, Curry said her own business suffers.

“I need to spend at least four hours a day on it but I don’t have four hours a day.”

It’s hard to focus, too, when so many things are going on, she said.

“I sit down to do something related to my business and the phone rings for my husband. It interrupts my whole train of thought,” she said, adding that it’s hard to get back to thinking creatively.

Call it the working mom’s lament.

That sense of helplessness so many working mothers feel is not very different from the way factory workers felt in the early 1950s when employees spent all day doing just one task, said Ida L. Castro, director-designate of the Women’s Bureau, which is part of the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington.

Factory workers, for example, would insert screws into machine after machine rolling down the assembly line, Castro said. They didn’t have control over the product - they just had control over that one screw - and they felt impotent.

That left factory workers feeling exhausted and stressed - much like working mothers feel today, she said.

Working mothers who get caught in the squeeze often find they don’t have time for much more than working and tending to their children.

Tali Blumrosen divides most of her time between her public relations job and her two children.

“I give my time to my work and children but I’m also a daughter, a sister, an aunt and a friend,” Blumrosen said. Not to mention a wife.

“You always feel torn,” Blumrosen said. “You want to give 100 percent everywhere but there are days when that’s not possible.”

But she tries hard, concentrating at whatever she’s doing so she can do the best at work and at home.

“When I’m at work, I’m at work,” Blumrosen said. “When I’m with the kids, I’m devoted to them.”

Blumrosen feels fulfilled at the end of the day, despite the problems of juggling so many demands on her time. She said it helps to have priorities firmly in place so she doesn’t become unfocused.

One of the hardest things in balancing work with family is finding time for herself. Many days, her only solitude is in the car going from place to place.

On the rare moments when she gets a few extra minutes alone, she reads a magazine or takes a walk.

“But when I have it, I feel guilty.”

Blumrosen is lucky because she has a live-in housekeeper.

Many working moms have just themselves - or if they’re lucky, a mother nearby to pick up the slack when it seems impossible to juggle kids and work.

L.M. Sixel can receive e-mail at lm.sixel@chron.com. Or to voice comments, call (713) 220-2000 and dial in code 1002.

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