Donna Smallwood relished her career in Australia, working herself up in a construction company with 70-hour workweeks, on-call weekends and 15 sales staffers reporting to her.

"The networking, the people, the lifestyle, the lunches — I loved everything about it," she says.

Babies were the furthest thing from her mind, she says. "I was just so focused on my career."

All that changed with a golf game that brought a man and a move to Hawai'i into her life. Now, at 40, with two children under 3 years old, she can't imagine going back to the office pressure-cooker.

"This is a new phase of my life," she says.

Smallwood isn't the only high-powered professional woman heading home from the work world to full-time motherhood.

As the career track collides with the mommy track, a growing number of younger mothers are backing away from the balancing act called "doing it all."

A new study by the Pew Research Center has documented this trend, with the latest statistics showing that for mothers with children under 18, working outside the home is less appealing today than a decade ago.

In the past 10 years, the percentage of working mothers who are on the job full time has dropped from 32 percent in 1997 to 21 percent today.

"I think we've come to terms with the fact we want to be supermoms and we just can't," says Liz Stone, an attorney who spent 10 years in private practice and then in the state attorney general's office before opting out six years ago to stay home with her new daughter.

"Now we're being a little easier on ourselves, and looking more for the quality of life," says Stone.

'THE FEMININE MISTAKE'

With this hot-button topic stirring national debate, women of a generation ago say a new generation of younger mothers, especially those affluent enough to do so, are making different choices than they did, while one author is warning women that leaving the work world entirely could be hazardous to their long-term financial health.

Leslie Bennetts, author of "The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much?" (Powell Books) warns women to weigh the financial losses to the family, the issue of re-entering a workforce that will have changed over time, and depending solely on a spouse's income.

"The feminine mistake in the 21st century is to build your adult life around the notion that it's safe to give up your financial autonomy and depend on someone else to support you," writes Bennetts. "The unfortunate truth is that most of these women will be blind-sided by painful challenges in the years to come."

"My own mom raised me and worked full time, and there was the expectation that this is what we did and this is what we have to do to get ahead," says Stone, who recently added a part-time job as executive director of The Baby Hui that she's able to do from home.

"It was very much to prove to ourselves and the men in our lives that we can do this, and we can have it all," Stone says. "I don't think our generation has that mindset as much."

The new trend has also been documented by author Pamela Stone (no relation to Liz), associate professor of sociology at New York's Hunter College, in a new book called "Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home" (University of California Press).

"It's clearly happening among key pockets of high-achieving women," says author Stone, by phone from her New York home. "You see it most surprisingly at some of the most elite schools, among women who had all the advantages and we would expect to be working. For instance, women graduates of Harvard Business School between 1981 and 1991. One-third are not working at all 10 years later. That's a big number, and it's some of those kinds of statistics that flag us to what's going on."

SUPPORT NOT ALL THERE

For social analysts, the developing trend puts the spotlight on a society that does not fully support working women.

While the number of family-friendly companies has grown over the past two decades, and is still growing, there still aren't automatic or widespread workplace supports for employed mothers, studies show.

Gender salary inequity persists, opportunities for part-time work may not be available, and options for appropriate child-care are still challenging.

"There's a big wage discrepancy between men and women still, and the gap hasn't really closed," says Coralie Chun Matayoshi, CEO of the American Red Cross Hawai'i State Chapter and former head of the Hawai'i State Bar Association, who has watched equity issues since she was a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., more than 20 years ago.

"Consequently a lot of women are getting out entirely, and that's a waste of their talent," says Matayoshi, who kept working while raising her own children because she felt it was expected of her.

"I see a lot of women just quitting these high-powered jobs to be home. Before, we were trying to be supermoms. ... I felt like I had to do it all. But the next generation is finding they don't want to do that, and they shouldn't be expected to do that.

"Now, if they can afford it, they will just leave the workforce completely, because it's so difficult to balance unless they have a lot of help from their husband at home."

MORE LEAVING WORK

"Opting Out" author Stone says that the number of women leaving the workforce to stay home is still smaller than the number of college-educated women with children who choose to work outside the home. But it's a persistent trend, she says, and it's growing.

"One in five married women with a college education and kids under 18 is out of the labor force. This is definitely something that's not open to everybody, as most households with kids need two earners. But this is still a fairly large chunk of women."

A longer-range research study that began in the 1960s at the University of Maryland has shown a rising crescendo of more time-intensive parenting by both mothers and fathers over the past 20 years — after it hit an all-time low in the mid-1980s. The increased time spent on parenting, then, affects parents who work as well as those who stay home.

And those parents are really enjoying being with their children, says Stone.

Among the highly-educated women who are choosing a mommy track over a career, Stone says the choice is having a lasting impact. The women liked being with the kids, being involved with the school, being part of a new community of similarly situated mothers. Their career ideas began to change as a result.

"I don't want to (go back to) working 10- and 12-hour days," says Stephanie Jones, who left a demanding job as a human resource manager at a Waikiki hotel when she went on maternity leave in 2000, and has never gone back.

"I'm going to be choosier," says Jones, about returning to the workforce at an unspecified time in the future. "The priorities have just shifted. I want to be available after work so I can take my daughter to soccer practice or ballet lessons. And I wouldn't want to do anything like traveling. So for me it may be starting anew and maybe working at a smaller business."

KIDS COME FIRST

Though she loved her job, Jones was clear that if she had children, she would be home with them.

"My husband and I talked — we didn't want to put them in daycare or have Grandma and Grandma raise them."

That's a prevailing sentiment for many mothers who have opted out of the workforce to stay home with young children.

"The poor working moms who miss a baby's first steps, a baby's first word," says Judy Wood, who left a Mainland teaching job to move to Hawai'i and stay home with her children, now 6 and 3. She has shared their successes, each step of the way, and now also is sharing their delight in learning as she home-schools the older one.

"These are formidable years," says Wood. "If parents can do it, if you can stay home with your child, it makes all the difference in the world."

Many parents can't do it, of course. With Hawai'i's cost of living one of the highest in the country, two-income households have become standard fare.

"If I did stay home, we would be cutting back majorly, and I just don't know if we could live that way," says Anne Shigeta-Koch, who works for the drug manufacturer Genentech Inc. educating medical personnel about medications for heart attack and stroke.

"No more vacations or eating out, and we have a massive mortgage," she says. "The problem is I'm 40 and I waited a while for children, so we're leading a different lifestyle. We can save a lot more money with me working. Then I'll spend it on vacation, because it's just worth my sanity."

What also helps enormously, says Shigeta-Koch, is the job flexibility allowed by her boss, who is trusting of his employees in general and generous with time off when children are sick.

"He knows I'm getting my job done, so the trust is a huge thing," she says. "And that's what's giving me the flexibility."

BALANCING BABY, WORK

Like Shigeta-Koch, many women have not given up on the struggle to have it all.

Jodi Yip Lee believes she's figured out a way to keep the mommy track on a parallel course with the career track — by working for herself, bringing the baby along whenever she can, and trusting things are going to work out.

"My clients understand the whole balancing act," says the CEO of her own small franchise business, Shangri-La Tea Co., which takes her daily from her home to her warehouse to the island restaurants which sell her products.

With Isabelle often along for the ride, Yip Lee has seen her 2-year-old take her first steps, smile her first smile, giggle her first giggle. At the same time, Yip Lee's income has been able to help the family finances.

"I've decided to keep plugging away making it work," she says. "You just do what you have to do as a parent. You flow with that and go forward, just doing the best that you can do.

"We only have our children at this stage of their development once in a lifetime. To seize that moment is important."

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