Working moms: You can do it all!

The Working Mother's Manifesto
In honor of the platinum anniversary of the Working Mother 100 Best, I commissioned a survey to find out exactly what moms want now so we can chart the next twenty years of working motherhood. Socratic Technologies, a renowned research firm in California, fielded the What Moms Want survey in 2005 by asking more than five hundred working mothers from all across the country and in all kinds of jobs about the details of their lives: who cares for their kids, how much do they spend on child care, how does having children affect their ambitions and careers? What strategies work? What kind of support do women get from their companies and communities — and what kinds of support do they most desperately crave? The findings of this survey provide a strong foundation for this book.

I also examined twenty years of information from the Working Mother 100 Best Companies, and spoke with work-life experts about what innovative steps companies are taking to truly help working moms, and how moms can persuade their companies to hop on the family-friendly bandwagon. And of course I had at my fingertips the remarkable stories, big thinking, and practical tips from the hundreds of writers and dozens of editors who have made Working Mother magazine a beacon of support and solutions for twenty-six years.

But let's face it, when it comes to advice, the tidbit someone shares with you while you're shopping for shoes, or the postpartum advice you hear from a mom who's been through it, is the stuff we really need. While our survey, our articles, our Best Companies and our experts reveal the basic principles that working mothers live by, it's the stories of real moms that really show how we're doing it. In those stories lie the infinite variety of strategies used every day by moms who combine the love of a family with the rewards of a career.

In response to my "CEO Mom" column in Working Mother magazine, I get lots of e-mails from readers who want to share their ideas. I talk to working mothers in the doctor's office, on the plane, at the Ragamuffin Halloween parade in my town. I get to speak to moms at our reader breakfasts, through online panels and at dozens of conferences and events that I host or attend. I'm constantly inspired by their deep understanding of the issues and the creative solutions that make their lives more sane ... and more joyful.

That's why this book needed to be written. Not just to tell my stories, funny and crazy, sad and jubilant, but to tell all of our stories. To share the secrets of how we do it, to acknowledge our doubts and fears about all that we have taken on our shoulders, to reveal our pride and to trade our personal solutions. To make clear to the world why we do what we do, and to ask our companies and our communities to give us the support we all need.

This Is How We Do It is for all of us who are doing it, but want to do it better. It's also for those millions of women who haven't yet added "mother" to their resumes, so they can chart their own courses for the most exciting decades of their lives. As we learn from each other throughout these pages, we find our own ways to be the best moms we can be, and be the best in our careers as well. Because we are doing it . . . and here's how.

Excerpted from “This Is How We Do It: The Working Mothers’ Manifesto,” by Carol Evans. Copyright © 2006 by Carol Evans. Excerpted by permission of Penguin Group USA . All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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