1978

The Wall Street Journal recently ran a story headlined "Stay-at-Home Moms are Fashionable in Many Communities Former Professional Women Bring Competitive Edge to Bake Sales, the PTA." This topic has been a lightning rod for women of our generation. Mothers who make the choice to stay home sometimes feel uneasy about leaving their careers behind. Some who can't afford to quit their jobs resent those who can. Some who could afford to, but choose not to, feel another kind of guilt. And women everywhere worry that talking about their own personal choices makes them sound like they're judging the choices of others.

The most consistent themes with stay-at-home '78s are contentment with their own choices coupled with an appreciation for the complex problems facing families everywhere.

"Five years ago maybe we were less sure about what we were doing," explains LaurelBates Preston, "now I think we're all more comfortable with it." Laurel stays home with Jason 9, Hillary 6-1/2, and Conrad 2 in Bellevue, Wash., while Steve does his senior-pro-gram-manager thing at Microsoft. "It's something you have to feel strongly about. You feel pressure sometimes from other women. But I've never had a job that wasn't overtime, like Steve's is, and I truly enjoy the children."

"It's been wonderful for me," says GabrielleAlbans Hirshfeld. "I have friends who have reverberating guilt. But I don't." Once a corporate counsel for International Paper, Gabrielle now leaves the lawyering to husband Michael and takes care of Ned 7 and Natasha 4 in their Lexington Avenue apartment.

"It's a choice," says Cathy Colligan Yates. "With choices come dilemmas." But not too many. While Greg '76 is a manager with Motorola Kodex, she is at home in Norfolk, Mass., with Kevin 10, Carolyn 7, and Jeffrey 1. Recently Cathy also got the IBM-sponsored enrichment program "Odyssey of the Mind" started up at Freeman Centennial Elementary School.

Ann Hurwitz Forster gave up mergers and acquisitions at Sullivan & Cromwell to be with Will 7 and Matt 3, and she really doesn't expect to go back. "Once you re-establish your priorities, I couldn't imagine going back to a setting where you're required to put work first." Her husband, George, is a partner at Price Waterhouse.

Jane Kirstetter Ingram was on the road every week for five years as a management consultant. After Julie was born, Jane worked part-time for a year, then said "no mas." She and Jeff, a commercial real-estate banker at Bank of Boston, also have a one-year-old, John. "I just feel really lucky to have been able to put a whole decade into my career and then have the option of being home with my kids. I expect to rejoin the work force at some point, but I don't know when."

Melanie Graves Rios was the computer education coordinator at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., when she and Michael (who manages a Computer Care store in Arlington, Va.) started their family. "I thought I wanted to be a working mom, but then I decided I didn't want two fulltime jobs." She started a family-home day care, which now has eight kids, including her own Davi 7, Maya 5, Skye 3."I manage it out," says Melanie. "I have two fulltime assistants." This leaves time for Melanie to teach violin and help out at the Spanish Immersion Program Key School.

"The funny thing," says Melanie, "is that among my feminist friends from college, the liberals are the ones in the workplace. The radicals are the ones staying home."

This discussion will continue in a subsequent column. I have several comments that had to be cut for space, but I'd like more.

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