Moms and careers: a new way forward

Full-time work or dependency on a husband is a false choice. Moms today can opt out, then relaunch a career.

from the April 30, 2007 edition

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With its Encore program, Lehman Brothers is one of the companies leading the charge to recruit from this pool of underutilized talent. Aquent, the world's largest marketing staffing firm, is drawing from the at-home pool as a new source for its temporary-to-permanent and interim staffing programs. Management consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton has created a contract pool of consultants on career break. And financial firms Citigroup and UBS have collaborated with Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, respectively, to defray the costs of these schools' relauncher updating programs and recruit from the programs' graduates.

We recently spoke at the Conference Board's Women's Leadership Conference, showcasing these cutting-edge efforts to access the at-home pool. Our audience was a room full of mid- to senior-level human resource and other executives, who have historically looked askance at relaunchers with gaps on their résumés and kids at home.

That these professionals are taking the time to attend sessions on the virtues of recruiting from the at-home pool means that relaunching is coming of age. With big, influential companies and universities creating programs and successfully reintegrating at-home moms back into the workforce, other employers have models to emulate. And moms who relaunch their careers inspire their at-home peers to follow suit.

With all the exciting opportunities for women today, the biggest feminine mistake would be to heed the message of Bennetts's "The Feminine Mistake." Now is not a time for fear mongering. Young women contemplating their future career paths need to know that they are not doing themselves a disservice by leaving their careers to stay home.

It won't be long before the pregnant employee is asked, "Are you going on a maternity leave, or are you taking a career break and then relaunching?"

We have never felt so optimistic about the prospects for at-home moms to relaunch careers as we do now.

Carol Fishman Cohen and Vivian Steir Rabin are the authors of "Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work," forthcoming in June. Both Harvard MBAs, Ms. Cohen, a mother of four, and Ms. Rabin, a mother of five, relaunched their careers after multiyear leaves at home.

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