The 36-Hour Day
with Lylah M. Alphonse
I'm a full-time editor, a part-time writer, and a mom and stepmom to five amazing kids, ages 1 to 14. For me it's not about finding balance, it's about the daily juggle-- my career, my commute, freelance work, homework, housework, married life, social life, and parenting-- and finding the time to get it all done.
To learn more about Lylah, check out her Work It, Mom! profile and read her blog at writeeditrepeat.blogspot.com.
Forbes magazine has figured out the best cities for working moms, and the results are surprising.
New York City – also known as the most expensive city in the country, where $60,000 buys you about as much as a $26,000 annual salary in Atlanta — comes out on top, followed by Austin, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Milwaukee, and Portland, Oregon.
I’m a little confused. What do those five cities have in common, and what makes them great for working moms in particular? A high concentration of moms who work outside of the home? Family-friendly companies? Spectacular, affordable childcare? Jobs with flexible hours?
Don’t know. Forbes didn’t focus on those things.
Instead, Forbes calculated the rankings by taking the 50 largest cities in the US and evaluating them in 11 categories: income, unemployment, living cost, health care, pediatricians, school quality, spending per pupil, child care, violent crimes, property crimes, and parks. All of which are important, yes, but none of which are specific to working moms or the challenges they face.
The reasoning behind the large number of categories makes sense: Different moms have different needs. But since all of the categories were weighed equally — the number of pediatricians in an area meant as much in the rankings as cost of living, job opportunities, and availability of childcare — the end result doesn’t make much sense. Which is how you end up with New York City — a place with high unemployment and an even higher cost of living – in the number one spot. Which is odd, because Forbes declared it one of the worst cities for families just a few months ago. Austin — a city whose best traits, according to Forbes, are a low unemployment rate and a high number of parks — is in the number two spot. (You can see the complete list here.)
Going just by availability of childcare, Houston was the number one city for working moms, followed by Chicago and Miami/Fort Lauderdale; if your most important criterion is the ability to earn a lot of money, your best bets were the Washington, D.C./Alexandria area, San Jose, and San Francisco/Oakland. School quality your number one priority? Go with Minneapolis/St. Paul, Milwaukee, or San Francisco.
What’s my point? It’s that even spread out among 11 categories, it’s difficult to gauge what makes a city great for working moms in particular.
What do you think makes your city (or town) good for working moms? If you were in charge, what would you improve?
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Hmm, when I look at the ratings for my city, I believe them to be quite inaccurate. Health care, for example - we have a couple of the most world-renowned hospitals headquartered here and they are available to everyone, even destitute people. Parks? The urban area is literally surrounded by a national forest, aside from many other parks and amenities. So I have to take the rest of the ratings with a grain of salt.
Some things I really like about my city as a working mom:
- low cost of living. This is big because I have a great backyard that I could never afford in/near most cities. Free daily nature study, meditation spot, etc. are very important to me.
- usually no long waits for things - whether you’re talking about traffic, health care, whatever. The preschool availability thing - every place I called told me to come on over any time, take a tour, here’s a packet, let us know when you want to sign up. No waiting lists whatsoever. Relatively no inconvenience at the airport, either.
- many educational, cultural, and natural treasures
- world-class medicine, technology
- a car drive away from half of Anglo-America’s consumers
- relatively clean air, lots of green, not a lot of congestion
- diverse, friendly, down to earth people
Some things I’d like to change (which aren’t on the Forbes list):
- taxes
- government stagnation, largely due to special interests such as unions vs huge land owners. The impossibility of true progress in government results in disastrous public school policy, public works policy, economic development policy, etc., mass exodus of anyone who has a clue, and residual dependent population.
But overall, I have to say that I really like my location for both working and raising my kids.
SKL | August 10th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
How about a dynamic online and offline mom community like JPmoms, that even is open to dads (https://www.bigtent.com/groups/jpmoms). Also walkability. Density for lots of neighbors and if you’re lucky family to depend on. Proximity to work for emergency (and not) getaways back home. And maybe something like the Commonwealth Compact that is tracking how many besides white men are running the shows in town (http://www.commonwealthcompact.umb.edu/)
Stefan | August 10th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
My town is good for this working mom because my parents live here :)…and I’m a single mom, so that’s especially important. It’s a small town, too, and that’s good for me because I am almost never more than 5 minutes’ driving distance from home, work, daycare, or the pediatrician’s office. The people here know who I am, and many of them will help me out if I get into a bind.
These aren’t things that would show up in a survey or a study, but they are the very real reasons that my life works.
Just me | August 11th, 2009 at 11:52 am
I think our city’s ranking is probably about right; we’re not the best, not the worst.
I think Forbes is wrong about:
1. Parks. There are parks & playlots in walking distance to most every neighborhood.
2. Childcare. I don’t know who they spoke too but finding care for my daughter was a horrendous experience. There may be a lot of providers but they’re all full. No one had space or they were well out of the price range for most working moms.
3. Healthcare. We have several nationally acclaimed hospitals here.
I agree with them on:
1. Schools. Our schools are nationally reknowned for how abysmal they are.
2. Income. Salaries are decent, but they don’t stand up to cost of living. 3. Food. Grocery stores are inaccessible to many who don’t have cars.
I wish they’d rated:
1. Public transportation. The ability to live without owning a car is crucial to working moms at lower salary levels.
2. Social. Where are the rankings for kid entertainment?
Mich | August 18th, 2009 at 2:37 pm