"MAMAS" Gets Going
by Krista Harris Cheatham
June 20, 2007
The Mother Attorney’s Mentoring Association of San Diego (MAMAS) is off and running. MAMAS’ first event, the Children’s Tea held on May 12 at the Westgate, was an amazing gathering by all accounts. Mothers and their children from all over the county descended on the grand old hotel to meet and greet and, frankly, to acknowledge one another for doing what it took just to be there for two hours on a sunny Saturday morning.
The Westgate was ready for us: the Versaille Ballroom could not have been more sumptuous, with lovely linens draping the tables and chairs, giant blush-colored rose arrangements at every table, sparkling silver and glassware. I made sure to keep my 4-year-old and 2-year-old as far away as possible until the last possible moment.
It took some time for everyone to arrive – another testament to the ever-present chaos of our lives as mothers – but eventually we amassed a quorum and decided to get started. MAMAS co-founder Shana Black gave welcoming remarks, Former Executive Assistant City Attorney Leslie Devaney, there with her daughter Brenna, gave a short speech, and Administrative Law Judge Vallera Johnson led more than 180 lawyer moms and kids aged 0 to 11 in an apple juice and champagne toast. It was an emotional moment. Judge Johnson said that she was in near tears, and she spoke for many of us in the audience. None of us had ever seen ourselves or each other in quite this light: Mothers. Attorneys. And there are so many of us!!
With the formalities out of the way, MAMAS got down to getting to know one another over the mostly pleasant din of our children’s chatter. While infants rested and wriggled in their mother’s arms, their moms compared options for returning to work. “When are you going back?” “How did you find your nanny?” “What is your firm’s part time policy like?” While older kids congregated around the storyteller and at the craft tables, their mothers traded parenting tips. “How do you get him to go to sleep at night?” How do you get her to eat veggies?” While my children played chase with a few like minded preschoolers under the watchful gaze of volunteer babysitters, I was able to meet women from seemingly every conceivable area of the law. Cards were exchanged, and, where necessary, phone numbers were scribbled on the backs of the day’s art projects.
It was an honor to be able to spend the morning in the company of these women and their little ones. It was encouraging to learn that, however unbalanced my own balancing act might seem, there are many, many others dealing with the very same challenges, and not only dealing with them, but succeeding. It’s something that I knew intellectually, but it’s a whole different thing to know it because you see it and feel it all around you.
Maybe it’s a reflection of the fact that we women attorneys have habitually downplayed our parenthood in professional and networking settings. We inform the minimum number of people possible of our pregnancy and maternity leave plans, we go off to have our babies, we return to full-time status (or we negotiated a part-time or flex-time deal), and we try hard not to stand out as a person who faces different challenges or who has different needs than any of our non-parent colleagues. Usually there are only two or three of us moms with school aged or younger children in a given office. Even where we have the benefit of female mentors – senior women who preceded us in the profession – they are generally either not parents themselves or their children are older. When networking or business development opportunities come up we find ourselves sailing the thinnest line between Scylla (the massive guilt associated with the call for back-up child care on top of the 8 to 12 hours of child care we already used up that day) and Charybdis (the creeping fear of never breaking out or losing relevance in a close knit and active legal community). To now be in a position to celebrate our children and to network at the same time came as something of a shock of the system. A pleasant shock, but a shock nonetheless. The looks on the faces and the animation in the voices of the mothers at the May 12 tea told this story powerfully. June 20, 2007
