Every Mother Is A Working Mother!

I am reviewing the May issue of Working Mother magazine. I had never sat down and read this magazine so this was a first for me. Although I am a working mom, my children are adults so I am reviewing this through the eyes of someone who has been a mom who worked out of the house and had children.

The cover of the magazine grabbed my attention immediately. It is a beautiful picture of NBC’s Soledad O’brien with her mom and her 4-month old daughter. A couple of the articles that caught my attention on the cover are “My mom worked (and I turned out great!)” and The Trick to Paying for College.

The magazine has only 96 pages, which is fairly skimpy for $2.99; however the subscription price is $9.97 for 10 issues, making it very attractive to subscribe!

At first glance I didn’t think I would like it. The magazine is made up of a series of 1 to 2 page articles covering a myriad of topics. At first I found them shallow and not important. I think this is an important topic, so I didn’t want to see a lot of fillers and fluff. But I gave it a chance and once I delved deeper liked what I saw.

On top of my first negative thoughts about the substance of the material, the layout confused me a bit. We first find something that says “Company News” and it took me several minutes to figure out what I was reading. As it turns out it is basically an ad for WorkingWoman.com and what that site is doing.

Again I found the layout confusing with the section “Balancing Act” in which we read a 4-page article about “netting a job” and the real way to find a position on line. There is also a sub-topic under that called “Get Ahead” and we are told to “Be Wary with Web Resumes.”

I read what I call fluff in 2 pages on the workplace telling us that workers are getting mad and how to stay safe in your office. Another article asks us how much time are we spending taking care of personal business at work (for example, where are you reading this right now?!)

I found Soapbox to be quite interesting not only because it was well done, but because it focused on Massachusett's acting Governor Jane Swift. (Governor Celucci is now Ambassador to Canada). Jane has a toddler at home and is about to give birth to twins. Can she do it all? I think most women can do a lot. I agree with the article that she may be over her head on this one! The article itself will take you about 30 seconds to read.

Perhaps you can tell we are getting into more substantial, more “meaty” articles.

•One I especially liked addressed getting grandparents to help pay for your child’s education. We are given some tips on how to ask them and also a small but good chart of plans for saving and paying for college. This was excellent and something I hadn’t read in this way before.

•Several pages of "Confessions" were cute and probably many of us can relate to some of the stories. Yes, I also have picked one child up at day care and almost forgot to get the other one! In one case, a woman dropped her older son off at school and didn’t realize the baby was still in the car until she got to work!

•There is a "Health" section where you’ll read short tidbits such as “eating and exercising for 2”; environmentally friendly cleaning solutions; and the move of the month that will help relief stress.

•There is a "Style" section that talks about women’s love affair with their pocketbooks and how true that is. Don’t you wonder how men get by? This is a cute 2-page article and the sentence “A purse if female. Men tried to steal this idea in the 70s showing up with bags but it didn’t feel right to anyone.” It may sound sexist but it is 100% true and in the 70s I remember getting a make friend a letter pouch type bag. It didn’t last long!

•There is a section on "Happiness" where again we have some tidbits such as using our green thumbs (assuming we have one!) for as little as 12 hours in a month is good for the soul and information about sprucing up or getting rid of the good and bad relationships in our lives.

•A 4-page article entitled "An Ode to Working Moms" is wonderful. You’ll read 13 adults tell what it was like to grow up with a working mom. One woman in the above article talked about how her mom’s working shaped her thinking about women’s roles in society. According to the magazine this article is “in honor of Mother’s Day, we offer you these heart warming, guilt-erasing stories.” Now I know you can find 13 women who feel traumatized by having working moms, but remember this magazine is designed really for moms who work out of the home. If you do not, unless you are fascinated by the subject or want to understand others who do, this is not the magazine for you! This is especially true if you feel strongly that women should not work outside the home.

•The working mother of the year is Safia Khalil Rizvi, a single mom and scientist who came to the United States from Pakistan for graduate school. She got married in an arranged marriage over the phone and her husband joined her week later. Obviously the marriage didn’t work since I told you she was single.

•There is an excellent 5-page article on "Fit not Fat" talking about not being a food cop in your house and get your family to exercise which, they claim, is the best way to help overweight children who suffer both physical and emotional harm. This article also has resources at the end such as the book “The Overweight Child: Promoting Fitness and Self-esteem” by Pitman and Kaufman, videos and .com sites, one is tinytummies.com where you will find advice about choices to make when cooking for your child.

•And finally (Although not every single piece is listed in this review) are 4 pages of brunch suggestions with recipes and delicious looking pictures.

In summary, although I am not a working mom in the usual sense, I enjoyed this magazine very much. Although the layout can be confusing at first, the articles are very well written and informative. I read some material here that I have never seen before and I don’t say that very often when talking about fairly mainstream magazines. If you are looking for a good magazine that is inexpensive in its subscription rate, consider Working Mother. I would suggest, and always do, that rather than spending $3.00 on it and not liking it (You may not agree with me.) get it out of the library first.

If you have not gotten the mom in your life who works outside the home and has younger children a gift yet, consider this. You can buy the magazine and make a copy of the subscription card you send in and put it in a Mother's Day card.


This is part of a write off hosted by naphtalia. Thank you for organizing this one! Please read the other participants’ reviews which will be posted through Sunday.

Trevsmom,MelissaSRN, lynnzop, fallyn96, mellkinwa,
wovengold, Debbie26, leafsbabe01, straight_up, KateTPZ,
willthing, naphtalia, mtbat, masonp, diverpam, AshleyA,
Social14, brooke77