I don't want it "all." It literally sounds horrible to me - trying to have kids with a demanding career. What does that say about me? I'd rather give one up and enjoy it fully.
But really, I don't think anyone can have it all, and we should stop striving for some society-defined all. Define having it all by what makes you happy (at least that's what I've decided to do). Life is about sacrifices and compromises, and no one really has it all b/c I'm sure at some point they've made a compromise or given up a dream or made a choice that changed things.
I think we need to stop talking about "having it all" and start making it easier for people to balance what they do have. Our workplaces should have more family friendly policies for both men and women so that they don't have to choose 100% career or 100% family. For those who concentrate on their career, they should still be able to work remotely, take time for doctors appointments, etc. We need to concentrate more on quality of work rather than quantity. If you can get all of your work done in 6 hours and take 2 hours for your child's doctor appointment, what is the problem? How does this hurt the company or productivity? Similarly, for people who choose to concentrate on their family, we should help them keep their professional skills up to date so that they can reenter the workforce if need be, as well as not automatically discarding any applicant who has been a SAH parent for the last few years and instead maybe considering them based on their skills and abilities rather than whether they fit a prescribed mold of what an employee's resume *should* look like.
Hallelujah and holy shit!
(That means yes, I agree) Fuck this live to work mentality. It's not helping production or GDP.
What needs to change is the myth that anyone has it all.
ITA! And, the myth that success = linear path
For me, success is on a household level. DH and I take turns making advances so that the family isn't stressed. Once one is comfortable in their position, the other makes a move. I really wouldn't want it any other way. We both reap the benefits of additional income and a happy family. I have lots of goals and some I won't tackle until my kids are out of the house. I'm totally ok with that.
And I do think this affects men just as much. DH was not a happy person when he took a new job that took him away from the family more than he wanted. He stayed there 18 mos and made a change. I don't think this was a failure for him, he tried it, it didn't work and he got to a better place.
men don't "have it all" either. they're just expected to be OK with having less family time than women. their bar is set lower than ours.
This is a really really excellent point. I do not believe for a second that a man (whether he's a father or not) who's working 80+ hours a week, even if he's raking in the dough, "has it all" either. Something always has to give - family, work, leisure time, etc. For many reasons, there is just less "pressure" for a man to feel guilty about that.
Yes, I'm coming back to this super late because I just actually read (part, 'cause good GOD TL; DR) the article and can't actually believe it's a news flash to literally anyone on earth that you can't live two hours from your child AND simultaneously parent them.
My big boss lives a plane ride south of here, he's usually in the office Mon-Thurs. If he has any delusions that he's an involved father, he's not nearly as smart as I thought he was. Likewise, my husband takes off for dr appts and leaves on time at 4pm daily to pick up his child. He knows this means he will never be president. I do the same at my job and I similarly realize I will never be CFO. This doesn't mean that either of us are SAHP; our balance happens to be somewhere in the middle, and that makes both of us happy.
I like ttt's analogy of being a doctor and a lawyer at the same time. What a bizarre thing to thing you could do.
I think we need to stop talking about "having it all" and start making it easier for people to balance what they do have. Our workplaces should have more family friendly policies for both men and women so that they don't have to choose 100% career or 100% family. For those who concentrate on their career, they should still be able to work remotely, take time for doctors appointments, etc. We need to concentrate more on quality of work rather than quantity. If you can get all of your work done in 6 hours and take 2 hours for your child's doctor appointment, what is the problem? How does this hurt the company or productivity? Similarly, for people who choose to concentrate on their family, we should help them keep their professional skills up to date so that they can reenter the workforce if need be, as well as not automatically discarding any applicant who has been a SAH parent for the last few years and instead maybe considering them based on their skills and abilities rather than whether they fit a prescribed mold of what an employee's resume *should* look like.
But there are a lot of jobs that can't function this way. My DH could never work from home...so much of what he does happens on site, and that can't change. I'd say that true for 80% of the people that work for him as well. My BFF's DH has a job that requires him to travel frequently, and to cover a lot of ground once he reaches a location. Phone calls and internet don't change that.
This is fair. Certainly a lot of jobs actually do require that you be on site during specific hours. That's not going to change for many jobs.
But, for many more jobs, I think a lot of people/companies think that This Job Is Special And Hard and therefore no solution exists for offering employees better balance, when that's not actually true.
Litigation is a classic example. And yet, I'm a litigator that works from home and I have more flexibility than anyone I know, except for my boss, and that's because shit rolls downhill. My boss - ie partner in this firm - works from home and he just stops working every day at 4:30 to play with his toddler and feed him and take walks and have dinner with his wife at a reasonable hour. It means he often starts working at 7 in the morning, which is easy to do because he doesn't have to go anywhere.
I have shitty times where it would suck if I had a kid. Like right now, when I'm sitting in a hotel room 3000 miles away from my husband and dog, where I've been for the last week, billing hours and running around like a crazy person. But, my firm has figured out a way to manage their case load and clients in such a way that this type of thing isn't actually required of anyone that often.
My set up is by no means perfect and at times I actually really hate it, but I refuse to accept the idea that OMGZZZZZZ!!!!!! LAWYERS CANT HAVE FLEXIBILITY BECAUSE THEY ARE LAWYERS AND IT IS HARD AND DEMANDING AND CLIENTS WANT YOU ON CALL 24-7!!!!!!!
In many situations, there are ways to make flexibility work. People just don't want to think creatively about what that would like like. And while I blame parts of management/partners/one percent/masters of the universe for the refusal to think creatively, I think many high achievers tend to think that their job is too important for such work/life balance nonsense.
I once read a fee petition in a contingency case in which the lawyer representing the plaintiff didn't have an office, but rather, worked from home. The opposing side excoriated him, suggesting that he was committing malpractice, was a sleazeball, was not a real lawyer, and could not have possibly been an effective, dedicated lawyer because of his unusual work set up. As long as people within a profession have a grandiose sense self-importance, professions as a whole will be resistant to change.