In Saturdays WSJ, writer Virginia Postrel has a retrospective on the Mommy Track.  She takes us back to a controversial 1989 Harvard Business Review article by Felice N. Schwartz called “Management Women and the New Facts of Life. Schwartz started with the fact that not all working women want the same things. Some are chiefly career-focused, making “the same trade-offs traditionally made by the men who seek leadership positions.” However, most women want children, Schwartz wrote, and “are willing to trade some career growth and compensation for freedom from the constant pressure to work long hours and weekends.”  Schwartz, who died in 1996, said that companies should recognize such women as a precious resource, and to retain them, should offer more flexibility and part-time work. Such arrangements would likely mean lower pay and a slower career trajectory, but “most career-and-family women are entirely willing to make that trade-off, wrote Schwartz.  Schwartzs piece ignited an outcry, Postrel writes. Critics charged Schwartz with consigning women to dead-end jobs, or — as it quickly became dubbed — the Mommy Track. Lower pay for less work offended the reigning idea of a serious career, Postrel writes.  However, Schwartz ended up being prescient. By the late 1980s, college-aged women began conceiving their career and family options in new ways, and the percentage of women who had both children and careers jumped significantly. Most of the gains came from new work patterns, such as part-time arrangements, that no longer forced women to make an all-or-nothing choice, Postrel says.  For instance, Postrel cites one study of University of Chicago MBAs that found that, a decade after graduation, women with children work on average 24% fewer weekly hours than men. (Women without children work about 3% fewer hours.) Only half of them work full-time, while others hang out their own shingles as consultants to take on more flexible, project-based work. “MBA mothers,” the researchers wrote, “seem to actively choose jobs that are family-friendly, and avoid jobs with long hours and greater career-advancement possibilities.”  As it turned out, many women indeed have chosen to trade money for family. You just couldn’t say so in public, Postrel writes.  Postrel doesn’t delve into the changing roles and expectations of men, but it will be interesting to see whether more men eventually choose to make these same trade-offs, too. Will there just be a “Flex Track” available to anyone — men, women, parent or not– as opposed to a gendered “Mommy” or “Daddy” or even “Parent” track? And will that track necessarily mean lower pay or promotions, especially if the work gets done efficiently and competently?  Readers, do you think its still taboo to say you want to trade money for family? Is it taboo for men to say they want to make these trade-offs? Is the Mommy Track (or “Daddy Track”) still an unmentionable concept in your workplaces? Or have you seen a shift in your workplace, in your profession, or among your peers  such as the one Postrel describes? Do you think that flexibility should come at the expense of lower pay or slower promotions?
As it turns out, many women have chosen to take the "Mommy Track," trading money for family. So why is the concept still unmentionable in some workplaces?