Why Busy Moms Need a Safety Net and How to Find One

Who's Your Safety Net?

By Elaine Rogers


Lindsay Townsend often drives "like a bat out of hell," commuting from a job 40 minutes away to try to get home before her young son is dismissed from school. On those anxious days when neither she nor her husband can get to the school, Townsend relies on a small network of friends and neighbors.


Whether single, married or somewhere in-between, most working moms are well acquainted with the stress of juggling career and home-life demands. Especially intense are those times when a child wakes up sick on a day of deadlines and must-attend meetings, or when a student unexpectedly needs to be picked up early from school.


Stay-at-home moms can relate to another kind of scheduling stress - the nerve-wracking kind that results when dropping children off at piano lessons and soccer practice, making a short trip to the grocery store, and then getting caught in traffic en route to retrieve the kids.


Young mothers today are trying to juggle so many things, says sociologist Susan Short, the associate director of the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University. "They're raising young children and they usually have a lot of other demands on their time. Their lives get pretty complicated. Figuring out who else can help out or pick up the pieces when they're away - that's the million dollar question, isn't it?"


On Our Own

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American companies have come a long way over the last decade in trying to offer working parents a safety net of more flexible scheduling and family-friendly policies. But a 2006 survey shows that we've still got a long way to go... Read More


A generation ago, mothers could rely on extended family and neighbors when they were caught in this kind of bind. But today, more mothers are in the workforce, neighborhoods are often empty during the day, and extended family no longer lives nearby.


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