How to be a Super Mom

Written by Jan Jaben-Eilon Wednesday, October 07 2009

Today’s women want it all. They want motherhood, and they want careers. And they are getting both. But finding balance between the two keeps these super moms walking a tightrope in a fashion that would impress The Flying Wallendas.

Holly Sims, 47, senior vice president at the Bank of North Georgia, is a fifth- generation Atlantan who lives with her two sons, 11 and 13, just two miles from her office.

Unlike most metropolitan Atlantans, Sims doesn’t spend hours on the road commuting. And that extra time is a godsend to Sims since she now is a single parent. But even with no commute, she still must be “incredibly organized” to keep home and work functioning properly.

As a working mother, Sims juggles car pooling and after-school sporting activities with managing a household, helping her sons with homework, and keeping her career up and running.

After her divorce, it took her a few months to find the right job and return to the working world. Initially, thanks to alimony, she had a nanny who helped with the boys and daily chores such as grocery shopping. But that changed last year, inspiring Sims to seriously develop her organizational skills.

Now, she says, “I can plan the invasion of Normandy.”

Her day typically begins at 6 a.m., when she arises, turns on her computer, and does a little work. She continues handling email and job demands on her Blackberry as she sits at traffic lights.

One morning each week, Sims takes her turn as the neighborhood’s designated car pool driver. Most days, she arrives at work by 8:15 a.m. On days when she needs to pick up her kids, she quits at 5:45 p.m. When they catch a ride with someone else, Sims arrives home close to 7 p.m.

That’s during the school year. Summers get more than a little crazy, as Sims tries to schedule activities for the boys and also keep her job. One month of this past summer took them to sleepover camp. Whew! Then they spent two weeks with their dad. Sims took off work and spent one week with them. Finally, she was able to locate day camps, which occupied the boys for the rest of the summer.

Like other super moms who handle this overload, Sims gives a lot of credit to her employer. Bank of North Georgia, she says, understands that its employees are making financial sacrifices during this tough period for the banking industry – with raises frozen and no bonuses the past two years – so it’s willing to be more flexible with employee working hours.

Married women who juggle careers and motherhood have problems similar to those Sims faces.

“There are tough days,” acknowledges Marcia G. Jerding, mother of three and partner, Assurance and Advisory Business Services, at the accounting firm Ernst & Young.

Jerding figures if she stays mostly on track, then she’s doing well. “I don’t get it right 100 percent of the time. I told myself that if it was in balance 75 percent of the time it would be OK,” Jerding says. But it requires tremendous communication with the people who work for and with you.”

Every Sunday afternoon, Jerding, 39, and her husband compare calendars to make sure they don’t schedule early morning meetings on the same days.

But even with a spouse, working women find they need additional help. For Jerding, it comes in the form of a personal assistant. When she became a partner in 2006, she hired an assistant who works 10 hours weekly doing the laundry, grocery shopping, and preparing meals.

Other female partners in her office have either nannies or au pairs. Different methods work for different people. But the point is, these women do get help.

As for Ernst & Young, Jerding says the company has been very supportive. When she was pregnant with her first child, she told her boss she wanted to stay on the partnership path. To accomplish this, she adopted a reduced flex-work arrangement following the births of her first two children. She worked three 11-hour days except during her busy season when she worked full-time.

By the time her third child arrived, her husband had more flexibility in his job so Jerding was able to return to full-time work.

“As I look around, I’m not sure I could have done this anywhere else,” she says, referring to the flexibility Ernst & Young allowed.

Cindy Huber, 47, is vice president of sales and marketing for the Eastern division of Denver-based Strucsure Home Warranty, which just entered the East Coast market.

While Huber previously worked in publishing, her husband stayed home with their two sons. Now that he’s back at work, Huber particularly appreciates being able to work from home.



This means she can be available in the afternoons to take her kids to after-school activities. And it allows her to volunteer at her boys’ schools. When one of the boys is sick, she and her husband check each other’s schedule to see who can best accommodate sitting at a child’s bedside, or making him chicken soup.

Joking that she could use a wife to help her out, Huber says the “hardest thing is taking care of the house, laundry, and grocery shopping.”

Female attorneys, who live and breathe by billable hours, are especially challenged by combining careers with motherhood. When Jane Allen, 45, practiced private law, she had three children in three years. After seven years, she went to her law firm and said she didn’t want to work part-time.

“They said, ‘Figure out a way to make it work.’”

She did – big time. Allen launched Nashville-based Counsel on Call, which places top-quality attorneys with law firms and in corporate legal departments, on a contract basis.

She employs several hundred so-called candidate lawyers (because they are candidates for placement) across the country, finding positions that fit their needs. They receive benefits, including 401(K)s and the chance to earn their continuing education credits, all through Counsel on Call.

“Our clients understand why our lawyers choose to work with us. These lawyers are good enough to be partners in a law firm, but they’ve made a career choice,” Allen explains. Each chooses the type of contract work he or she requires. Some mothers, especially those with young children, prefer to take on work they can do from home. Others work for only a few months at a time then take a break.

Although many of the lawyers at Counsel on Call are women, in the past year male attorneys who have been laid off have joined Counsel on Call, says Anne Whitaker, 53, a former attorney who now works for the company in business development in Atlanta.

Whitaker, mother of a son, also coaches women on how to juggle complicated lives. She says this requires planning ahead. In the summer, it means “lots of camps,” but during the school year, because she wants to spend time with her son when he’s not at school, Whitaker often completes her own work as late as 10:30 p.m.

“I want to be here for him, help with his homework, and make dinner,” she says.

Whitaker emphasizes that staying in touch with her values is crucial. “I want to be clear about what’s important to me. And I try to be in-the-moment. It’s a special challenge of mine because I tend to jump from one thing to another.” Her top tips to super moms include:

• Make time for you.
• Work with a coach to keep focused on goals.
• Exercise.
• Delegate – even to children.

Perhaps the ultimate in delegating is Whitaker’s friend “whose children get her up in the morning and make her coffee.”

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Jan Jaben-Eilon was a founding staff writer of the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Since then, she has been the international editor of Advertising Age magazine and has written for such publications as The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Washington Journalism Review, and Consumer Reports. She is the author of soon-to-be-published (There is) Life After Cancer. Jan and her husband have homes in Atlanta and Jerusalem.