True Stories of Kids, Career & the Collapse of the "Do It All" Mom

Mothers everywhere, rejoice!! The era of "doing it all" has come to an end. Finally, after years of trying to be everything to everybody-- the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect professional, and more-- women are realizing that it was all an impossible dream... and moreover, it was a mistake. When Gloria Steinem and her cohorts threw off their bras and fought for women's rights, their purpose was to create equal opportunity in the workplace and schools for women. Herein lay the misunderstanding: When women were told that they COULD do it all, they took it to mean that they SHOULD do it all. A big difference. One that has caused women to suffer from feelings of failure and inadequacy for decades.

As Gloria Steinem clarifed to Oprah in 2008, "today's feminism it isn't about women doing it all. It's about women not having to do it all."

I began buying into the myth of "doing it all" at an early age. In my 20s, I had my checklist life in mind: start a lucrative career right after college, meet someone, fall in love, get married in my mid-20s, get my career to a successful enough point that I can take some time off without loosing footing and/or work part-time from home, and then of course get pregnant and have my first child before the age of 32. It seemed like a realistic timeline of expectations and according to the tenants of Feminism. Not only could I do it all, it was my right and even duty as a woman.

With age, wisdom, and each successive child (I have 4), I learned that by trying to do it all at once, I was not doing anything at a level of 100 percent effort or enjoyment. There was simply too much to do and accomplish to feel 100 percent about anything other than my stress level. So in my 30s when each item on my checklist that I accomplished did not create a sense of fulfillment or relief but rather more longing, I admitted to myself that doing it all was not all it was cracked up to be. I made the difficult decision to put my career on hold and stay home to raise my children.

I felt like a failure.

After agonizing over my inability to "do it all," I decided to do some market research on the subject. I reached out to women who were seemingly able to balance kids, career and family life, and ask them how they did it. What I learned was that so many of them were so tired and overburdened that they did not seem to be enjoying anything. And then I reached out to others who had given up on the "do it all" dream and were just trying to do their best, rather than chasing after all the "should's" in life. These women seemed far more peaceful and actually quite happy.

So, women. Let us breathe a collective sigh of relief as we delete "doing it all" from our hard drives and gracefully slip into a state of being true to ourselves- Hopefully for good. Let's join one another in embracing the imbalance, the imperfection and the chaos of motherhood.

The past has been about participating more fully and equally in the world. The future will be about changing the world.

A Labor Market Punishing to Mothers

This is a must-read article from the New York Times (8/4/2010):

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/business/economy/04leonhardt.html?_r=2&emc=eta1

"Women do almost as well as men today as long as they don’t have children.The data make this case. So does the disproportionate number of prominent women who do not have children — Ms. Kagan, Ms. Sotomayor, Janet Napolitano and Condoleezza Rice, among others. Obviously, many other successful women (including Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) have children. Through a combination of talent, hard work and good fortune, they have managed to beat the odds.

But that is indeed what they are doing: beating odds stacked against them. Most parents are simply not able to have it all, regardless of where they are on the income spectrum."

What the H*%^ is "Faminism"?

Has anybody read the article on "Faminist Theory" in the NY Observer last week? (http://www.observer.com/2010/culture/faminist-theory). The term, coined by Irina Aleksander, has created quite a buzz. Readers were not only confused by the intent of the article, and therefore by the meaning of this new phrase, but were even enraged by it. As I see it, "faminism" is not regressive, turning the clocks back on feminism and telling women that they should focus solely on motherhood and family. Rather, similar to the stories in my upcoming book, "I'm No Superwoman," "faminism" is about embracing family/motherhood as an integral part of feminism. While motherhood has come to describe a good chunk of my identity and day-to-day reality, I still have ambitions, goals and responsibilities outside of motherhood.

It IS possible to be a mother and a feminist.

The Birth Control Debate

My husband and I were in our weekly marriage counseling appointment on Monday when the issue of birth control came up. Not for the first time.

"I just don't think it's fair that I'm the one who always has to deal with all issues down there" I explain, looking down to the zipper of my jeans. I've had 4 babies, 2 miscarriages, and years of monthly menstrual anguish. I've been on the pill, tried the IUD. I'm sick of being the one to deal with all matters reproductive. I've done my part in that show. Besides, vasectomies are easy. All of my friends' husbands are getting them. They aren't a big deal."

My husband disagrees. Men have this thing about their penises. Just mention penis and cut in the same sentence, and they crouch over and grab their crotch as if they can actually feel the pain.

"You're the one who doesn't want to have any more kids," he says. "So you should be the one to get fixed."

"You're the one who wants to have sex all the time," I reply, "So maybe you should be the one to get fixed."

The scary truth is that my husband would happily have another baby, making the grand total 5 kids. Let me say that again. 5 kids. Who in their right mind has 5 kids these days?

As a mom of 4, I’ve reached the point of knowing - without a doubt - that my days of longing for another child are over. I’ve done my part in continuing the family lineage, times four. I’ve hit the proverbial wall - with a thud.

I’m tired. All the time. I don't need to explain why.

So the issue of birth control in our household lingers, to be brought up again in marriage counseling next week.

Where has feminism led us?

When I read last week that a former Goldman Sachs vice president-- a
woman-- was suing the firm for firing her a week before she returned
from maternity leave (NY Times, 3/24/2010), I felt like we had
regressed back to the pre-Gloria Steinem era. What good was the
women’s lib movement, after all, if women are still unable to hold
down big jobs and have kids, too?

I graduated from Princeton in 1990. Like other young women who came of
age in the 70s and 80s, I was told that I could do anything, be
anything, that the world was my oyster. In my early 30s, with two
degrees and ten years of work experience under my belt, I quit my job
to stay home and raise my children. I wasn’t educated or trained to be
a mother, God knows. But, with a husband who traveled extensively for
work, an extended family that lived three thousand miles away, and a
workplace that was unforgiving towards mothers, I felt I had no
choice.

As I crawl around the floor picking up Cheerios and toys, I wonder
where the women's lib movement has brought us. How liberated are women
today, really? When we look at the life of the "superwoman" career
mom-- cramming 36 hours worth of obligations into each 24 hour day,
putting the needs of a whiny toddler above her own, caving in to the
pressure of other people’s expectations and her own desire to excel in
every aspect of her life-- the picture is far from liberating.

Firing a woman who was out on maternity leave is illegal, and
hopefully Goldman will be held accountable for their actions if this
proves to be the case. But I can’t help but think that a society which
either forces a mother to choose between her job and her family life,
or ensures she can’t succeed when she pursues both, is just tragic and
cruel.

The Good Enough Mother

There is a fundamental shift in young women’s attitudes. The new direction for women is aimed at happiness and downshifting. The age of superwoman who wants to be the world’s best mother, wife and boss is dead.”
Margi Conklin, editor New Woman magazine, 2006

I'm in the midst of writing a book on how women today are managing to juggle it all-- career, kids, relationships and personal life-- what is commonly referred to in the media as the “work-life balance.” What I've discovered in the course of my research is something very different. Women today are sick and tired-- and I mean literally sick and tired-- of the pressure to “do it all.” Thanks to our feminist foremothers who paved the way for us to throw in our aprons and take our place in the boardroom, we have been brainwashed to believe that it is our duty to be superwomen-- super moms, super wives, super professionals.

I’m not slamming Gloria Steinem. We owe a great debt to the women’s liberation movement for opening doors that previously had been shut. But when we examine the day-to-day life of today’s “superwoman,” the picture is far from liberating-- cramming 36 hours worth of obligations into each 24 hour day, putting the needs of a whiny toddler above her own, caving in to the pressure of other people’s expectations and her own desire to excel in every aspect of her life. It’s a recipe for a nervous breakdown.

So what do we do? We give up on "doing it all" because we have learned that it doesn't make us happy. Instead, we try to be good enough mothers, good enough wives, good enough professionals.

In "The Good Enough Mother: Why Women Today Are Choosing Happiness Over Having It All," women of varied ages and backgrounds share the troubles and turmoil that inevitably arise when motherhood and career collide-- from struggling to keep down morning sickness while presenting to a board room of me, to writing a novel while care for a child with special needs, to getting a text message from a sick child while flying an F-16 over Afghanistan. Ambitious and accomplished, these women have taken different paths in life: lawyers, doctors, bankers, professors, writers, artists, mothers. Some are working full time while raising kids. Others have given up careers to be stay at home moms. Some are trying to balance motherhood with part-time work. Celebratory but realistic, their stories illustrate the multitude of choices available (and still unavailable) to women and the great rewards (and considerable pitfalls) of fitting motherhood into the professional mold.

The first book of its kind to let women express their own voices on the subject of, as I refer to it, the work-life imbalance, it exposes the difficulties women today face as they attempt to balance career with family life, inner happiness with the happiness of those dependent on them, the predictable life of the office with the chaotic life of the home. Honest, funny, frustrated, provocative, and, in some cases, in love with their work, these women don't claim to be able to “do it all” well. Sacrifices must be made on all ends, and feeling content and fulfilled on both a professional and personal level does not come easy, if at all.

My goal in this book is to expose the dirty truths of motherhood, the triumphs and failures, the inevitable challenges and crises that life brings:  battles with cancer, lost jobs and broken marriages, unplanned pregnancies and the heartbreak of infertility, and lots of “bad mommy” moments.   The anthology will appeal to a wide-ranging audience, including college graduates contemplating motherhood, parents overwhelmed by the demands of work and family life, stay-at-home mothers and mothers trying to “on ramp” back into the workforce, and husbands trying to understand the plight of the women in their lives. In a world that typically extols the voices of experts and professionals, this collection is a unique opportunity to hear the voices of the women around us--our mothers, daughters, wives, friends-- in the hopes that we can better understand what it means to be a woman, and a mother, today.

If you'd like to learn more about the project or are interested in contributing your story, please contact me at sam@walravens.com

After 40 years of fighting for equality, why are women not happy?

After 40 years of fighting for equality, it seems that women are no happier. In fact, women in many countries have been growing steadily unhappier compared with men, according to a study published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research in the United States.

In The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers of the University of Pennsylvania, begin by noting the gains.

“By many measures the progress of women over recent decades has been extraordinary: the gender wage gap has partly closed; educational attainment has risen and is now surpassing that of men; women have gained an unprecedented level of control over fertility; (and) technological change in the form of new domestic appliances has freed women from domestic drudgery,” they wrote.

Yet Stevenson and Wolfers have found that in America women’s happiness, far from rising, has fallen “both absolutely and relatively to that of men”. Where women in the 1970s reported themselves to be significantly happier than men, now for the first time they are reporting levels of happiness lower than men.

In Europe, people’s sense of happiness has risen slightly, but less so for women than men. In 12 European countries, including Britain, the happiness of women has fallen relative to that of men.

The authors readily admit that measuring happiness is necessarily a subjective task, but the overall trend from the data, compiled from social surveys conducted over many years, is clear and compelling.

The work builds on earlier research by Andrew Oswald, professor of economics at Warwick University, who has a particular interest in the study of happiness. He said: “What Betsey and Justin have done, which is a valuable addition, is to show that the trend is found rather widely. For most of the post-war era, happiness surveys showed women noticeably happier than men. That difference has now eroded to zero.”

The big question is: why?