Work Family Balance

A Delicate Balance is a blog about my struggles with the work family balance act. It is a delicate balance. I do not buy into the whole idea of being a perfect mother, with perfect children. I think women should give themselves a break and stop trying to live up to everyone else's expectations of what motherhood is supposed to be. I think motherhood has become a competition to see who has the child who talks first, whose child gets into the best preschool, and whose child is the best dressed. We are making each other feel like failures if our child does something average every now and then. Sadly, we also fail to see how much pressure to be the best all the time puts on children. Then, add the desire to be a competent employee to the mix, and you can definitely see that the work family balance is never easy, but it is rewarding.

The whole pressure to be the best mother ever is out there. Sometimes the competition is subtle, masked in the slightly surprised looks and the comments of, "oh, you allow your child to eat non-organic food and watch TV?" The pressure is applied by marketing departments who convince parents that they are uncaring if they do not buy outrageously expensive strollers, because an average stroller could result in some kind of a fluke stroller accident. You are not a failure at motherhood if you buy cookies instead of baking them when your child's room mother asks for contributions to the holiday party. It is also okay to have low-key birthday parties in the backyard instead of celebrations that require the planning and execution worthy of a $30,000 wedding reception.

However, these days, in addition to feeling the pressure to be a perfect mother, you also have the pressure exerted by the neo-traditionalists. Some of these neo-traditionalists are women who believe that "having it all" cannot happen in today's world, and they have joined the "opt-out revolution" and have made a choice to stay home. Others of them, such as writer Caitlin Flanagan, warn women to not get too obsessed with careers, and to make sure that they still have hot meals waiting for their husbands-or else! Yes, the neotraditionalists of this variety say we can have it all, but we better still make sure we are doing it right. Gee, I thought most men these days could make their own dinner as needed. This attitude plays right into the "second shift" mentality that was written about decades ago by Arlie Hochschild, wherein the women she interviewed held full time jobs, but also did the bulk of housework and childcare after they got home. So, sadly, despite the general awareness of this issue of women being overburdened, women are still "suppossed" to pick up the slack at home according to Ms. Flanagan, or we are not being "good" wives.

So, I find myself battered about by those who expect us to be perfect moms, and those who say we should join the opt out revolution or become a neotraditionalist of some variety. However, I feel that there is a path to be blazed in work family balance in that I do believe it is entirely possible to combine work and family successfully. So I also see myself as rebelling against the whole opt out revolution that says that women cannot really have it all, and have to sacrifice their whole career in order to have a happy family. However, I do not want to give the wrong impression that I consider this whole work family balance to be easy. And I'm not tossing away 8 years of higher education and long, long hours of work to stay home full-time. No, I am not blissfully at peace all the time about pulling off the balance. I get frazzled at times. I sometimes get too little sleep. I have pangs of guilt on occasion for not being able to bake those darn cookies, or make 14 different crafts to decorate the house at Christmas. But, I do it well enough to be satisfied with both. Most of the time.