Sheilah O'Donnel tells herself that her new home, a townhouse in a development in Chevy Chase, Md., just a stone's throw from a Safeway, isn't really all that bad. Sure, it's near a gas station. And the front window, with its cheerily upholstered cushions, overlooks a dreary parking lot. And yes, it's kind of small — "an apartment," O'Donnel, who is 44, sometimes says bitterly, when she's reminded of her former life with her ex-husband in their custom-built, six-bedroom home. But then again, it's perfectly maintained and impeccably furnished, and most important, it's rented with her own money, from the first real job she has had in almost a decade.
It's a midlevel sales job, a big step down from the senior position she held before she had children and quit work. When she was first hired, in May 2011, her salary was just a fifth of what she earned at her peak. But, she said, she wasn't complaining. All around her, she saw women her age scrambling to find work, some divorcing and losing their homes. She liked to help them, editing their résumés, polishing cover letters, pumping up tearful friends who forgot what they were worth after years without a paycheck.
After one emotional session with a friend, her 12-year-old daughter asked what all the fuss was about. O'Donnel told her: "This is the perfect reason why you need to work. You don't have to make a million dollars. You don't have to have a wealthy lifestyle. You just always have to be able to at least earn enough so you can support yourself."
Nine years ago, O'Donnel was promoting a very different message. She was a spokeswoman of sorts for a group of women — highly educated, very accomplished, well-paid professionals with high-earning spouses — who in the early 2000s made headlines for leaving the work force just when they were hitting their stride. They were a small demographic to be sure (another, larger, group who left the work force at that time — poor mothers who couldn't afford child care — went without notice), but they garnered a great deal of media attention.
This magazine, in a cover article by Lisa Belkin, called the phenomenon of their leaving work the "Opt-Out Revolution," and other coverage followed: a Time magazine cover story on "The Case for Staying Home" and a "60 Minutes" segment devoted to a group of former mega-achievers who were, as the anchor Lesley Stahl put it, "giving up money, success and big futures" to be home with their children.
O'Donnel, featured in the "60 Minutes" story pushing a stroller, was, in some ways, an unlikely voice of the opt-out revolution. She had been proudly working since she was 15, when she had a job as a coat-check girl. By 17, she was buying clothes and books and food — and sometimes even paying her family's electric bill — through jobs that included waitressing and pedaling tourists around downtown Columbus, Ohio, on a pedi-taxi.
She worked her way through Ohio State and, eager to pay off her college loans, got a job selling copiers. She eventually landed in a competitive training program at Oracle, the technology company, where she rose quickly through the ranks, ending up in the top 5 percent of the sales force. She also met the man who would become her husband, Mark Eisel — an up-and-comer in management. They worked hard and became well off. At her peak, O'Donnel was earning $500,000 a year.
But after her first two children were born, O'Donnel's travel for work became more difficult. She gave up a quarter of her earnings in exchange for working three days a week, but felt marginalized, her best accounts given to others, meetings often scheduled on her days out of the office. "I felt like a second-class citizen," she said.
Even with the reduced schedule, the stresses of life in a two-career household put an overwhelming strain on her marriage. There were ugly fights with her husband about laundry and over who would step in when the nanny was out sick.
Judith Warner, a contributing writer, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the author of "Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety."
Editor: Ilena Silverman
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