`There’s an impression that a woman’s lucrative working life is over when she jumps on the `mommy track,’ but despite all the gloom and doom of some back-to-work moms’ stories, I did find a job that meets all of my requirements.”
That’s the observation of attorney Connie Cowan, age 50, who returned to the workforce after an absence of 13 years as an at-home mom. It is, she says, ” a success story.”
And she believes there should be more successes, despite the threat of the mommy track, which refers to the slower progress of the careers–often interrupted–of women with children. It’s a phrase that also describes the discriminatory path assigned by employers to women with children and other family responsibilities.
“I hear a lot about the problems that women encounter when they try to return to work after leaving an important job to stay at home to raise their children,” said the lawyer, whose husband, William, is a corporate attorney. They have two children, ages 14 and 16.
Cowan, who has a law degree from DePaul University, works at the law firm Huck & Brisske LLC in Wheaton. The firm specializes in estate planning and probate, and Cowan has been the firm’s probate lawyer since August 2004. She found the job in five months.
The attorney says she had “considerable concerns” about finding a job after being out of the job market since 1991. She left her job as a senior attorney at the Chicago Board of Trade when her children were 9 months and 2 years old.
“I started out working at the board full time, from 50 to 60 hours a week,” said Cowan, who was well paid in her job. “At the end, after my daughter was born, I was working 25 to 30 hours part time.”
I asked her if she did any legal work in those years at home. “I practiced `family’ law–which means all my family called me for free advice,” she said with a smile.
In 2003, she realized that “my kids were older and didn’t need my presence as much. I felt it was time to get back into the workforce. But I wondered where and how I would get a job with my rusty legal skills and virtually no computer skills.”
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Cowan says her best source for finding a job was “networking and discussing it with my women friends. I told them I wanted to go back to work as a lawyer and to be in probate, because probate is non-adversarial and gentle, and clients are very appreciative of my help.”
In addition, she wanted a job that provided the flexibililty to be home when school gets out, when a child is sick and during vacations.
Her networking paid off. Through friends and their contacts, she heard about the opening at Huck & Brisske. She works 20 to 25 hours a week and has paid vacations. In fact, she had two paid weeks off at Christmas, despite being there less than a year.
And equally important, she is being trained and has one of the partners as a mentor.
Her salary is good for part-time work, she says, and has “the potential to be very lucrative. It’s the necessary price of being out for a while. As my skills get up to speed, my salary will be very good.”
Cowan believes that “women need to hear the message that they can have it all–flexible hours, professional accomplishment, mentoring, respect and decent money.”
She says that if you are a professional and willing to make a few sacrifices, “you have reasonable expectations of resuming a rewarding career.”
The lawyer, who plans to work full time when her younger child starts college, says in her part-time position, “I have not given up anything. I still can drive my children to their activities, do needlepoint and take walks.”
Does this mean there is no such thing as a mommy track?
“There is one, but it is exaggerated in its effect on women who want to return to the workforce,” Cowan said.
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Carol Kleiman’s columns also appear in Monday’s and Thursday’s Business sections. Hear her on WBBM Newsradio 780 at 6:21 p.m. and 10:22 p.m. Mondays and 11:20 a.m. Saturdays. Watch her “Career Coach” segments on CLTV. E-mail [email protected].