The Soccer Mom Diatribe

I want to be a soccer mom when I grow up.

How antiquated! How lowly! How ungrateful of such opportunities! Some (probably most) would be shocked to hear that I do not aspire to a fifty-plus year career doing something professional in an office where I make big money doing something I am incredibly passionate about.

Though the idea of extended parenting leaves and more flexible workplaces is a lovely one, I’m not sure the money-thirsty corporate world will succumb to the pressures of giving people paid time for not doing work. Especially when the labor market is decently tight. Realistically, I personally do not imagine a peace of mind balancing a serious big-time career with 2.5 children and a dog, living in a nice suburban home from where I drive my future minivan around, go shopping for groceries and run the PTA. This movie-perfect vision, totally flipped from the future woman-professional portrait we are attempting to paint, is what I strive for, where I see myself in about 15 years. It’s that soon.

Seeing my life on this fast track to fulfilling my maternal instincts, I’ve been super-professionally minded for a while now. I meet with course advisors to count out my credits, I overload courses, I go to networking events. Once, I organized all of my classes on a Tuesday/Thursday rotation so I could intern at two different companies during the week. I am determined to graduate a little early with a major and two minors and a stacked resume.

I want to make the most of my time in the real-world. At a go-see with the owner of 7 NYC bars, I got a refreshing piece of surprising advice. If you know what you want to do, just go ahead and do it. You don’t need grad school (and those student loans) for a lot of careers.

I plan on writing. Whether its brochures or a New York Times bestseller, I’ll be pretty happy. Though print media might be going out of style faster than Myspace, people will always need to communicate and writing is a key means of achieving that.

The awesome thing about writing is that you can work really hard writing for a corporation’s PR department or a non-profit’s website or a newspaper’s daily edition. The opportunities seem endless. Or you can freelance. If the doors were not open in the professional world, freelancing provides the opportunity to create whatever size and shape of ‘door’ you want to.

So, I can work full-time for 10 years. I can settle down and have kids and freelance for 25 years. And then, I can get back to you in a bit about what’s after that. By then, I might want to go to culinary school or become a biologist or a ballerina or an astronaut or queen of the universe. Though I have the next step planned out (graduate and get a job writing somewhere for something), I am open to the endless possibilities I can continue to create for myself.

While the work of organizations like Ms. Goldenhar's at Advancing Women Professionals is absolutely phenomenal, the power to create our own futures is in our own hands, minds, and hearts.

No matter what you do, I think you should go full-speed ahead.

(written in response to a talk on Gender and the Workplace with Didi Goldenhar. Check out her work at http://www.advancingwomen.org/ or understand the term 'soccer mom' on Wikipedia)