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OCR Page 1 of 45Date: 11/02/93 Time: 12:43
Big Jobs, Small Kids at Clinton White House
Pg2!
WASHINGTON (AP) Prudence the potty doll and her toddler owner
attended a Clinton administration meeting on health care last
summer. It was a weekend, and Mom the White House political
director couldn't find a sitter.
A new generation has risen to power, and it's the same one that
delayed having children until they were in their 30s. The result is
people with big jobs, small kids and lots of pressure.
Seventy-hour, six-day weeks are not unusual. That can jump to
80-plus when projects like health care reform reach critical mass
or foreign policy crises require round-the-clock monitoring.
Back at home, the counterpressures range from Little League
practice to dinner menus, from Where's my lunch money?'' to How
come you never drive me to school anymore?'' There's also the
uneasy fear that babyhood and other phases are vanishing into the
whirlwind of a consuming, possibly consummate moment in a parent's
career.
``It's always in your mind, when can you get home, how many more
meetings, what's the right balance, said Environmental Protection
Agency administrator Carol Browner, whose son is 5.
President Clinton, 47, with a 13-year-old daughter of his own,
tried to reassure his Cabinet last winter at a Camp David retreat.
I never want it said that your service in this administration was
a reason to deny your family the time it takes to raise them, he
said, according to Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros.
But good intentions are no match for enormous demands. Some
Clinton aides rarely see their children awake. Some work until 1
a.m. after putting baby to bed.
The intersection of late parenthood and heavy job responsibility
is common among upper-income, dual-career couples. Births by women
in their 30s, most of them professionals, have risen nearly 40
percent since 1976.
Delayed child-bearing is especially hard to deal with for
families who've moved here for work, said Ken Kusterer, an economic
sociologist at American University. `There are no extended
families, he said, none of the traditional things that humanize
this.
In other words, no grandparents to pick up the slack.
Transportation Secretary Federico Pena, 46, had few
acquaintances when he arrived here from Denver. Then his infant
daughter was hospitalized with a lung infection at the same time he
needed to go on a sales trip for the Clinton economic plan.
Pena's wife was staying at the hospital and there was no one to
take care of their older daughter. Despite regulations forbidding
child visitors, his wife finally persuaded the hospital to let Pena
bring her over.
It was tense, Pena recalled. `Normally I would not leave
town when I had a sick child in the hospital. But this was an
important event for the country.'
Usually the tradeoffs are less wrenching, as when Browner, 37,
had to miss her son's school play because of a trip to Canada. His
response: Can you give me the president's phone number so I can
call him up and ask him if you can stay home?' Browner caught the
play later on videotape.
Cisneros took nearly a week off when son John Paul, 6, underwent
heart surgery in Philadelphia. When he travels, he almost always
returns the same day so he can get an hour or two with his son in
the evening. I try my very best, he said. I hate being away
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