Talk about fanning the flames of guilt.

“Working mothers have fatter children” screamed a headline in the Times (London) on July 23rd, reporting on a study published by the International Journal of Obesity. The Independent added fuel to the fire, gleefully trumpeting that “the nation’s highest paid working mothers bear much of the responsibility for the nation’s ticking obesity time bomb.”

The new research, carried out at the UCL Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, finds an association between maternal employment (particularly long hour, highly paid maternal employment) and obesity among British preschool children. The researchers are careful to point out a variety of risk factors ranging from inattentive dads to a shortage of sports programs, but these qualifications have not prevented an orgy of working mother bashing in the press. Rather than laying out the complexity of the challenge, the media simply dumps the blame on the backs of working moms.

Such guilt trips are clearly bad for women -- pumping up anxiety levels and distorting decision making. But they are also bad for employers, since they ramp up attrition rates and exacerbate the flight risk among talented women.

A study of the high end labor market (see my Harvard Business Review article “Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek”) demonstrates that 80% of highly qualified women in large corporations have one foot out the door -- they feel they can’t cope with the demands of their jobs for more than one more year. This is not because they don’t like their work or can’t deal with the performance pressures -- 78% adore their jobs and thrive on the challenges associated with them. Rather, they can’t deal with a mounting load of maternal guilt.

Companies have much at stake here. In a day and an age when 50% of the talent pipeline is female, employers need to get into the business of assuaging maternal guilt. Losing 80% of your key female talent can be a very expensive proposition. A first step is to create a little push back. A company-sponsored speakers series can help to set the research record straight.

A second step is to offer flexible work arrangements that allow working women to be home in the precious 5 to 8 p.m. time slot. The data is quite clear here (see Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success). When mothers are able to be with their children in the early evening hours -- even if they go back to work late at night -- they feel much more in touch with their children and much less wracked by guilt.

HARVARD BUSINESS ONLINE RECOMMENDS:
Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success (Hardcover)
Women in Business Collection: Insights for Executive Women and Their Organizations (2nd Edition)
Keeping Your Most Valuable Women in Your Workforce (Conference)
The Maternal Wall (HBR Article)