PRIMARY DILEMMA: A Study of The Choices Working Mothers Make Lynn Hall

PRIMARY DILEMMA: A Study of The Choices Working Mothers Make

February 22 2011

Lynn Hall is the founder of The PRIMARY DILEMMA LLC, which creates tools to help working mothers (parents) discover professional and parenting satisfaction. These tools can also assist employers in creating workplace vocabulary to support conversations about work and family balance. Read more about Lynn and the PRIMARY DILEMMA LLC.

Why are working mothers treated as one undifferentiated group? There are 16 million working mothers in the United States alone. What are the motivations, support networks and economic circumstances that drive their behaviors? Can segments be defined among these working mothers to create meaningful context for the choices that they make?

These are questions that I asked myself, three years ago, while wrestling with my own personal work-family balance after the birth of my fourth child. The challenges that I faced seemed different than those of my working mother colleagues. It was frustrating for me to see working moms compare themselves to one another with feelings of inadequacy like “she is more successful” or “she spends more time with her kids”. And it was equally frustrating to see employers use a cookie cutter approach to the management of working mother talent.

What started as simple questions, emerged as a meaningful body of research. The first wave of primary research achieved 134 responses and generated interesting insights that inspired The PRIMARY DILEMMA for Working Moms (www.primarydilemma.com).

The PRIMARY DILEMMA for Working Moms is a friendly framework that empowers women to better understand their own unique work-family approach, engage their partner and treat other working moms (bosses, peers or employees) with respect and understanding.

The PRIMARY DILEMMA for Working Moms introduces three proprietary concepts:

Working-Mother Methods: Each working mother has her own formula, but there are some shared approaches to the work-family juggle. The PRIMARY DILEMMA identifies 5 approaches and calls them Working-Mother Methods.

Fully Loaded: Is a Single Parent. She is solely responsible for the balance of work and family. Among the women who responded to the PRIMARY DILEMMA research, 10% were Fully Loaded. Of note, a higher percentage of respondents reported to be single mothers but acknowledged co-parenting with someone else.

Workable: Is the primary career in her family. She spends more physical time working than physical childcare. The Workable is enabled by someone else providing primary childcare. Of note, the Workable is highly engaged with her children emotionally. Among working mothers responding to the PRIMARY DILEMMA research, 22% identified themselves as a Workable.

Equalizer: Is actively engaged in work and parenting. She must carefully coordinate with an equally involved and accountable partner to share childcare and household responsibilities. Of women responding to the PRIMARY DILEMMA research, 21% were Equalizers. This person has the opportunity to be a primary career and a primary parent, just not at the same time.

Obliged: Is the primary physical parent who also supplies a required second income. Of women responding to the PRIMARY DILEMMA research, 24% identified as Obliged. This is a complicated method. Most of the childcare responsibility will fall on the shoulders of this person but there is also significant pressure on her job. The greatest dissatisfaction for work was expressed among survey respondents in this cohort. The dissatisfaction typically reflected inflexible work arrangements and an overall shortage of time.

Parentess: Is the primary physical parent. She supplies a discretionary second income for her family. Among working mothers responding to the PRIMARY DIMEMMA research, 22% identified themselves as a Parentess. Part-time or flexible work indexes highest for this method. In addition, she acknowledges that her method may be transitional.

An important insight from the PRIMARY DILEMMA is that the perception of personal choice varies widely among working mothers. Many working mothers feel that they do not have a choice in the method that they adopt. Other working mothers feel empowered to evolve and change their method to meet the needs of their families, their careers and themselves.

The findings of the PRIMARY DILEMMA study have yielded a typing tool to help working moms self-identify their own method (http://www.primarydilemma.com/find-your-method/quiz/). The hypothesis for the typing tool is that if women are more self-aware, they can improve their engagement in career and family and improve their overall sense of personal choice.

The two complementary components of The PRIMARY DILEMMA for Working Moms include:

Contentment Map. The PRIMARY DILEMMA Contentment Map plots four states of working-mother satisfaction: 1) Contentment, 2) Acceptance, 3) Reluctance and 4) Resentment. It is accompanied by diagnostic questions to help the reader improve her personal situation.

The PRIMARY Ps. The PRIMARY Ps is a system to help working mothers identify basic things that they can change to make their jobs more manageable and appealing:

Place: Where do you work?

Pace: What are the demands of your job?

People: Who are you working with and for?

Profession: Do you like WHAT you do for work?

The PRIMARY DILEMMA project is dynamic and growing. The insights reflect real challenges that working mothers are facing today. The goal of the PRIMARY DILEMMA is to offer vocabulary and tools to help working mothers (parents) and employers create better work and family balance.

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