Great news.  The White House will be hosting a forum on workplace flexibility on March 31.   This is great…right?

You see the problem is that the focus will be on how workplace flexibility can help families manage their work/life better.  Those with school age children, those with ailing parents.  And I agree, workplace flexibility is great for those populations.  But it’s also great for so many others.  People who want to pursue their passions.  Those who want to work, just not 50+ hours a week.  Those who are nearing retirement age and still want to keep working just not at the same pace.   Those who do not define themselves by their work/careers but strive to be whole people living fulfilled lives.

And I get it.  Especially after the week I’ve had.  After traveling for a week I came home with a cold only to be totally trumped by my daughter who contracted pneumonia.  It’s been a bit of a lost week of productivity for me.  So I get the pressures on family and work.  But I also felt those in my 20′s as I was pursuing my graduate degree (no children at the time).  And I felt them as I wanted to take time off to travel with my husband (no children at the time).  And I feel them for my mom who would like to work, but splitting her time between home in the Northeast and the lovely sunshine of Florida makes that pretty difficult.

So please let’s not do what so many other countries have.  Discriminate against those without children and ailing parents.  I would hate to see legislation that gives parents of young children the “right” to ask for more flexibility at work.  Everyone should be able to ask, present a business case, and at least be heard.  It should not matter whether you are a parent or not.

If we make more flexibility at work only about families it will be doomed to fail.    So here’s hoping next week there is great discussion on the issue.   And that the discussion includes many voices, not just those with children.

This isn’t how I planned it.  Which as anyone who has had children will know…is how it often ends up.  Once you have another living, breathing, thinking human being to consider the best laid plans often get waylaid.  And so it is for me.

I’ve been on the road a lot lately.  First dipping my toe in the crazy (at least for me) world of SXSW and then running to the much more tame and familiar ERE Expo.  Great conversations, interesting business partnership talks, cutting edge tools, techniques, strategies, wonderful friends and staying up way too late.  And in the background helping to juggle the responsibilities of a two-working-parent household.

Wow was that fun and boy was I glad that was over.  But there was more coming…or so I thought.

As I write this I thought I would be heading to an airplane to fly to Washington DC for my 2nd to last conference of the year.  The one I was really excited about.  The first Work/Life conference for me.  But it is not to be…

My husband carried the water for the house all last week and did a masterful job at remaining home when he is normally expected to be in a different city.  The whole time I was away he was the parent on call.  He was home for dinners, bedtime, cuddles, comfort.  His career is hectic and harried with lots of work and expectations.  And it pays the bills.   So this was wonderful.  I was away without a care in the world.

I knew this week would be different.  He needed to head back out on the road.  I had agreed to be on the road to attend, write about and talk about the Work/Life conference.   I put together a village to take care of home while I was away.  I would need to check in a lot, but I was ready to go for it.  Until 102 that is.

No matter how independent they start to be, or how much they want to do things themselves.  Put a sick little one near a mommy or daddy and forget it.  Nothing else will do.  And honestly at this stage in life….that’s the way it should be.  Mom and Dad are the entire world/universe/reality for that little one.  So I made a decision…it was one I had already made, I just planned to put it off for a bit.

With a fever of 102 3 days running, my little one who was more a pile of pudding in my lap, than the usual independent, testing limits preschooler we expect. So I came off the road.  I knew this day would come.  I had planned it for  later this spring.  I just thought I had one or two more conferences in me.

So my apologies to the Conference Board and all those involved in the Work/Life conference.  And my apologies to Tru USA and all those who are working to make that a really fun event.  I will not be there.

Managing work/Life is about choices.  And the right choice for my family is for me to be the home body as needed.  And I cannot control when that is needed so it is time to practice what I preach.

I blog, I promote flexible companies, I still see the need for much more flexibility in the workplace.  I will not stop working on, talking about, promoting these issues.  I will just do it close to home and not in faraway cities at conferences.  At least for now.

So I’m on vacation.  And I’m watching my little one just enjoy being…playing with toys, riding a bike for the first time, running down the sidewalk…and I think I really should chill more.    We’re in Arizona and she would desperately like to be in the pool.  But it’s 52 degrees out, so not today.  Instead of pouting she just moves on happily.  I posted my thoughts on Facebook and a male friend agreed that wives/moms should chill more.

And so I think, goodness, why can’t I do that better?  Well it could be because I bothered to open my laptop this morning.  I have a conference call so I was checking on the details of that and in the process saw an article about a study that claims that children of mothers who work full time are fatter, less healthy kids than those that work part-time or stay at home.

Ugghhh!

Here is why Moms can’t chill.  Because if we work we are compromising our children.  If we don’t we are compromising ourselves.  If we work part-time we are underemployed as well as under appreciated both at work and at home.

My husband is great and he helps a lot but if you asked him how many fruits or vegetables our little one ate in a day he would have no clear idea.  If you asked him how much TV she took in, he would know what the rules are, but not necessarily the realities.   And if you asked him to make dinner it would consist of something frozen or a pizza.  If you asked him what Dr’s appts are coming up, he would really struggle with that one and certainly not know the dates or times or even some of the Dr’s names.

Moms are working (women are now 50% of the workforce), they are attending to the children’s health, the food buying, the food preparation and they are being judged.  ‘Nuff now.  Either it’s time for other parts of society to help or quit it with the judgments and studies! Just once I would love to see a study on how Dads’ work habits, eating habits, life affect children.

Oh and did I mention today’s breakfast for me & the little one will be hotel room service.  I won’t be controlling the ingredients, etc. I will make sure to include fruit in the mix, but I’m sure it won’t be as healthy as it could be…and I’m sitting her in front of the TV at 11a as I have a conference call.   As Kathy Griffin would say:  You can suck it society.

Today’s guest post echos something I say a lot: you can have it all…just not all at once.   And I truly believe that.  I also believe that in today’s more typical two-parent working families there are choices that do need to be made for the family.  They do not have to be forever and it is probably best if they are equitable, one person sacrifices for a time, than another.   So your family and your chosen workplace need to have the flexibility to make it work.  Like Greg and his family have realized and live.

You can do anything you want in life. You just can’t do everything you want.

This sage advice was given by my father-in-law to my wife when she started medical school.  No phrase better sums up the reality of work / life choices.  Our careers and family responsibilities constantly force us to make choices on what we won’t do, in order to do the things we must or want to do.  Our progression through our careers and early family life has provided countless examples of this universal truth.

Four years ago, we felt we had reached equilibrium. Our careers were advancing, and our two boys (two and under-one at the time) seemed to be in a good routine with daycare.  We had built our dream house a year earlier, and other than lengthy commutes that made getting to daycare on time sometimes an event (though we were never late), life seemed to be moving along smoothly.  My wife was thinking of cutting back some on her work hours to spend more time with the boys, and we felt we had the financial flexibility to do so.

Then, as our eldest son was approaching his third birthday, it was becoming clear that he was not going to be ready to move to the next class in the daycare.  The local school psychologist was brought in, and what had always seemed just “developmental delay” became “autism” overnight.  Daycare was no longer an option, and we enrolled our son in an early intervention program in our public schools.

The preschool ran from 8:30 – 2:30, so we needed help after school, and cutting back that much time was not an option for my wife.  Thus, we needed to hire a nanny, an unexpected financial shock which, when combined with the costs of upcoming therapies, set back indefinitely any plans for my wife to cut back on her hours (and numerous home improvements we had planned).

After a year or so, we had recalibrated our lives and were again in a decent routine.  I took a new job at a company three hours away which required (ideally) spending a few days a week in the office.  While the travel was not ideal, it was a real growth opportunity.  Then, another of life’s little surprises came our way, as we discovered my wife was pregnant with child #3 (another boy). This unplanned event once again threw off our balance; my wife had c-sections with each child, and it would be impossible for her to watch all three boys on her own for the first few months after delivery.

So the sacrifice this time involved cutting back on my time at the office significantly, with a corresponding loss of momentum, visibility, and impact in my role.  No matter what you may hear about the growth and attractiveness of telecommuting, it is not a widely accepted practice in traditional industrial companies. Even after my wife recovered, having a house full of three boys aged five and under is not conducive to a busy travel schedule.  But we persevered, and my trips to the office settled in at an every-other-week pace.

Eventually, however, that was not enough for the company.  Times were tough, and strong, visible leadership was needed.  I was asked to spend most of my time in the office.  In return, I’d be on a rapid path to a general manager role.  The other alternative was to work out a negotiated layoff.  I only had a few days to decide in advance of the next board meeting.  While never having faced the prospect of being without a job, and knowing that my leverage in finding a new position would be slim without an existing job, I nevertheless worked out terms of my departure, as moving or spending more time away from home were not viable options given my wife’s career development and our family situation.

In the ensuring scramble to find a new position, I was fortunate to have several offers.  Knowing the realities of our work/life situation helped me keep my priorities straight.  I ended up turning down a Chief Marketing Officer role in favor of one that gave me more flexibility and a slightly shorter commute, even though the CMO position offered >50% better pay.  The deal-breaker was when I asked at the last minute for clarification of travel expectations, and was told that I’d need to spend a week per month in Europe.  While I would have loved the role, it just wasn’t viable in face of our daily realities.

In no way have I or my wife lost sight of our dreams, be it continuing to advance her academic career or running a company.  But we do know that life and careers are long, and making the right sacrifices now while continuing to build the skills, relationships, and processes we will need to be successful in the long run is the best choice we can make.  We have learned to keep “the next sacrifice” in mind, whether its on the daily decisions (who takes the sick child to the doctor) or in the face of life-changing events (a parental illness).

Greg Strosaker is a marketing executive at Mayfran International in Cleveland, Ohio.  His wife is a pediatrician at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, and they have three boys aged seven and younger, the oldest is autistic.  Between work, family, and marathon training, Greg still finds time to maintain the Constant Cogitation blog on marketing, strategy, leadership, productivity, parenting, and running.

Apparently I am suspiciously well balanced and lack an identity according to a quiz I took recently about whether my life was happy or interesting.  And the verdict.  It is neither.  It is somewhere in the no man’s land in between.  Now I do not put much stock in these kinds of tests.  They are often too generic to give any real meaning to people…they just give people angst.  And so I wouldn’t be thinking much about this, except that the angst already exists.  And honestly this verdict feels absolutely correct to me.

You see I was brought up in an age where it was understood you would work.  No matter your gender…you worked.  And it was wonderful to know that.  I went to college, I started a career, I got a Master’s degree, my career flourished, I was interesting and often happy.  But there were also those conversations that I was having with my girlfriends.  We talked about how you can’t have it all.  How we didn’t want to be go-go career women at the expense of time with our children.  How we would make different choices than the generation of Hilary Clinton.  We would be hybrids.  Career women with children who understand something has to give.

And in theory it sounds great, doesn’t it?  We get to fly high in careers, then we get to take a step back and embrace our children.

The problem lies in the reality.  And the crash landing from a-type, goal setting to playing Candyland.

And maybe this is just simply a case of timing.  You see the Olympics are on.  And probably the most interesting career move I ever made was to produce Opening & Closing ceremonies for the 2002 winter games for TV.  It was a challenging and very frustrating gig but man it sure was interesting.  And it followed other interesting gigs like working on Red Sox games for TV, being on the field at Fenway Park when Ted Williams came out during the ’99 All Star Game,  being a gatekeeper at the Sundance Film Festival for press pass seekers.  All super interesting, some even made me happy, others did not.

Then after all these highly interesting gigs…I took a breath and went for a trip with my husband…around the world.  Yep we took a year off, traveled the world together and we were happy and interesting.

We came home.  We settled down.  We had a baby.  And we began living the traditional American Dream.  And a few years later I’m not sure who I am anymore.  Yes I have extremely happy moments like sledding with my little one the other day in the middle of the day.  Or watching her mind work as she figures out puzzles,  or dancing in the living room with her with all my might.  And I have very interesting moments – like starting my own business and debuting it at a conference.  Like being asked to share my expertise with really smart people.   But honestly these come in fits and starts.  On a regular basis I’m not sure I’m either happy or interesting.

Because you see I’m also not a fan of getting on the floor to play cars and trucks endlessly.  And because in order to attain this hybrid life – I needed to strike out on my own and leave the corporate workforce.  So I work alone…a lot…with no companionship or collaboration.  And I’m not really sure how to think of who I am – a mom who once was a career girl who is now over-qualified for any position I may apply for, which apparently is a bad thing.

Recently I read this article about men adjusting to women being the breadwinners.  And I’ve seen many articles about whether women are happy or not.  But this is not about my gender.  This is about working and parenting and doing what is right for your family.  And I think Penelope Trunk’s original article and quiz summed it up best for me.  I have achieved a hybrid life…it’s just neither very interesting or overly happy.

Today is one of those days when I don’t have all the answers.  I have my truth and my journey.  And I’m working on it…

Today’s guest post is quite timely as I spent yesterday afternoon listening to a radio show where parents discuss how work/life stress affects kids and how that stress is somewhat self-imposed and how guilt plays into it.  It was quite a lively discussion with Ellen Galinsky, Lisa Belkin and Joshua Coleman and is definitely worth a listen.  My take is that parenting is wonderful and also very hard and also simply boring.  I try very hard not to do guilt as a parent…it’s unproductive.  And I’m lucky to have very supportive friends who understand and know the realities of parenting and are happy to be honest about it.  And I’m brutally honest about it…to the point that some would prefer I sugarcoat it.  But that only perpetuates the myth that fuels the guilt.

Now yesterday’s parents were all talking about very mundane work/life issues.  Hiring babysitters, whether to choose to work or to stay home, who does more around the house moms or dads.  Knowing today’s author personally, I’m guessing she would have welcomed those kind of mundane issues in her first year as a mother.  And I’m also guessing there are plenty of parents out there today that are away from their children as they go about their jobs in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Japan, Germany and more…that struggle with guilt.  Here’s hoping they can all learn to let go of it as Tammy Colson did:

Managing work and home are difficult for anyone. This is the story about how I learned to manage work and home while leaving the guilt behind.

I was an active duty Marine for six years. When my daughter was 3 months old, I was deployed overseas. I had signed a contract and had a job to do. It was painful, but I had no choice but to give temporary custody of my beautiful daughter to my mother for a year because my husband was also active duty, and was constantly gone. I missed a lot of things I wish I hadn’t. This was before flip cams, and the internet, which make long distance communication so easy. Not shortly thereafter, I divorced, and I was on a path to raise my daughter solo. Along the way,  I discovered some things about myself and my daughter, things that got me through the next 16 years of parenting.

I found that we could survive. It might not be pretty, it might not be easy, but babies are resilient creatures. I had to learn that I could rely on other people to protect my daughter. Just as I had to learn later that she needed to learn to protect herself. I discovered that you build networks that help create balance in your life. Friends become family, and you ask for help. The decisions I made weren’t always easy, but that year away made me realize that I was doing what needed to be done, and the best thing I could do was not feel guilty. Guilt wasn’t going to change the situation.

Raising her, there were times I wished I could have been there more. But I’m told by her, that I was there for the important things. I made mistakes, there is no manual, and you make best choice in the moment. I got babysitters so that I could go out, and I felt guilty about that, making up excuses about work to the sitter. Then it dawned on me, occasionally going out was good for me, and good for my daughter. Again, that guilt wasn’t doing us any good.

The lesson I learned that year, was that sometimes duty comes before family. And that’s okay. If you put the support in place, if you stop yourself from feeling guilty, just get the job done, and enjoy the time you have when you are done, if you realize that you don’t have to be perfect, that you just need to be present in the moment when you are there, amazingly, the kids will love you anyway.

My daughter is almost 19 years old, and she’s a good kid, despite my mistakes. I don’t feel guilty for doing what needed to be done, because the guilt never changed a thing. It just made me feel guilty.

Tammy Colson is an HR Consultant with 15 years of experience in all facets of human resources as a solo practitioner. She is available for consulting and speaking in the areas of HR and Social Media. She can be found on Twitter at @TLColson and writes at http://www.junkyardhr.com,  – Where old HR goes to Die. When not in the HR space, she is the proprietor of Southern Wine Trails, a wine and hiking experience in NC and VA http://southernwinetrails.blogspot.com/ – where she shares the beauty of the southern mountains and their wines with her clients.

As you may know I do not consider myself the smartest person in the room…I certainly have strong opinions and aren’t afraid to voice them and they are based on lots of reading, research and facts but I’ve been known to be wrong, and I”m sure I will be again.  And I’m by no means the only voice to listen to about work/life.   There are many people who are “experts” at this…they live it each and every day.  To that end part of what I want to do with this blog is to give voice to others who struggle/juggle/conquer/fail with their particular work/life balance.

I have guest bloggers on occasion…I would love to have more, but honestly it takes a lot of work and while I am constantly working on it, it isn’t happening as regularly as I would prefer.  So I wanted to bring you more stories…not from this blog but from one I read regularly Work. Life. Balance. I was lucky enough recently to meet Chrysula Winegar in person and I look forward to working with her to change the way work works and the way we all think about work.  Please check out her blog and her Work LIfe Stories series…I think it will be a valuable resource to learn from real people living their lives, working and making work work for them, and constantly questioning what makes sense for them – in other words…people just like most of us!

The first in my series of work life stories is representative of a relatively new piece of the economic puzzle – mothers who work from home, often at night or in the early mornings and make a decent financial contribution in the process.  It’s a hybrid approach – entrepreneurial, but with low costs of entry and minimal child care requirements.  A middle ground for some wanting/needing to parent full time but keep connected to their professional world and make a family income contribution.  These kinds of work life solutions are growing at an exponential rate in certain applicable vocations.

Enjoy the full article.

Yesterday my high school friend, Stephanie, brought this story about working moms and extreme situations to my attention:

First, a Tourniquet, then Preschool Pickup

At Fort Hood last week, while fellow soldiers tied a tourniquet to stop her bleeding, Sgt. Kimberly Munley found her cell phone and arranged for her 2-year-old daughter to be picked up from preschool.

Stephanie noted that it really did put the whole struggle/juggle with her work life balance into perspective.

I agree with her because my job and my life is much more mundane.  But I also wasn’t surprised by it.  I have definitely been told by my husband that I can be intense when it comes to our little one…making sure the schedule is in place and everyone is on the same page.  And while he offers that criticism, he does not offer a solution.  If I don’t do it, or ask that he do, no one does.   He has been known to say, “It’s good to be the Dad” or “If you’re going to be a parent, I recommend being the Dad.”  Which is all in fun…but also true.

I could now go into how the world is changing and women make up 50% of the workforce, so why aren’t men making up 50% of the support system at home?

I could also go into how when I do ask my husband to take on a task, he usually does so happily…so women need to learn to ask for help more.

I could go into how he’s right…that I can be intense and need to let more things slide.  I mean really if we miss a little pre-school is that really a life-changing event?

Or I could go into how this article in a major publication talking about an issue that hasn’t really been discussed until modern day is a huge step forward.

But it’s Friday and I want to give us all a break.

I do, however, welcome your thoughts…moms, dads, non-parents….you can comment here or on the Career Life Connection forums or on the Facebook fan page or by @leanneclc on twitter.

I’m on my way to a conference.  I don’t do it often and that’s because it stresses me out, usually.  Why?  Because not everyone in my life is as flexible as I need them to be when I travel.

The last time I went to a conference my husband was traveling, too.  So not only did I have to get organized to exhibit at the show…and take care of all that entails.  I also needed to set up childcare for evening and early morning, schedule who would take my little one to school, go grocery shopping so she & those taking care of her had food, put fresh sheets on my bed (no guest bedroom here), and write out the schedule so everyone was on the same page.  And still be the go-to-parent if anything went awry.

It would be much easier if I could travel like my spouse.  Each time he travels, he makes sure to help get the house in order from the weekend, packs a suitcase, calls a cab and is off.  No worries about groceries or school or school projects or birthday parties or childcare schedules or anything.

I’ve been very jealous.

And now I know that I should be!  Because we’ve switched places this week.  He is not traveling…nor working too hard this week.  So he is me.  And I am him.  I’m loving it.  As is he.

I know this is a nice respite in our normally hectic work lives and that it won’t last.  But it’s nice while it does.

I’ll admit, my initial take was to laugh out loud, literally.  It is funny…creating a fake kid so you can sneak out of the office.  But of course, I understand the problem.  If workers perceive that work/life is only about working parents, the movement is sunk.  And no one should need a reason to leave the office…they should leave the office when they need to.

But the reality is that there are some real emotions surrounding parents in the workplace and special  treatment.
I have personally never experienced the pressures of taking over work for a working parent.  I also do not think I ever offloaded my work onto others because I was a parent.  But the Office Kid business and the blog article are just two examples that others aren’t so convinced.  So let’s talk about it.  My take on horribly over-bearing working parents:

1) Put Yourself in their shoes:  Parents don’t have a choice sometimes.  Daycare closes, pediatricians work during business hours, teachers do, too. That is reality.  There are realities for others as well but they don’t include a minor being left to fend for themselves.

2) Think it through:  Does the project you’ve been asked to take over, really need to get done tonight?  If it doesn’t…why don’t you just leave it for the parent to finish the next day.  My guess is many of our over-inflated egos want to believe our work is so important it can’t wait…it probably can.

3) Build a relationship:  Relationships are a 2-way street.  So if the parent asks you to help them out…do the same.  You don’t even need to tell them why.  Just explain the you’re facing a time crunch and could use their help and offload some of your work on them.  If it’s a manager insisting you do it…that’s different and that’s not a working parent-issue at all.  The problem is you have a bad manager and need to deal with that.

4) Just say “no” – I don’t think employees take enough responsibility for their own work/life happiness.  If you think you are being treated unfairly…speak up.  If you don’t want to help out and it’s not part of your job…say “no.”  It is by no means your responsibility to help out all the time.  But if you agree to and then complain about it…that’s just not fair.

That’s my take.  Let’s remember the Family Medical Leave Act is for all – not just parents.  Let’s also remember that working moms take it on the chin from many angles and get paid less.  I’m not suggesting you give them a break, they’ve made their choice.  But I am saying, be honest.  If they are the problem…fix it….and if not, be honest about it.