Hooray for Marissa Mayer?

Everyone is raving about Yahoo!'s new CEO today. I get it. I do. She broke the glass ceiling, we women love that. She's smart, and successful, and a mom.  We really love that.  But according to MSNBC, she is planning to work through her upcoming maternity leave.  Shame on her!  She's worth $300mm so I get that times are tough. You do what you gotta do.  Personally, I'd never work for a company whose chief female set such an example, or perhaps unwittingly, an expectation,  for its female staff. 

Don't get me wrong, every woman has her own choice, and I suppose not every mother will look back and regret the time she chose to spend in the boardroom rather than the nursery. I personally regret every second I was on a plane or in the office late, when my kids needed me. But that's me. The part I have a real problem with is the message it sends to a workforce full of mothers who already have an unrealistic expectation of themselves, who increasingly bear the burden of being the breadwinners in their family, and still expect to master the illusion of the Pinterest Mom.  Maybe it's not wrong, but to me, it's definitely sad.

The link isn't really missing

I'm living proof. I'll admit it. Recently, whilst standing in my kitchen, baby in one arm, wiping down the highchair with the other, I spotted a few little pebbles of cous cous in baby's hair.  I instinctively swiped it from his fuzzy blonde locks and, without even thinking about it, popped it in my mouth. Images of monkeys inevitably crossed my mind. Nice.