Melanie Mayron Quotes

I have never met a woman who works who doesn't feel guilty. I mean we all deny it like crazy but deep down there is always that voice saying you should be at home.

Women are smarter by basic instinct and by what we have to do to multitask at home and at work. My mother did that 50 years ago, but it wasn't called multitasking or stress back then. She had a job, two kids and the meals to make with no cook or maid. My father would come home every day and expect lunch. He was a nice guy, but he was clueless!

The No. 1 impediment to women succeeding in the workforce is now in the home.

Most of us in the baby-boom generation were raised by full-time mothers. Even as recently as 14 years ago, 6 out of 10 mothers with babies were staying at home. Today that is totally reversed. Does that mean we love our children less than our mothers loved us? No, but it certainly causes a lot of guilt trips.

Men have the choice to arrange their schedules so they can pick up the kids from school twice a week. And they have the choice not to, and then to feel guilty about this choice.

Working moms commonly testify that they feel guilty when they are away from their children and guilty when they are not at their jobs. Devoted fathers certainly miss their children deeply, but it does not seem to be with the same gnawing, primal anxiety that often afflicts women.

I absolutely don't want to suggest that women are unreliable because we're mothers - on the contrary. But the question of who brings up the kids has a material effect on all women's careers.

Women feel like they have to choose. Am I going to have a career or am I going to have kids and that's not a decision that men have to make.

You don't bring your wife to work.

Working mothers do an hour more per day than working fathers do and working mothers do on average an hour more per day with the kids than working fathers do.

Some women work while they are pregnant, but not me. That was a choice I had made. That's when I took a break. Men can work at whatever stage they are; whether they turn daddy, they still have their own thing. But women can't afford that because by being mothers, they have to be there for their kids.

I feel intensely guilty for working... You have to be able to provide for your kids. But I feel like it's a weird modern phenomenon that you always feel guilty for it.

That said, my kids are at home right now with my husband and I'm missing something important at my daughter's school which makes me feel sick inside. It's a lot of balance and a lot of really hard decision making.

When a father puts in long hours at work, he's praised for being dedicated and ambitious. But when a mother stays late at the office, she's sometimes accused of being selfish, neglecting her kids.

Literally, over a weekend, Friday to Monday, I went from a C.I.A. officer to changing diapers and putting the kid in a Bjorn and going to the playground and hanging out with all the nannies. I was the only dad - everyone kind of gave me strange looks because of our sexist society.

As women, we're supposed to bear the burden of raising our families and then also financially providing for them as well, and it's difficult when you're already starting off making less than the average.

There's a repression against mothers where we're expected to be full-time workers and pretend we're not mothers, and then expected to be full-time mothers who pretend we're not working. Simultaneously, within the hours of the week that exist.

Working parents bring a certain amount of guilt to their relationship with their children.

A woman's place is in the home. Why should she go out and take away a workingman's pay instead of staying home and stealing out of his jacket like a good wife.

As more women have gone into the workforce, they find it harder to be a good mother and a good worker. When I go into the office, I always feel guilty. I'm thinking about the children. When I'm at home, I'm thinking about my work. So you're always under tremendous pressure. Women feel very stressed. They feel like they're working harder and harder and harder. And society is not really helping them.

Many women cut back what had to be done at home by redefining what the house, the marriage and, sometimes, what the child needs. One woman described a fairly common pattern: I do my half. I do half of his half, and the rest doesn't get done.

After Mason was born, I'd feel guilty doing anything that wasn't related to work.

I love the fact that there are also women out there that don't have a choice and they must go to work and they still have to raise the kids. Thank goodness that we value those people too.

If you factor in not just who's doing what at home, but how much more time working fathers are spending on work outside the home, on average they spend two hours more per day outside the home.

The average full-time working male works more than a full-time working female.