Working Mom Flips The Script On Daughter's Outdated Worksheet

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – While in the midst of making dinner and helping her young daughter with her homework earlier this month, working mother Lynne Polvino was suddenly taken aback by one of her daughter's worksheets.

The fill-in-the-blank assignment, entitled "Back to Work," carried a message about how miserable a little girl was because her mom was heading back into the workforce. To Polvino, a children's book editor in New York City, the worksheet was both outdated and dismaying.

"It just pushed so many buttons for me, and with each sentence it managed to get worse," she told TODAY Parents.

Indeed, Polvino brought her concerns up with her daughter's teacher, but she also rewrote the worksheet, envisioning a world where employers help working parents with benefits, kids and dads are expected to help in household chores, and public institutions are well funded bodies dedicated to empowering students.

She posted a side-by-side of the original worksheet and her revised one on Facebook, where the post was shared hundreds of times.

Polvino told TODAY Parents that while she is able to balance family with a demanding career, there's not enough support out there for working moms. She noted that the last thing working moms need is their children's homework telling them to stay at home, manage the household and not question themselves.