When The Today Show was putting together a piece related to working moms this week, I was glad to be enlisted as an expert. Take a look at the segment here). However, I can admit now that I had some ambivalence when I heard its direction summarized as: “how working women are penalized for motherhood.” My visceral reaction was to think I was now going to be complicit in another “negative” piece about working moms – and if I have any one soapbox as it pertains to us, it is my strong belief that working mothers are either ignored in media/pop culture portrayals of moms – or portrayed through a ridiculously distorted negative lens.

However, as I immersed in the background to the story, I reflected on why there is indeed new data and new emerging real-world experiences continuing to point to the fact that women who place focus on their family responsibilities while maintaining a career can be penalized in their careers, whether in extreme cases losing their job — or more likely, losing ground professionally and/or financially. The issue is not simple; rather it speaks to a nuanced mix of psychological, cultural and practical factors involving moms taking short or longer-term career breaks, and seeking flexible work solutions (with a dose of potential bias thrown in).

Generally, complex issues require complex solutions, but perhaps the best first steps to change are to change the way we collectively think — not just moms, but all of us:

1. We should ban the expression “work/life balance” once and for all, for its completely erroneous (if well-intended) implication that work sits separately from this other thing called your life… and for its secondary implication that there is some Nirvana-like state of balance in which these two opposing poles are supposed to consistently live.
2. When we talk about moms having careers, we must stop positioning it as a choice; we never position a career this way for men, including dads. It insinuates that for women with children, a career is a nice-to-have adjunct, an indulgence even, which is a tremendous disservice and inequity to us all. Seventy percent of Executive Moms surveyed told us they work both for its financial and emotional importance, which speaks to the fact that feeling a sense of satisfaction from work is not mutually exclusive with also needing to work.
   
   
3. As a society, we have to stop viewing the need for workplace flexibility as a “moms” issue, and start seeing it as a “people” issue. As President Obama noted in the recent White House Forum on Workplace Flexibility: most U.S. families today are “juggler families.” Flexibility needs to be seen as a change in our overall culture, that stands to benefit ALL.
4. We must surface a more pragmatic definition of what flexibility really means. Many assume the ideal of flexibility is a part-time schedule. While there are examples across professions of a part-time schedule proving to be an attainable and wonderful solution, the under-reported truth is that most professionals define flexibility in terms of having the ability/agility to make accommodations in their schedule for their family, when needed — while remaining fully committed to and responsible for their career. I propose we call this the “treat me like a grown-up” principal to work flexibility. While each industry and specific career within it may have characteristics that make this more or less viable, with technology today keeping us tethered to work at all hours, we are in turn theoretically less tethered to one desk to be able to ably deliver. And like a wonder drug, a little flexibility can go a long way toward making us feel appreciative, loyal and generally gratified by being able to meet the joys and responsibilities of our families and our work, in fair (if not always perfectly equal) measure.