One more post for today! I am quoted in a white paper from Ad Age on marketing to moms. Drawing on the “Core Competency Mom” series that I wrote for The Huffington Post, I talk about the genius of claiming that products that reduce housework time give you more time with your kids. This allows marketers to claim that paper plates make you a good mom!
Update 11/20: Executive Moms picked up on the Ad Age white paper in their email newsletter, the Executive Momorandum, and highlighted how I’d coined the term “core competency mom.” They also mentioned a great phrase, “delegating to Dixie,” about how moms cut themselves some slack on the housework front in order to focus their energies on their paid work and nurturing their kids. I will definitely start using that one!
3 Comments
Leave a Reply
Laura Vanderkam is the author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think (Portfolio, 2010) and Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career without Paying Your Dues (McGraw-Hill, 2007). She is a member of USA Today's Board of Contributors, and her work has appeared in Reader's Digest, Scientific American, Wired, The American, Portfolio and other publications.
Write to her at lvanderkam at yahoo dot com.
I totally agree with this and never really understood the commercials on tv about paper plates making you a better mom until I had a child. Housework is an important area to delegate if you want to be a successful working mom. Being bad on the environment however, makes you a bad role model, but we have to make choices and it is more important to be present and involved in your core activities than dish washing. Maybe more eco friendly products that are also able to be thrown out.. C
In a blog on Globe and Mail, you reference your book, “168 Hours: You have More Time than You Think.” In terms of your math, if women work 40 hours a week, they have ample time for 8 hours of sleep a night, and time to spend with their children. Can you please tell me what careers allow women to work only 40 hours a week? Because I have been searching for 10 years, and it seems that every company out there demands more and more time from their employees, hence the lack of time in people’s lives. I don’t think the problem is that they “fritter” away their waking hours; rather in this economy people are so worried about losing their jobs they cannot tell their boss they need to cut back to 40 hours a week. I’m sorry Laura, but the 40 hour work week no longer exists. You need to re-do your math to make it more realistic.
And “leaving the dishes to Dixie?” Really? You don’t care about the amount of garbage that is piling up in our landfills? You just encourage people to use paper plates and throw them away?