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What was interesting, however, after I finished the book was noticing that more than 80% of those women had become moms, and among those who ended up being public company chief executives, women like Mary Barra at GM, the percentage was even higher. I only devoted one chapter, however, of Earning It to the issue of being a mom and also being a boss. But the chapter title, which came from one of those fifty-two women, spoke it all, and it said, "Manager Moms are Not Acrobats." And the whole point of that chapter was that this notion of a work-life balance was an impossible ideal, but as all but one of those fifty-two women were women from my generation, the baby boomer generation, it sparked interest in my doing a second book to look at how far have we come as women in the workplace who have kids and also aspire to higher levels in management versus the women of my generation. 

So, that gave birth, no pun intended, of course, to Power Moms. Power Moms reflects interviews with 111 women, eighty-six of whom come from these two generations, the Boomers and then the Gen Xers and the Millennials. In addition, I talk to twenty-five young adult daughters of the Boomers. What was it like growing up, having a mom who was larger than life, a mom who seemed to have a lot on her plate, who perhaps traveled a lot, who also seemed to be going through a lot of stresses. 

But the other thing that was really critical about how I approached this book was the marching orders I got from the publisher, same publisher for both books, Harper Collins Business. For this book, they insisted that every chapter begin with an anecdote about my own journey as a working mom. I, in my situation, had two kids. They were three and a half years apart and returned to work after fairly brief maternity leaves, because that's what it was called in those days. And so, every one of these chapters looks at the whole experience of being a working mom and an ambitious working mom, is framed around my experience as well. 

Megan Monson: Joann, there's so many topics in particular in Power Moms, that really resonate with us as working moms in the early days of motherhood. To start out, can you tell us a little bit about how executive moms today differ from those of prior generations? 

Joann Lublin: Well, that was what I was curious to find out. Had things really gotten better? Did it make a difference that there were all these trailblazers that I had documented in the first book, women for whom not only becoming an executive was the exception, but becoming an executive and having children was looked upon as very strange and very odd, and I am happy to report that I found there had been significant changes, that life was easier for the younger wave, the women who were in anywhere from their early thirties to early forties when I reported this book. And, what I found was that the changes, which I saw as a profound cultural shift, reflected three things that had gotten better. Number one was that these younger wave women had more supportive life partners, and part of that was deliberate. They were not willing to commit themselves to a long-term relationship or marriage unless that life partner was equally committed to their success as a woman and equally to their success as a parent. 

The second change was that there were more female-friendly workplaces. For many of those boomers, when they entered the workplace, you had your choice of going to work for one unfriendly family workplace or another unfriendly family workplace, whereas the younger wave could choose to not be somewhere where it wasn't supportive their needs. As a woman, in particular, their needs as a parent. And the third shift was that there were more women in upper management. Those trailblazers that I had documented in the first book not only had moved into positions of power, but they could act as role models, both as executives as well as parents, for younger women who had ideas about also aspiring to move up in their careers, and they could be both sponsors, meaning speaking out on their behalf, putting their reputation on the line, and mentors, which were role models saying, "This is how it works, this is what you should or shouldn't do." 

Megan Monson: So, I think all of those have really helped shift and improve things toward the next generation of executive moms. In your opinion, why is the newest generation of executive moms still facing challenges, because we've certainly come a long way, but there's always more work to do. 

Joann Lublin: Well, it's because there is this persistence of what some call unconscious or less conscious bias, and it's bias that affects men and women alike. It's the expectation that the mom is always going to be the primary parent. It's the expectation that you're not a real guy, a real man if you take your fully allotted paid parental leave. And, to some extent, we are ourselves to blame. Think about when your children, I don't think any of you have kids old enough yet to send to school, but when you do enroll one of your children in kindergarten or preschool, whose name are you going to list first on the emergency form, yours or your partner's? And so, you have people like the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg who is constantly being called whenever her son acted out at school, and after a while, she finally told the school, "This boy has two parents, call the other one once in a while." 

I also think that one of the issues that younger women who are trying to aspire to higher levels and also have kids are dealing with is that we see so many employers saying, "You got to come back to the office," and you have to be there x number of days a week, or the perception that if you're trying to carve out a work from home schedule that is predominantly home-based, the perception that somehow you're less committed because you have children or you're less committed because you're working far from the office. And so, you have this notion that you can't possibly be ambitious and that you are overlooked. There also is still this issue that unconscious bias training is not standard and it's not happening, top to bottom, and it's not happening on a regular basis. 

Nicole Fulfree: Yeah, we still have a long way to go. Joann, to your point about the expectations of moms still being the default parent, no, working moms are constantly being pulled in a thousand different directions and feeling like we're failing at one thing or another, or, at times, everything. And like I said, I'm fresh coming off my second maternity leave. 

So, one of the things I've been really struggling with is feeling guilt about leaving my six-month-old son and transitioning from being his primary caretaker, twenty-four hours a day, while my husband deals with my toddler. It really was just me dealing with him. So, I think it's a struggle for me to leave him at all. And so, Power Moms shares your experiences alongside those of many other executives, mothers regarding what I'll call the high guilt-inducing issues working moms have to deal with. 

Pretty much all of them are at the top of my mind right now, but I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on what these executive moms and you have to say about some key topics, which for me, the top of my mind, are heavy business travel and the high-tech demands of always being on. For me, I used to travel a lot for work, and with the pandemic, it was really helpful because it aligned with the period when I had my daughter. And so, courts were virtual and that worked out wonderfully for me. I could attend a hearing in Florida and then go to the next room 10 minutes later and see my daughter. Now, some courts are transitioning back, and it is something I am a little bit scared of having to balance. 

And then, the other thing is the high-tech demands of always being on. I feel like it's a struggle when the expectation of our clients is that, and rightfully so, is that we'll be available whenever they need us, but that's also the expectation of our little children clients. And so, that's another area that I always struggle with. 

So, what have you learned about these things? Please, Joann, help me, share your wisdom. 

Megan Monson: Help all of us, Joann. 

Rachel Dikovics: Yes. 

Joann Lublin: I'm happy to help all of you. Just remember no one solution fits all, and the most important thing I think all of us learn in our parenting journey is adapt, adapt, adapt, because your needs as an individual, your needs as a professional, your needs as someone who's ambitious in their careers are going to change over time, but so will your children's needs. And so, just when you think you finally got it into the groove and got it right, everything is up for grabs. And so, being adaptable, whether that has to do with travel or having to do with trying to not be always on, I think is a really kind of bottom-line message from the book. 

But let me talk about some of the solutions that some of the women I talked to for Power Moms had to the travel issue. One of them is this notion that to the extent you can plan your trips in advance and your kids are of an age where they can be involved in knowing what it is you're doing and why, you get them be part of that planning process. You explain to them, what it is that, why you have to take this trip, and that you are going to be gone not for a super long time, but you got to remember, kids under five don't understand time, as I talk about it in the book. But you have to explain to them that, particularly once they're at school age, that you are going to try the best you can to make your trips coincide to times during the year when it's not going to interfere with an important event at school. 

There was even one of these executives who, at the beginning of the school year, starting from when her youngest daughter was in kindergarten, would incorporate the school calendar into her work calendar and, once she had the school calendar, would let the daughter pick out like three events, 30 in September, where she wanted mom to be there, and that became part of her work calendar. So, it was a, "No, couldn't cancel that." 

Another thing that some of these executive moms did is they coordinated their work schedules with their partner, with their husband or life partner, so that neither one of them were both out of town at the same time. A third strategy, and this was one that worked very effectively for an IBM executive, is when she knew she was taking a business trip to a part of the world where there was something that her school age kids might enjoy, I.e., Florida and Disney World, and it coincided with a school vacation, she would enlist one of their grandparents to come along. And so, it then became a family trip, not just a business trip. 

And, I think the fourth good solution is, enlist your employee resource groups to look for company-wide solutions. So, these don't have to be problems that you're solving on your own, but they represent the point of view of lots of women and men who have to travel and have parental needs. 

Accenture, for instance, bans out-of-town business trips for a year after the parental leave ends, either for the mother or the primary caregiver. If it's the other parent who has taken the longer leave and then comes back, he or she then is not required to go out of town for that first year after they come back. 

In terms of the issue of being always on, I think this is a particularly persistent problem for individuals who are in professions that are client-facing, and nowhere of course is that more true than it is for the legal profession. And, of course, when we were faced with COVID-19, even though you were able to go to those court hearings remotely, you were still under huge pressure to be always on because you were never away from the office, and you were spending too many hours trying to serve those clients. 

And so, I think it's really important that we make sure that technology works for us, not against us. And so that means that if you are working predominantly remotely still today, get the ground rules set with your boss that you need to carve out a certain number of hours of the day in which you are essentially protected hours. And that may be early in the morning, which has happened to one of the younger power moms who had been working remotely before COVID, but then her kids were suddenly home once Covid hit. She basically said, "I'm not free for meetings between seven and 11AM, that's my protected time. If I have to work after the kids go to bed and make up that missed meet or whatever, I will." 

It's also important that you don't look at email when you're on vacation. You're spoiling the whole point of email and being on vacation if you're constantly connected while you're away. And, of course, many of those women who were always on and Power Moms, particularly the younger wave, tended to not disconnect on vacation. But I think the most important thing you can do is also to turn off work devices on the weekend and at bedtime. Too many of these women I interviewed for Power Moms slept with their phones turned on or even under their pillow. I don't think anyone ever found romance with their smartphone under their pillow. 

Rachel Dikovics: Or with their kid in bed. 

Joann Lublin: Or with their kid in bed. Yeah. 

Nicole Fulfree: So, Joann, these are great tips and I think, generally, what I hear you saying is that working moms need to take control and be empowered to set your own boundaries, and that's something I've been definitely working on. But, we're a new generation and we're working with different cards and I think we need to be the ones to know ourselves and set our own boundaries. And, like you said, if you can't take calls from a certain time period, no. If we had another client called during that period, we would just say, "I can't do it," but we think, because it's an obligation with our kids, maybe we feel guilty about it. But, I think, as this new generation of this new version of working moms, I think we really need to be empowered to say, "No, I'm not going to be able to take a call between the hours of hours six and eight P.M. because that's when I put my kids to sleep, and that's just as important for me as a client call." 

Joann Lublin: Absolutely. But the importance here is to not feel like you have to reinvent the wheel solo, that there's solidarity in numbers. One of the younger Power Moms I interviewed for the book, when she returns from her latest maternity leave, she's a management consultant, she's on the road all the time, and she's lugging two suitcases through the airport on Thursday night and one of them is filled with the milk she's expressed over the prior four days, and it leaks all over her clothes, and she complains about this to a client who happens to be at a law firm and the guy at the law firm says, "Well, gosh, our partners and others associates who have to travel for work who are still nursing, we ship their breast milk home," and this light bulb goes on, okay? 

And so, she approaches the executive sponsor for the Parenting Employee Resource Group, and they turn this into initially an experiment on a small scale. And, when that works, they extend it to nationwide. And then, not only applies to the women who are traveling, but if the male management consultants have to go out of town and their wives are also just back from work and are nursing moms that want to come along on the business trip, they ship home the expressed milk of the wives of the male consultants. But that wouldn't have happened if this woman just spoke up because of her leaky suitcases. It happened because they had an executive sponsor for their Parenting Employee Resource Group who got the ear of the top brass and they did a pilot and that worked. 

Megan Monson: That's amazing, and I love that story. It's just so important to talk about these type of issues and it just shows what a far way we've come from women having to hide in a maintenance closet to pump their milk for their baby. So, that story makes me really happy. 

Joann Lublin: Or, in my case, I had to pump my milk down the toilet because there wasn't even a maintenance closet I could go to, and I would do it in tears, because there was no such thing as a refrigerator to keep your milk in. It had sandwiches with mold all over where people kept their lunches. 

Megan Monson: Very thankful for the far way we've come. 

Joann Lublin: Indeed. 

Megan Monson: And the trailblazers like you guys who've made it way easier for us. 

Joann Lublin: But you guys are trailblazing for the women who are joining the law firm tomorrow and the day after that. And, frankly, that's where the idea for Earning It came from. I wrote a first-person essay for my daughter when she joined the workplace, and I said, "The day after your first day on the job, you will be the most experienced person there compared to the one who's starting today, and you got to pay it forward." 

Megan Monson: I love that. So, talking about paying it forward and continuing to encourage our employers to really meet the demands of today, one thing that we see come up often, especially with the flexibility of remote work and employers becoming more supportive, is that more young parents are requesting reduced schedules. Have you seen that there are instances where a reduced schedule can actually enhance mothers' careers, long-term? 

Joann Lublin: I am living proof that it can do so. In my case, when I got pregnant the second time expecting our daughter, I proposed a four-day schedule. I said, I was then working for the Wall Street Journal's Washington Bureau, I was willing to take a 20% cut in pay and benefits, and I got turned down. So, I returned to work. At that point I had a four-year-old and an infant, and I was going crazy. Luckily for me, management change, I got a new bureau chief, guy named Al Hunt, married a Judy Woodruff. Some of you may have heard of her from PBS. They already had a child. He understood what it meant to be a working mom. And his boss was new, a managing editor who had a working wife. And so, I re-proposed this, and it not only was accepted, but they did not cut my pay or benefit, and nor did they expect me to work longer hours. They essentially said, "We think you'll do as much work and good journalism out a four-day schedule as a lot of people in this bureau do on five days." 

And so, not only was I able to have that reduced schedule, it meant I was able then to be active in the co-op nursery school that my daughter eventually attended because I could co-op on Fridays. Plus, it was beneficial to my career because, at the end of that time period, I was asked to move into management and move to London as, initially, the news editor and then the deputy bureau chief. So, I ended up working for a woman in that bureau. We were the first Wall Street Journal bureau where the two top managers were women. And yet, years later, when I'm reporting Power Moms and I asked Al Hunt, "Why is it that you gave me this great deal and didn't expect me to take a cut in pay or benefits?" 

And he said, "Because we thought you would quit and go work for the competition." The thought had never crossed my mind, but it made me realize, we don't value our own contribution enough when we're looking for flexibility in our work schedules. 

There was another great example in Power Moms of a woman who had come from a large corporate background but was being recruited to become CEO of a startup. Might've heard of it, it's called Spanx, but at the time- 

Megan Monson: Yes, I've heard of it. And like I said, just returning from my second maternity, very familiar. 

Joann Lublin: Okay, so this is Laurie Ann Goldman, and at the point when they're asking her to become their first outside CEO, she has three kids, three sons under eight years old. So, she negotiates an employment contract that actually has language in there that says that "Company acknowledges the fact that she will sometimes have to leave the office during the middle of the day to deal with family issue." So, she gets this in writing, and essentially, this was a deal breaker for her, because she was negotiating from a position of strength. She was coming from a big beverage company, a global beverage company, and this company wanted a CEO who knew how to make the trains run on time. And she did a fabulous job as Spanx's first outside CEO, but she knew that she had leverage. And guess what? We all have leverage. We just forget to learn how to use it. 

Megan Monson: I think that's so true and really resonates with me. In my experience, both before going on parental leave and in the months that I've been back, I've found that any request I've made, the answer has been yes. They were reasonable requests, but I think a lot of women may hesitate to ask for things, because they don't want to appear that they're less serious about their career than they were before they had kids or that they're not prioritizing work. But, I think that we all have to keep in mind that there are seasons of our lives, like you said, that as soon as you adjust to one thing, things change again. But, in the season of your life where your kids are very little, you may need some accommodations at work, and that will help you stay at work for the long haul as opposed to not being able to accommodate what you need and feeling like you can't make your job work anymore. 

So, I think it's really helpful to hear these success stories of women who were able to make adjustments and request accommodations that made their job work for them so that they could provide their employer with high quality work while still making things work at home. 

On that topic, I think one of the main stressors, you touched on this earlier, that can push women off this Power Mom who has it all track, is being the default parent outside of work. I know we talk a lot about millennial dads being more involved than prior generations, and anecdotally, I think we probably all say that that is true, but it remains true that many, I venture to say most, women on high power career tracks still find themselves as the default parent, at the end of the day, to the extent the day ever ends for mom. 

You mentioned in the book having supportive parenting partners, discussing your career-chore balances before even having children. Can you tell us about what you learned on those subjects? 

Joann Lublin: Well, again, I think some of the greatest progress is happening among women of your generation because frankly, you're not going to put up with people who are not willing to view the world the same way. And so, if that means in order to co-parent that your spouse or life partner dresses your toddler for preschool with mismatched socks and the shirt on backwards and dirty underwear, you're going to let it go, okay, and you're not going to totally get completely fixated on being the perfect parent. And I think, at the end of the day, that's truly really important, is to make sure that we give ourselves the grace to defuse all this working mother guilt, to not feel like we have to be the default parent, that this is a partnership. And the way you do that is you not only talk about this before you enter into this long-term relationship, you have regular checkups, because, like I was saying before, things are not going to stay the same. 

One of the younger Power Moms that I talked to for the book, Margaret Dewan, was somebody who I think did it right. She and her fiancé devised a formal check-in system in order to make sure they could minimize tensions. He's a surgeon and she comes from the world of business. And so, even before they got married, they started having quarterly strategic planning meetings. It sounds very formal, but it basically involved them sitting side by side with a drink in each one's hand, late at night, looking every quarter about what was working and what wasn't working, not only about their marriage, but about how they were sharing household duties or parenting. So, for instance, when she got pregnant for the first time, at one of those strategic planning quarterly meetings, they debated whether they actually could manage without a nanny once she went back to work. He was joining his father's surgical practice. She was becoming a VP in her early thirties, very unusual at her company, and the consequence of that discussion was, they did decide that they needed a nanny. 

Megan Monson: Sure sounds like they need a nanny to me, based on our experiences. 

Joann Lublin: And now they have multiple children. 

Megan Monson: Yeah, definitely. So, we talked earlier about the differences in prior generations of executive moms, and today's working moms, we are lucky to be at a point in the practice of law where there are lots of women who are senior to us, as well as junior to us, and at least the three of us are somewhere in the middle between the more senior generation and the brand new Gen Z generation that we just recorded another podcast with, talking about how Gen Z's attitude is different about work. 

But what do you feel like women whose children are grown up or older can do today to support their colleagues who are at the stage that the three of us are at, with young kids, pretty new to being mothers. What can these moms who have been around the block in the business world do to help support us? 

Joann Lublin: Well, I think it's a really great question, but I also think it's an untapped resource. Whether you look to these women informally or formally, you should recognize that they've been down this road before and they are eager to share their expertise, their insights, their support, to tell you what worked and what didn't work. 

And then, there are formal programs. The last chapter of Power Moms looks at a handful of companies that are making work workable for working parents. One of those I highlight is PWC, which many years ago initiated a program called Mentor Moms. It was the brainchild of a woman who had come back to work after having a child and feeling very alone and very isolated and very unsure of herself in terms of how she was being viewed, as well as how she was dealing with the guilt of leaving the baby at home. But these Mentor Moms becomes a very formal program, and it still exists to this day, and what happens is a woman who's already come back to work, whose children are older, is paired with an expectant woman before she goes out on parental leave, while she's out on parental leave, after she comes back from parental leave, and offering tips based on their experience, like the notion that maybe you start work back in the middle of the week so it doesn't feel so stressful because the week ends sooner than you expected. 

Megan Monson: I started up my return from maternity leave on a Friday, and it was amazing for me. So that's a great tip, Joann. 

Joann Lublin: Absolutely. But another one of the companies focused in that last chapter is American Express. And so, when American Express makes for a more generous parental leave policy, one that applies to men and women alike, primary and non-primary caregivers, they indeed recognize the fact that having so many people go out on leave can put a strain of those colleagues who either have grown children or have chosen not to become parents. 

And so, what American Express did is they created a small pot of money and told supervisors they could use this to hire temporary staff. This became very, very apparent to me when I showed up at American Express's headquarters to interview one of their younger executive moms for this book, and the male PR guy I had been dealing with wasn't there. The woman who greeted me said, "I'm so-and-so from the such-and-such PR agency. The guy you've been dealing with, his wife just gave birth and he's out for the next five or six months, and they've brought me in to be a temporary fill-in from one of their regular PR agencies." 

I think it's important to recognize that many of these younger moms, women, who are perhaps even newer to parenthood, those of you who have more than one child, don't know how they can move up in their careers, especially if they're trying to work at a flexible schedule. And so, I think, as a law firm and also as colleagues, it's important to educate them about the drawbacks of being remote, such as this thing called proximity bias, which is the boss picks on the person he or she sees sitting next to them or in the office down the hall, rather than the person who's remote or that project or that promotion. And the importance of learning remote networking techniques, the idea that, ahead of a meeting where it's something important to your career is going to be decided, or your budget or your program, you end up then networking if necessary, remotely or in person with somebody who's going to be there in person. 

Megan Monson: These are all really amazing tips. Joann, any final words of wisdom to share about the future for working moms and dads? 

Joann Lublin: Well, I am hugely optimistic about the future for working moms and dads, mostly because I think people of both genders get it. They get the importance of being highly involved parents, and they get the importance of being highly involved in their careers, and they recognize that there is not only solidarity in numbers, but there's solidarity in trying to work on solutions together. So, I think, as individuals, my parting advice would be to make your choices wisely. Choose your right life partner, choose the right workplace, and if it turns out that all those great recruiting videos in which it looked like it was a family-friendly workplace were just propaganda, vote with your feet. Go work somewhere else. 

And thirdly, I think you need to choose mentors and sponsors wisely. Choose different mentors and sponsors at different points in your career, because what you need early on in your career, particularly in the legal profession, it's not going to be the same as when you're getting close to being eligible for partner. But, at the same time, recognize that most of your mentors and sponsors are going to be men, because men still predominate in law firms and in companies in upper management. 

Megan Monson: Joann, thanks so much again for joining us today. We've had such a wonderful conversation, and I'm sure our listeners have found your insights and perspective very useful. I know I certainly have, and I think we've all got some new ideas about ways to improve even more our experience as working moms. 

Joann, can you tell our listeners where to find more information about your work? 

Joann Lublin: Sure. The best way to learn more about me, my Wall Street Journal career, and my two books is by checking out my website, www.joannlublin.com. It's got six easy clicks at the top; in case you want to order either book from six different online retailers. I am agnostic when it comes to Amazon. I think we need to spread the wealth. I'm also available on LinkedIn. 

Megan Monson: Thanks so much, Joann, and thanks everybody for joining us for another episode of the Women's Initiative Network, Real Talk. We'll see you next time. 

Amanda Cipriano: Thank you for listening to today's episode. Please subscribe to our podcast series at lowenstein.com/podcasts or find us on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, Google Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Lowenstein Sandler podcast series is presented by Lowenstein Sandler and cannot be copied or rebroadcast without consent. The information provided is intended for a general audience. It is not legal advice or substitute for the advice of counsel. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. The content reflects the personal views and opinions of the participants. No attorney client relationship is being created by this podcast and all rights are reserved.