• There's Still A Long Way To Go, Baby

• The Problem With No Name Revisited

• The Tired Superwoman

• A Life Of Balance

• The Way We Whine

• The Glass Ceiling Is In The Nursery

• What Did You Expect?

• Term Limits

Term Limits

Caught in their daily routines, the Clayton, Martling, and King families provide a tableau of the lives of working, middle, and upper-middle class American mothers. While their experiences don't capture every possible situation, they stake out the outlines of the Mommy Trap, as well as a new family paradigm.

The Mommy Trap snares a mother whenever:

• she takes on a parenting or household responsibility automatically, resulting in more work and less leisure than she would like, particularly in comparison to her husband;
• she does nothing to change the situation beyond express anger, complaint, and resignation;
• pre-conceptions about what men and women can and should do, how child and household care should be performed, or that the universe of work and childcare arrangements is rigidly predetermined, prevent her and her family from finding a solution to their problem.

The Mommy Trap occurs when a mother who feels guilty for spending time away from her children during the workday devotes every ounce of her energy in her spare time to her children. It snaps tightly around mothers who gatekeep, granting their husbands limited access to their kids, accompanied by critique and instruction. Women like Mary Clayton who end up at home, frustrated, because they assume fathers provide income and mothers make career sacrifices for the family, also reside in the Mommy Trap. So do stay-at-home moms happy to raise their children and not work for pay but who never get a break even to go out to lunch or the movies. Those who plan months of maternity leave while their husbands take three days off upon the birth of their babies, and expect to share parenting equally (time to introduce myself!), constitute another large segment.
While I have researched what happens to women when they become mothers and can speak somewhat distantly about the experience, let me say up-front that at different times I have been all of these women. I have made every mistake in the book more than once. That's how I know what they are. With time, I remedied some of my errors, by talking to mothers who had set up better situations, and copying their methods. Whatever worked for them, I figured, could help me too. I learned from couples who made up their own rules. I would love to pass their wisdom along to you.

I should make clear that the term "Mommy Trap" does not refer to giving birth and then having to take care of, or give up something for, your child. If I had the choice of becoming a mom and doing everything myself or not having children, I would pick my daughters without hesitation. But, we actually have more choice than that, which can include many possibilities beyond those expectant couples generally consider. More than anything else, the term Mommy Trap describes a failure to understand the wide range of options available to modern parents.

Let me also note that "traditional" roles work well for women who value domesticity. Nobody should fault mothers who like to stay home to do the difficult work of raising a family and taking care of the household. However, fewer and fewer women desire pure traditional roles. Post women's liberation, most women want and expect something beyond house and family.

In a 1999 poll sponsored by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, just one quarter of those surveyed agreed that "women should return to their traditional roles in society." Forty-eight percent completely disagreed and twenty-three percent mostly disagreed. Similarly, a recent survey of 8,000 women found that eighty percent believed men and women should be equal partners at home, and sixty-eight percent wanted dual income households.

Later on, we'll look at research that shows that many women who think they (and their husbands) have moved past 1950's family stereotypes later find themselves in parenting roles that haven't changed much at all. Those who don't plan ahead like Ann King did wind up on the old road.

Follow me on a journey through the world of dating all the way to the joys of parenting teenagers. We will track Mary Clayton, Lauren Martling, Ann King, and others to see how to set up a personalized work and parenting allocation and learn how mothers already stuck can get out of the Mommy Trap. Wherever you fall along the continuum of life stages or hopes for paternal involvement, you will see yourself somewhere. If you're smart, like I wasn't, you'll have done some of the things our pioneering couples did. If you strayed, occasionally, or often, you will find a way to right your course.
We will learn precisely how Mike and Ann King and other families with different arrangements put themselves in situations where everybody wins. Not everyone will want to share equally. Not everybody can afford to cut back on work hours to spend time with his or her young children. However, moving in those directions will start the end of our collective dysfunction. And the end of constant carping, endless cups of coffee, angst, and temper tantrums.
Women who do not have children and haven't selected their life mates yet have the greatest chance of sharing parenting more equally. Certainly, girls or women picking up this book before they become mothers are far smarter than I was. They can set up structures ahead of time which allow them to do what seems nearly impossible: enjoy life and marriage after having children, and do a good job with all three, at the same time.

However, all is not lost for those of us whose bellies will never look again like they did when we put on our wedding dresses. There is hope for women who are already mothers. First, we'll look at some common detours that lead to the Mommy Trap. Once we identify dead-ends to avoid, we can trek on ahead to where we really want to go.

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