Work/Life Balance Baloney

My company just rolled out and official program of "Flexible Work Options" that they promoted with great fanfare. The official program includes part-time (with commensurate decrease in pay) or fulltime with flexible hours (e.g. 7 am unitl 3 pm). In light of the program and some weeks of particulary long hours I approached my boss (My boss is a woman whose husband stays home with their two small children). Here's the email I sent to a friend describing the exchange:

Been totally swamped at work for the past three weeks. So much so that I had a talk with my boss on Monday to say that I can "only" give her 45-50 hours per week since I want to see my child and my husband has been traveling a lot for work. Her response was that she was committed to making it work but I would probably be on a slower track and it would affect my bonus and compensation. You'd think I had asked her to work part-time or leave everyday at noon. Can you imagine the nerve? Being a working mom is a serious challenge. What has your experience been?

She sent me the following response:

What an EVIL boss!! I thought forty hours was considered full time....hmmmmm........you know that one of the reasons I quit my part time job was that they were ok with me working 'part time' as long as I would work 'full time hours when necessary...which was nearly every other week' and I said I could not...(also the 2 hour commute to manhattan didn't help)....at any rate my boss said if I came back after
number 3, I'd need to 'step it up'.....and since I
could not feasibly do so I quit...my husband already works 200 million hours a week and is never home and it would be nice for the kids to at least recognize one parent.....It is SOOO hard to be a working mom..........unless of course you have 1) stay at home or lame duck job husband or 2) parents close by who take over many of the responsibilities...........

Another friend had the following reply:

Sorry about the delayed reply - same here, have been totally swamped and my husband has been travelling. I can't believe your story though, that's so depressing! I asked my boss to cut back hours to 4 days, and he didn't say it was out of the question. That said, I'm not sure if our company will make it to another round of funding so we'll see... I think after this job I'm going to try to switch to contract work. Full time is just too much, esp. with two kids.