This week, California First Lady Maria Shriver is taking a seat on the Today Show couch and talking about the “new world” for women in the United States.  She has just released “The Shriver Report” which offers empirical research about family life, working life, and constant balancing act that is a reality for women who try, or need to be part of both worlds.

Maria Shriver is a good reporter and always has been.  Now she adds to her perspective, enormous life experience as a mother of four, a front row seat in political life, and eight years as a Governor’s wife touring the communities of California.

I highly encourage viewing her segments airing on the NBC Evening News, or Today, or MSNBC this week.  There is a lot to learn from her reports. It is valuable to know the source of the research as well.  The American Policy Institute, partnering with TIME Magazine, conducted polling of 3,413 people throughout the U.S.  Both men and women were polled in the study.   For your information, former Clinton aide, John Podesta, is the head of the American Policy Institute.  Scanning the initial findings, the results are telling.

The Shriver Report is  probably the most interesting survey about women completed since 1963, when President John F. Kennedy directed Eleanor Roosevelt to examine the standing of American women.   At that time only 10% of American families were headed by unmarried women.

Anyone can download the entire report at the American Policy Institute if they wish, and it is fascinating reading.  Here are some highlights:

1-Half of all families in the U.S. now require two breadwinners.

2-A woman is the primary breadwinner in 4 out of 10 American families today.

3-Half of all workers in America are women.

4-60% of all college degrees are being earned by women.

5-Half of all P.H.D.’s are being awarded to women.

6-40% of all women in the workforce are employed as managers or professionals.

7-80% of all the buying decisions in America are made by women.

8-350,000 women are now in the U.S. Military.

9-The number of women starting their own businesses has grown 23% in recent years.

10-The number of women starting their own businesses is growing twice as fast as men doing the same.

11-53 % of college graduates breastfeed their babies, while only 29 percent of high school graduates do so.

True North Readers should go to www.TodayShow.com and watch for yourself.  Some of the conclusions drawn by NBC producers about the findings in this report are probably more trendy than…true.  On Monday Shriver and Matt Lauer discussed how fathers and mothers are now virtually “interchangeable” at home, suggesting that families can be constructed in any way, shape or form, and have the same outcome.  I doubt that broad-based research would support that very “today” observation.

While it is true that men are spending comparatively more time in American households,  and many are doing outstanding jobs replacing Mom, where are the surveys asking children how much they miss their Mothers?   How often are they sent to school sick because it is impossible for them to stay home?  What kind of stress level exists in their homes and how often do they feel they have the benefit of their parents’ undivided attention?

These would be hard questions for me to answer honestly in my own house.
A study of children might be the next valuable step in looking at A Woman’s Nation, because women are still nature’s primary nurturers.  The Shriver Report reveals that only 30% of women now can be classified as “stay at home moms.”   In reading reports such as these,  mothers who are dedicating themselves to the raising of their children, and/or are fortunate enough to be able to do so, may feel like propeller planes from another age.

A truly interesting empirical study would be to compare the performances and emotional I.Q.  of  children from the same 3,413 homes measured by the TIME and American Policy Institute study.   It might be terribly helpful to new parents, growing families and ambitious parents, to understand how the emotional and mental maturity of children is truly impacted for better and for worse, when they come from busy two-career homes or one career homes, or from homes with stay at home moms and moms and dads balancing role reversals.

We know many men and women are buckling under the stress of the worlds they are  tackling each day.  What we truly need to measure is: Are our children buckling too?

While parents are spending more time away from home fighting for wages and exhausting themselves in the world of work, our children are growing up in a world that hardly resembles what their parents remember.  How families are adapting to the challenge of commuting,  increasing academic requirements, the reach and danger of the internet, the constant external pressures on child safety, policing the ever- present and invasive mass media, and balancing family time, family values, and family security, may be the true rubrics we should be using as we measure our success as working parents and breadwinners.

Let’s roll out those studies.