Thank you Brenda Barnes

I just read about how Brenda Barnes, the CEO of Sara Lee, was on the Today show talking about how she left the workforce to be at home with her children and returned in to a high level position. She has created a program at Sara Lee called returnship. Mom's go to work part time and receive education and training on what has changed while they were out of the workforce. She also encourages flextime and work from home. FINALLY!!! Someone gets it! Thank you Brenda Barnes!!

Now, if only the rest of the business world would follow. My ideal would be that women would not have to make the difficult choice and return to the workforce before their children enter school at age 5 unless they absolutely wanted to - not because of finances. I think women should have the option to draw their social security to help supplement the loss of income we take when we decide to stay at home with our children. When I was interviewing, I didn't dare even mention that I was a Mom or that I had enjoyed being home with my children. I know that employers tend to secretly discriminate against Moms. Then there is the blatant discrimination where we tend to get in attendance trouble because we need to take care of sick children. Heaven forbid one of our children get sick. Of course businesses expect us to pawn our sick children off on relatives or make our spouse miss work.

We don't treat our Mom's right in this country. We don't provide enough maternity time. We dont provide options for Moms to stay at home without going through extreme financial hardships in most cases. We are not Mom friendly in the workplace - very little flex time or work at home opportunities (that are legit), and penalizing Moms for doing the most important job we have in the entire world - raising our children.

I think it is time that the business world and government woke up and began to work to help Moms in all kinds of areas. There is a Mother's Act before the Senate currently. It keeps getting stalled of course. It would provide funding for research in to Post partum depression. It would also establish a national awareness campaign. Ladies - we are strong and honestly, we are powerful. We need to stand up for our rights to raise our children without fear of loosing our jobs. Without the financial hardships of going down to one income from two.

Ok - I"ll step off my soap box. This is just something I get very passionate about.