A Decade Later, Kids and Careers Still Collide : Parents: At their 10th reunion, a group of working mothers trade war stories from the struggle to juggle jobs and family.

Out on the campaign trail, the talk is of “family values.” In a meeting room at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center one recent Saturday morning, the dialogue was the same--only for real.

Sixteen women--all mothers and alumnae of the “Babies and Briefcases” support group--were having a reunion. Several have children who are now preteens. Others are juggling careers and preschoolers.

Ten years ago, when the group was formed as a place for mothers with both small children and demanding careers to share coping strategies, the women had admitted to feelings of guilt, exhaustion, fragmentation and frustration.

They had listed as tops on their needs list good day care and paid parental leave.

Today, they still do.

But a decade has brought positive change, said Phyllis Rothman, a clinical social worker who started the group under auspices of the Early Childhood Center at the Thalians Mental Health Center.

“The main difference is in terms of entitlement and expectation. Women no longer feel like pariahs” if they want both. Today, she said, a woman assumes “she can be a good mother and work.”

The women formed a circle, with Rothman speaking above the howls of 4-month-old Michael Kahn, who wasn’t about to be pacified by his mother, Carole. His sister, Michelle, 2, had just darted out to explore the hallway.

Kahn, 38, a trial attorney, jounced the baby as she told of the compromises she has had to make to combine career and motherhood.

She chose to get off the partnership track at her firm, gave up her fancy office and now works part time. But, she said, “I thought something was wrong with me that I wasn’t able to handle it. I still have problems with it.”

Valerie Seymour, an insurance agent, first came to Babies and Briefcases in 1982. Today, her daughter is 12 and, Seymour said, she’s “still struggling” with the combined demands.

“Child care has always been a big issue . . . I tried everything,” she said. There was guilt, too. Seymour said her daughter was “real grateful” whenever she’d show up for a school event. Maybe, in the new women’s movement, Seymour suggested, men will also be doing those things.

Babies and Briefcases, which has 200 alums, will include fathers in a session beginning Oct. 13--perhaps a reflection of some of the changes in the past 10 years.

Said Rothman: “Men have more of a hands-on relationship with their children,” starting in the delivery room.

But the bad news is that “gender bias is still alive and well in the workplace (and) power is still in the hands of men who have traditional wives,” Rothman said.

And while the Superwoman is dead, “we’re creating Superchild,” she said.

It is possible, Rothman suggested later, that “we have to create these superchildren to show that we are good enough mothers.”

Susan Kerans Shapiro, 33, an attorney and mother of 4-year-old and 4-month-old boys, is a lawyer who has chosen to work part time at home and, career-wise, she says, “it does hurt.”

Shapiro recalled the nightmare of being a full-time lawyer as well as a new mother. “Within a year, the glamour of the job wore off. Within a year and a half, I was miserable.”

When her son was 2, she resigned. Today, she is a free-lancer. The pressure cooker job “took a huge toll,” she said. She still tends to blame herself, and her career, for “every little problem he has along the way.”

Shapiro told of another lawyer she knows, who took two maternity leaves--and failed to make partner at her firm.

Other women, she noted, are toughing it out. In a recession, those with good jobs are loathe to ask for flextime or time off when their youngsters are sick or are having a special school program.

Some women, while acknowledging the difficulties, put a positive spin on their juggling act. Seymour said she felt proud when she heard little girls talk about what their moms do.

Inevitably, the issue of quality time versus quantity time arose.

Laura Busch, 33, who’s a health care risk management adviser, said she also has seen women with choices “kind of taking a step back” at work. “We’re not going to sacrifice our babies.”

With a 2-year-old daughter and a second due in March, Busch has chosen to work from home. She explained, “I felt very deprived with my first daughter.” She told how, when she’d pick her up at day care, “I was exhausted. She was exhausted.”

There’s “lots of realignment,” Rothman observed, as she listened to the women in the group discuss changing priorities and expectations.

Although these women are fortunate--they have well-paid careers rather than subsistence jobs--they share many of the concerns of the 9.8 million American women in the labor force who, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, have children under 6. (Fifty-eight percent of all mothers have preschoolers.)

“There’s a side of us that we give up” to do both, said Rachel Siegel, 38, a social worker and mother of three boys--7, 5 and 3. And, she added, a certain resentment goes with that sacrifice. “Men don’t go through that.”

Siegel spoke for many in the group when she described the conflicts experienced by working mothers: “We couldn’t be happy at work, and we couldn’t be happy at home.”

Maybe children of working mothers don’t get enough of Mom’s attention, suggested Andi Sherwin, an insurance broker, boutique owner and mother of a 9-year-old boy and a 5-year-old-girl. But, she said, no kid thinks he or she gets enough:

“I never heard a child say, ‘Mommy, don’t spend so much time with me.”’ Well, Sherwin acknowledged, maybe a teen-ager . . . .

Mary Beth Sweetman was nursing infant Olivia, her fourth child under 5. The others were at home with Daddy. Sweetman has just returned from maternity leave to her job as a registered nurse. “I work for a fertility specialist,” she said, to appreciative laughter.

Her husband, Donovan, is a full-time househusband. He’ll be bringing the kids to the office each noon, so Olivia can nurse.

Although Sweetman seems comfortable in accepting the idea that mothering is not the exclusive province of mothers, other women in the group are less so.

One woman mentioned that her daughter used to call her father Mommy. Sweetman laughed and said, “My husband calls me Daddy.”

Arlene Singer-Gross, 46, a studio teacher and mother of two youngsters, 7 and 5, told of hating some of the baby chores she was supposed to love. Even so, she said, “I’d become very jealous of my housekeeper. It was very confusing for me.”

Kahn, who’s married to a musician who sometimes takes care of the children during the day, admitted, “I think he’s more of a mother than I am.”

Sometimes, she said, she just feels “pulled here, pulled there,” and is “envious of my friends who don’t have children.” One day recently, she hired a baby-sitter, went to the Beverly Center and saw a movie.

Even in 1992, Rothman observed, it is Mommy who’s expected to wipe way tears, to chase away the bogyman.

If her daughter becomes ill at school, Seymour added, “they always call me, although both names are on that card.”

Sherwin had just made a breakthrough, which she wanted to share. Her daughter had started kindergarten and she wanted to be there the first day.

She had toyed with faking illness, or car trouble, but decided to tell the truth. Although her employers “weren’t thrilled,” she was glad she had.

One woman then told of a man she knows who took a week off to be with his wife and new baby. The group liked that idea.

Few of these working mothers have child care on-site at the office; where it is in place, they mentioned, it tends to be both expensive and wait-listed.

Shirah Vollmer, a psychiatrist and the divorced mother of two, said UCLA’s day care center is open from 8 to 5 and “I don’t work from 8 to 5.” In addition, she added, it can accommodate only a fraction of those eligible.

Taking a child to the office is still not an option, the women agreed. When one told of a law firm that set up a special nursery for a lawyer, Laura Busch asked, “Was she one of the co-founders of the firm?”

Said Sherwin, “They do it in the entertainment industry but they’ve got their secretary, their nanny . . .” She tried it when she was nursing, she added, and “It was hell on Earth.”

This had been a good session.

Maybe it was time to think about a “Children and Briefcases” group, suggested Singer-Gross. Kathy Burke, 46, a molecular biologist with daughters 11 and 7, thought that was a good idea: “We have a budding adolescent. Help!”

Singer-Gross had one other thing to share. Sometimes, she said, she asks her 5-year-old son what he wants to be when he grows up and he tells her, “I want to be a Daddy.”