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PREVENTING THE WORK/LIFE COLLISION

By Joan K. Peters

1.      So many women choose either a career or family. This younger generation wants more. And they can have it – they have the economic leverage and training to negotiate a sane work life, and to choose partners who will do the same.

2.      The biggest issue preventing women from “having it all” is fear. Women are afraid of asking men to insist on workplace accommodations in order to make time for their life together. They are afraid to ask men to sacrifice whatever ambition, work hours, or freedom necessary to create a rich home life. They fear that men will find them unattractive or leave them if they demand too much. And some will. But how authentic can a relationship be with one partner putting the other’s life before their own? How satisfying will it be with the inevitable resentments of such an arrangements? More and more, men want the personal satisfaction. They want lives, and not the driven lives their own fathers had. They want the excitement of a woman who’s making her place in the world, and the financial help she can bring. Those are, after all, the women they’ve known in college, professional schools, and on the job.

3.      Every woman who abandons work for motherhood needs to ask herself, is this what I want for my daughters? Do I want my sons to work twelve hours a day to take care of a family he hardly sees? Does it make sense that a woman who has sacrificed her ambition in order to raise children then encourages her own daughters to be whatever they want to be?  This disconnect is the basis of a new kind of thinking – women who train for work have the right to do that work without giving up her personal goals. She has a right to expect her partner to stand behind his personal goals. She has to have the good sense to choose a partner who wants a rich personal life.

4.      Change will come as more women develop a sense of entitlement. The women who change things for themselves and others feel entitled to work on their own terms, to be successful and remain themselves, to live with and work for men who support their goals, to shake things up when necessary, to start their own enterprises, to learn what they need to know, to value their contributions enough negotiate from a position of strength, to promote their accomplishments, to shape the future.