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The ideal of the supermom - briefcase in one hand, baby bottle in the other - is all but dead. And the briefcase is taking the blame.

Most working mothers think part-time, not full-time, work is ideal, according to a recent survey taken in the United States.

Only 21 per cent of working mothers with children under 18 see full-time jobs as the best arrangement for themselves and their families - a drop from 32 per cent in 1997, according to the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, 60 per cent of working mothers say part-time work is their preferred option, up 12 per cent from a decade ago.

Marlo Miazga, a Toronto mother of a one-year-old boy, can relate. After a brief, self-financed maternity leave, the freelance film editor took on full-time hours as a film editor and teacher. She and her husband, a writer, enrolled their son Phoenix in weekly daycare.

But if she could work part-time and still afford daycare, all without taking a professional hit, she'd "do it in a second," she says.

"I love my work. But especially for the first five years it would be great to work part-time."

This sentiment has grown sharply in the last 10 years, says Pew researcher Cary Funk. And it is markedly different from what working fathers are thinking.

While Pew does not have data from 1997 for comparison, 72 per cent of today's working fathers told researchers that working full-time is ideal for them.

"Mothers, on the whole, are less inclined to say full-time work is ideal," Dr. Funk says.

The Pew research does not suggest, however, that women will be leaving the full-time work force in droves any time soon.

Indeed, in Canada the trend is just the opposite: By 2004, Statistics Canada reported that about 75 per cent of women with children under 16 were employed, compared with 39 per cent in 1976.

"Our findings seem to be an expression of the difficulties of combining work and child-rearing responsibilities," says Dr. Funk. "It's an expression of what would be ideal."

While Canadian women work fewer hours and have better maternity leave benefits than their U.S. counterparts, similar economic and social forces are at play, says Carleton University economics professor Frances Woolley.

"The younger generation, they have an expectation that they're going to work because their mothers worked but they don't have any great illusions about it."

For one thing, the workplace still has a long way to go to keep women happy full-time, even if they need the paycheque. The public sector and traditionally female occupations such as nursing continue to attract women looking for reasonable hours and benefits, but Prof. Woolley says occupations with billable hours - especially law - "need to seriously think about what they're doing."

"You look at these firms - they're taking in all these smart, educated women, then they're losing them," she says. "Why aren't they reexamining these long-hours cultures?"

A recent survey conducted by Workopolis, a Canadian online recruiting and job search company, found that 27 per cent of working mothers feel their top challenge is time away from their family. Nearly 40 per cent also said they didn't have enough time in the day to keep up with household chores. They ranked flexible working hours as a top draw, followed by on-site daycare, extended maternity leave and job sharing.

And companies are being forced to listen, says Andrea Garson, vice-president of human resources for Workopolis.

"Employers are recognizing the need - they have no choice based on the current labour market and shortages," she says. "Savvy employers need to start advertising and promoting what their programs are when it comes to work-life balance."

In the meantime, though, mothers who work full-time gave themselves the lowest marks for parenting compared to part-time and stay-at-home moms in the Pew survey. Just 28 per cent of full-time moms gave themselves a 9 or a 10 out of 10, compared to 41 per cent of part-time moms and 43 per cent of stay-at-home moms.

There's also a striking opinion gap between moms who work and moms who don't. Working mothers increasingly believe they are good for society and at-home mothers increasingly believe working moms are a bad thing for society.

"That didn't seem to be the case 10 years ago. We're seeing these two groups growing apart," says Dr. Funk.

These findings represent a generally ambivalent view of working women, she says.

"A majority of women have been in the work force for a pretty long time now. We're still seeing very mixed views about this trend."