( EARNINGS AND YEARNINGS )

The Real ReasonsWomenSupporting the family is nottheir sole motivation.By Sarah Damaske, Ph.D.

VER TEA IN my officeone day, Helena, a mother with a pres-tigious, well-paying job, bemoaned thefact that when it comes to work, mothershave few options these days. "You haveto juggle or you have to make a choice:career or family," she said. Choosing tojuggle it all, she noted, is "really, reallytough." But, like many women I've metthrough my research, Helena explainedthat she went that route because it's thebest thing for her family.

Women's decisions regarding workand motherhood have been at the centerof a media maelstrom over the past year.From political pundit Hilary Rosen's quipthat Ann Romney "has never actuallyworked a day in her life," to Anne-MarieSlaughter's argument in The Atlantic thatwomen still can't have it all, Americanmothers'job-life trajectories continueto be highly scrutinized. But the choicesthey are makingand why they makethemare often misunderstood.

50 Psychology Today September/October 2012

"Even when they've made thehest work decisions for

themselves, women feel guiltyand unahle to escape criticism.

Last year, the Working MotherResearch Institute reported that the vastmajority of mothers say the main reasonthey work (or vi ould work) is for a pay-check. When I conducted interviews formy book on female employment, I simi-larly found that most women say theywork because it benefits their families.

But my research revealed somethingelse: Even though women emphasizemonetary needs, money is not the drivingforce behind their workforce decisions.Yes, money plays an important role, andwomen want to find work that pays whatthey consider a fair wage for their efforts.But I found that they also stay employedwhen they find work interesting, whenit provides a sense of accomplishment,whenitallowsagood job-family balance,when it garners recognition and respect,when it includes the possibility foradvancement, and when it can improvetheir family's social position.

Take Virginia, who summarizes thetypical response: "Financially, womenhave to work for their kids to have more."Yet a closer look at her work-family cir-cumstances uncovers a more complicatedpicture. Virginia continued working as ahairdresser after both her children wereborn, but left her job when new manage-ment reduced the flexibility of her hours(making childcare an issue) and hired aboss who treated the employees poorly.

"I hated working there at that time,"Virginia admitted. In fact, when shemade the decision to quit, her husbandhad recently lost his job, and the familyfaced several years of financial difficulty.By the time she returned to the work-force, her husband was stably employed.So while the explanation Virginia gave

for working focused on finances, heractions did notshe left a job she dis-liked when her family had no regularsource of income, and returned to workafter finding a great job during a periodof increased financial stability.

Why did Virginia and Helena (andalmost all the women I met) tell a storyabout the role of financial needs in theirworkforce decisions? First, even whenthey know they've made the best workdecisions for themselves, they feel guilty.One woman, Donatella, said that strug-gling with what to do about the work-family conflict "kept me up at nights. Icouldn't deal with the guilt of giving upthe career, or of not being a good mother."

Women also feel there's no way toescape criticism. "People look down onyou if you do work, people look downon you if you don't work. Everybody hasa very strong opinion," noted anothermother, Paula. Saying that the choicesthey make are for their family, rather thanfor themselves, may help mothers allevi-ate guilt (and defer blame) by suggestingtheir motives are altruistic.

Such explanations also tap into abroader popular discussion that connectswomen's paid labor to the financial needsof their family. The idea that womenwork because they need toand thatonZywealthy women can choose not to work-has deep roots in our country. At the startofthe 20th century, most females whotook jobs were working-class; this trendwas fairly stable until recent years.

Yet today it's a mythone that con-tinues to be perpetuated, even in Rosen'sresponse to critiques of her commentabout Romney: "I admire women whocan stay home and raise their kids full

time. I even envy them sometimes. It isa wonderful luxury to have the choice.But let's stipulate that it is not a choicethat most women have in America today."

If financial needs truly continue todictate women's work, we would expectto find higher employment rates amongworking-class women, who earn less thanmiddle-class women. But research findsthe opposite: Middle-class women aremore likely to work. Meanwhile, highlyeducated women are most likely to work(education is highly connected to incomelevels); according to the Bureau of LaborStatistics, 85 percent ofwomen with post-graduate degrees work, compared to 80percent of college grads, 68 percent ofhigh school grads, and just 48 percent ofwomen with no high school diploma.

National trends do not support whatwe think we know about why womenwork. Despite what even mothers them-selves say (and perhaps believe), womenwork for far more complicated reasonsthan money alone. Stories like Virginia'sillustrate that it's not just a paycheck thatmatters; work environment matters too.A lack of workplace flexibility, too littlerecognition and respect from managersand employers, and few childcare optionsare examples of problems all mothersface in the workplace and that factor intotheir career choices. Particularly amongworking-class women, addressingtheseissues could make "juggling it all" thatmuch easierand mean that moremothers choose to work in the long run.

Portions of this article are reprinted fromFor the Family? How Class and GenderShape Women's Work with the permissionof Oxford University Press.

September/October 2012 Psychology Today 51

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