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
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
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?
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?
If Your Have That Nagging Feeling of Uncertainty, Just Say No
I just read a blog that may have saved my life. For the past few weeks my husband and I have been discussing whether or not to get an au pair to help make our lives easier as I slowly transition back to work after having been a SAHM of four kids for 10 years. We have been ambivalent, at best, about the decision of whether to welcome a foreign-born stranger into our household to take care of our chidren. Just writing it here makes me feel crazy that I would even contemplate such folly! Then I read a blog on hybridmom.com entitled "LifeSaver" which gave this advice: "Just say no. If you're not sure about the question, whether it's a commitment, a new activity, a request for help, an expense... if you have that little nagging feeling of uncertainty, just say no. Wait. You can always change your mind and say yes later, but once you've committed it's hard to undo. I've been saved many a mistake by saying no, stepping back, and considering.”
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