working mothers

How would you feel if your company inquired about your plans to have more children? Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, believes that an open dialogue about family life between employees and their employers should exist and would lessen the gender gap in the workplace. Sandberg, a 43-year-old mother of two, spoke at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, sharing her personal experience with gender inequity in the workplace and how avoiding the topic only leads to increased discrimination on both open and covert levels.

At one point during the talk, Sandberg asked the men in the audience with children to raise their hands if their working was a topic that had ever been questioned. Not a single hand went up, a contrast to the many that were raised when the same question was asked of the women in the room. "Think of it like a marathon," Sandberg said. "Everyone's cheering the men on. The messages for women are different: Are you sure you want to run? Don't you want to run? Don't you have kids at home?"

Sandberg's belief is that opening up the dialogue and removing the current constraints of employment law (The Pregnancy Discrimination Act currently prohibits employers from asking female employees about their plans to have children) would benefit women and allow for increased flexibility and greater opportunities for career advancement.

What do you think? Would you be offended if your supervisor or HR department asked you about your plans to have kids?

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Should Employers Be Allowed to Ask Women About Plans to Have Children?

Yes — I agree with Sheryl Sandberg. Open up the lines of communication!

No — I feel protected by the current laws.

There isn't a specific date on the calendar, but sometime in the past two decades, the 9-to-5 workday disappeared, and the quantity of time spent in the office came to outweigh the quality of work completed. For moms who work outside the home, the shift has been extremely difficult, reducing the number of families that eat dinner together and generally reducing the amount of time parents and kids spend together. The only option for some moms who hope to see their tots before bedtime is to sneak out of the office and then "prove" that they are still dedicated by sending emails throughout the night.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's COO, has been an outspoken advocate for working mothers. In a recent interview for the PBS Makers series, the mother of two admitted that she leaves work at 5:30 every day in order to see her kids, but didn't talk about it for years. She said, "I walk out of this office every day at 5:30 so I’m home for dinner with my kids at 6, and interestingly, I’ve been doing that since I had kids. I did that when I was at Google, I did that here, and I would say it’s not until the last year, two years, that I’m brave enough to talk about it publicly. Now I certainly wouldn’t lie, but I wasn’t running around giving speeches on it." She also admitted that she feels like "there's no such thing as work-life balance. There's work, and there's life, and there's no balance."

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Do You "Sneak" Out of Work to See Your Kids?

Yes — I don't advertise leaving early for fear that it could hurt me career-wise.

No — I work for a very family-friendly company where I don't have to "sneak" out.

No — I work late and don't get to see my kids that much during the week.

If you've been part of an office environment while pregnant or as a parent, chances are, you've faced challenges (and some judgments, too) that are nonissues to your co-workers. In a recent article for Forbes.com, Victoria Pynchon states her case for the working mom, admitting frustration when her "mom employees" would have conflicting obligations but also noting that she now realizes that it wasn't necessarily their fault. She writes:

As I look back on the problem for both me and the working mother, I realize that my law firm simply failed to take into account the existence of working mothers on my team when planning my staffing needs. This was not rocket science. There was plenty of work for women to do at home if they had to relieve a babysitter or pick up a child at 6 p.m. If I needed a live, warm body in the office, better management on my part and better support from HR could easily have solved the problem.

According to a set of statistics presented by Dina Bakst, cofounder and copresident of A Better Balance: the Work & Family Legal Center, absences because of illness, injury, or medical problems are often two to three times as high as absences because of "child care problems, other family or personal obligations, civic or military duty, and maternity or paternity leave."

We want you to weigh in! Share your workplace experience by voting in the below poll.

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Are working moms more of an imposition on their employers?

Working moms are the most reliable employees of all — they're experts at multitasking.

Working moms carry the same risk of personal conflict as any other employee.

Working moms are more likely to have family conflicts arise than other employees — it's simply inevitable.

Sleep is for the weak...or childless. Lots of mothers say goodbye to their hours of uninterrupted shut-eye once baby debuts. And, even once a tot is sleeping through the night and has a sibling or two, it doesn't mean parents necessarily have time to hit the hay. There are only so many hours in the day and for moms juggling a career, family, and their children's commitments, burning the midnight oil can become routine. Do you long for sleep or do you just consider the lack of it part of parenthood?

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Were You Sad to Say Goodbye to Uninterrupted Shut-Eye?

Yes — I miss my sleep!

No — Long hours are part of parenthood.