A Special Dedication for My Working Mom

I come from a line of working moms.

My mom worked part to full-time throughout my childhood. Work was necessary to our family’s financial situation, but it also was something that she enjoyed. She has worked for Target for nearly 40 years and many of her closest friends have come from her work.

Her mom also worked a variety of jobs to help make ends meet in their family. She worked as a waitress, at a local grocery store, helped with her husband’s barber shop and eventually went back to school to become a hairdresser herself.

Growing up around other working women in my family taught me that work and mothering blended together. It was never either/or, it was both/and. I didn’t perceive my mom’s work as being a negative thing, and now, as an adult, I can see the positive impact it had on me.

In my new forthcoming book Stretched Too Thin: How Working Moms Can Lose the Guilt, Work Smarter, and Thrive I wrote:

The impact of our work on our kids can also be significant and positive. Not only does time together become more precious and valued, but our work impacts the very way our children will grow up and approach their own work and families. A study conducted by Kathleen L. Mcginn, Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS) along with HBS researcher  Mayra Ruiz Castro and Elizabeth Long Lingo, an embedded practitioner at Mt. Holyoke College, showed that “Women whose moms worked outside the home are more likely to have jobs themselves, are more likely to hold supervisory responsibility at those jobs, and earn higher wages than women whose mothers stayed home full time, according to a new study. Men raised by working mothers are more likely to contribute to household chores and spend more time caring for family members.”[i] Basically, our work can be good for our kids. Among other things, it teaches them the value of both work and play.

[i] https://www.hbs.edu/news/articles/Pages/mcginn-working-mom.aspx

This past week, my mom took off of work to fly to Nashville to help me with the kids while Matthew was in Uganda. My publisher was able to overnight the first copy of the final book to me. You see, the inside had a special message to my mom in it:

Dedicated to my mom, Debbie LoCoco,
one of the hardest working women I know.
I love you.

In memory of my grandmothers,
Marilyn LoCoco and Ruth Schim.
Thank you for always believing in me.

I had planned to record the moment I gave it the book to my mom, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out. I will forever remember her reaction though. She cried and told me it meant the world to her. Later in the weekend, I caught her looking at it again and crying.

Here’s to all the working moms out there. You are incredible and the legacy you are leaving with your kids is significant. I know because the impact my mom’s work had on me made me the woman I am today.