On a recent Wednesday night at the Emma Institute, an intergenerational networking event attended by about 35 women, I was one of a half dozen participants to share a two minute overview of an interesting professional experience. A couple of the women approached me towards the end of the evening to let me know that I was one of their favorite speakers and they wanted to follow up and have coffee. They weren’t just interested in what I shared about my experience leading the women’s leadership development program at IBM; they were also curious about my decision to leave my global job at IBM for an opportunity with more civilized hours.
These conversations foreshadowed the article that appeared a day later in The Atlantic, Why Women Still Can’t Have It All. Just four days after its publication, there were already 1,500 comments on the magazine’s website. Since then, it’s gone viral. Numerous friends and colleagues have posted about it on Facebook or Linked-In and sent me emails about it. For me, it prompted a re-examination of my own decisions on career and family - - the choices I’ve made about what to have and how to have it, if I can’t have it all - - and the underlying assumptions I’ve held. I made some deliberate choices that have turned out to be pivotal. Some unexpected things happened, things I would not have chosen, which also have had a big influence on where I am today. I’ve discarded some assumptions and taken on new ones, but not necessarily better ones. It’s enough soul-searching to spawn an essay.
I was married for nearly 12 years when my first child was born. Before we got married, David and I agreed that we would not have kids. To make it official, we announced that decision to our families. My dad didn’t listen, and his toast at the wedding was basically an exhortation for grandchildren. My in-laws accepted our pronouncement, which is probably why we caught them so off-guard when we revealed that I was pregnant when they were driving to High Holiday services in 2000.
My reasons for not wanting kids were varied. My family has a history of genetically inherited disorders which have tragically affected kids. I’ve got relatives with cystic fibrosis, mental retardation, crossed eyes, learning disabilities, and psychological issues. Growing up, I had frequent contact with two mentally retarded cousins and I lived with an unstable brother. In my adolescent’s mind, I assumed I would become responsible for all three, eventually acquiring them as dependents when their parents passed away. Well before I married, I had matured enough to realize that wasn’t true (and my two cousins had passed away young), but still I harbored vestigial fear associated with being responsible for a special needs child. If I never had kids, I wouldn’t have to be a parent dealing with this.
My interest in children was also negligible because I was extremely focused on career achievement. I had always excelled in school and in my first jobs. People told me that I was a person who had the gifts to accomplish anything to which I really applied myself, and I mostly believed it. Two weeks after my wedding, I started a PhD program, thinking that I was headed for an academic career. It didn’t take long for the reality of life as a graduate student in architectural history to set in. After a semester and a half, I quit graduate school and went back to work in the consulting industry, which is where I’d been just before my wedding.
In four years I became a partner in a boutique firm. I was working many hours, including weekends, and making frequent trips. It’s worth noting that this was a firm run by women. My five partners were all female, like me. The founder had started the company around age 40 and had been growing it for 15 years when I joined as a Research Associate. By the time I arrived, her four kids were grown. You might think that such an environment would be family-friendly. To the contrary, it was more like a start-up, with everybody doing everything. We worked long hours - - sweaty ones on weekends when the building’s air conditioning was off - - and it was stressful. I took on graduate school at UCLA in addition to work, earning my master’s degree and several awards, while continuing to work fulltime. I had a series of debilitating “back attacks” and kept a standing appointment with my acupuncturist as a way of managing the strain. Two of my business partners did have kids, and from my vantage point, it looked exceedingly hard, and expensive to boot, with full-time nanny help. I was still firmly in the “no kids for me” camp.
A few years later, I left my small firm and joined Price Waterhouse, mostly because I wanted to gain international experience. At PW, the level of work intensity persisted. There still wasn’t room for kids in my life and even if I’d wanted them, most months I probably wasn’t home at the right time to get pregnant. For my female PW colleagues who were trying to conceive, the constant travel was a real problem; if you’re out of town every time you ovulate, it is difficult to get pregnant.
In 1999, I went on a six month assignment to London which changed my career direction and my life. I was sent as a subject matter expert in project management, joining a team of learning experts who were developing and launching a new global project management methodology and curriculum for the recently merged consulting practices of Price Waterhouse plus Coopers & Lybrand. I attended the firm’s courses in learning and organizational development, and I was sent to the Master Trainer Institute near Geneva, Switzerland to become familiar with adult learning theory and instructional design. I discovered a natural talent for designing and delivering professional development. I found that I loved the work and excelled at it. Finally, a decade after college, I’d found my calling.
I also discovered how very different two cultures that speak the same language can be. There were many memorable and humorous cross-cultural contrasts, but attitudes towards work presented one of the starkest disparities. While I was living in London, there were laws which limited the hours of operation for many businesses. Parliament was debating a measure which would allow many more shops to be open 24/7. I was surprised that this was even up for debate. In my American capitalist mind, the operating time of a shop was a decision to be made by the shop’s owner or manager: if they thought that staying open 24/7 would be profitable, presumably they would do so.
The premise of the debate in Parliament (at least the part that got my attention) was about the effect on society of 24/7 shopkeeping. The argument against the measure went something like this: if shops are allowed to stay open around the clock, every day of the week, then staff will need to work in those shops all those hours and all those days, and if people are working in the shops that means they will be away from their families more hours and days, and that would be bad for society. I remember sitting in a pub on the Thames after work one day discussing this with a British friend. He was convinced by the logic of the opposition. I, too, found the societal critique to be good logic, but I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of lawmakers deciding shop hours. I was deeply affected by this debate, confused really, which was a good thing because it stayed on my mind and prompted many more discussions. It was also an important milestone in the development of my cross-cultural awareness.
Several months after I had returned home from my special assignment in London and unhappily resumed my normal duties, I met with the PricewaterhouseCoopers partner for whom I worked. I explained that I wanted to leave the client-serving consulting practice to become part of the Learning & Development team. I had tried to re-integrate into my prior role co-leading the government consulting practice in California, but realized that I was meant to do a different kind of work. He pointed out that I was in a good position to advance to partner, and if I joined the learning team I would never make partner. I acknowledged and accepted this reality. I was happy to keep my salary and pursue a new career direction in learning and development. I willingly gave up the chance to compete for a partner role, and the trappings that go with it, in order to pursue something that was even more compelling.
While the mission of the L&D function moved me, I was also attracted to its lifestyle advantages compared to serving external clients. I would have much more control over my schedule. No more last minute trips to prepare a proposal or appear at an orals; goodbye to clients yanking my chain; hello more nights at home. Heroically appearing when needed, soothing prickly clients and especially travelling had always been appealing aspects of my job. I thrived on the adrenaline. But that Parliamentary debate had planted a seed in my mind, and my biological clock had started to water that seed. I realized that if I shifted career direction into corporate learning, I would have the space in my life to start a family.
And so began chapter two of my career, in which I began to climb up the ladder of learning and development while raising a family. At first we decided to have just one child. I went back to work when my son was about three months old. We planned for my husband to care for our son for the next six weeks, under the FMLA leave to which he was entitled. He was the first man at his company ever to use the FMLA benefit. A couple of weeks into his leave, he was terminated, supposedly because his role was eliminated. He soon learned that his role had actually been backfilled. (The HR department at that company was apparently incompetent.) A legal complaint ensued, and my husband ended up with a settlement that consisted of roughly a year’s pay. With that cash in hand, he stayed home for most of a year to care for our son.
In our society, is it still extremely unusual for a dad to stay home to care for a baby. I am very proud of my husband’s parenting – he can do anything I can do except carry the babe in the womb and breastfeed - and yet I wonder if the career troubles that he’s experienced didn’t start with this turning point. He has never regained the same level of earning that he had before becoming a dad. Our economic times have been harder on men, and there are many factors contributing to that sad reality. Is it possible that men’s (not just my husband’s) increasing involvement in child-rearing is one of those factors? Is society de-valuing men who shoulder more parenting responsibilities?
My son turned out so well that we decided to have another child. After our eldest daughter was born, I returned to work and was immediately asked to take a big new role. It was proof to me that “the system” was working, in that a woman just returned from maternity leave wasn’t held back from advancement. My move up to managing a global team of 26 direct reports was a great learning experience. Among the lessons was the importance of asking for what you want and deserve. I failed to ask if a promotion or a raise went along with this big new job, and they didn’t offer one. I never made the same mistake again when taking on a new role.
My youngest daughter was born two years after the eldest. By that time, in 2005, IBM was well along on its strategy of global integration. (I had migrated to IBM when the entire consulting business at PricewaterhouseCoopers, including its learning function, was acquired by IBM in 2002.) I was working with colleagues from all around the world and managing a team with people in the U.S., Europe, India, and Brazil. Being based on the West Coast, for years I had started work early, checking email or getting on the phone in my home office by 7:30am to connect with colleagues on the East Coast. Coordinating with India now meant calls at 9pm at night. But not if someone from New York or London also needed to be on the call along with someone from Shanghai. In that case, which was often, the call would happen at 4am or 5am Pacific time, indecent for me but civilized for the rest.
In 2006 I took an even more global role. As part of the headquarters staff, I had responsibility for the leadership development of middle managers across the entire enterprise. My focus was the emerging market countries, where lack of management capacity was a primary inhibitor to growth. I was soon travelling – to Moscow, Beijing, Sao Paulo, Warsaw, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai and many other destinations. And when I wasn’t travelling, I was working with colleagues around the globe. Learning how to work effectively with IBMers around the world wasn’t easy, it took stamina, but it did enliven and enrich me, opening my mind and my heart. I became even more cross-culturally adaptable and competent.
People asked me how I was able to travel so much with three little kids at home. Sometimes I explained that I was fortunate to be married to super-hubby, that he took care of the kids when I was away, which was the absolute truth. I would not have realized my professional accomplishments without his hands-on involvement with our kids. But sometimes I felt snarky when people asked about my travel patterns, and then I would fire back a question of my own: “Do you ask men who travel a lot for work the same question?” I’d like to think that I was acting as a change agent with that question, but it was more a defense mechanism to shut down this line of discussion on days when I was feeling a twinge of guilt - - or sensing an implied criticism of my parenting - - for being away so much.
My husband was able to single-handedly care for the kids when I travelled because of his own work arrangements. When our son was one, my husband went to work as an I.T. engineer for one of the banks that eventually collapsed in the global financial crisis. It was a role with a very predictable schedule, a boss in another city, and very little travel, so he was able to drop the kids off, pick them up, and handle much of the domestic routine. After the bank collapsed, he was unemployed for awhile, then self-employed as an I.T. and home automation consultant, and now employed part-time with some consulting on the side. The flexibility in his schedule has been an advantage, but it has carried a high cost in terms of foregone income, affecting our family finances.
I appreciate that my husband was able to take primary responsibility for handling drop offs and pick ups and homework. And yet there were sacrifices. As the owners of a backyard pool, we did prioritize swimming lessons and got all the kids to a level of water safety, but my kids didn’t take more than a few music lessons, they didn’t participate in organized sports, and they only went to religious school for two years. Neither of us could commit to getting them to after school activities on a predictable basis, given the demands of work, even my husband’s part-time and consulting work. Being there at 5pm every day to pick-up them from the after school club is far different from being there at 2:30pm. So other than after school enrichment classes through the club on the elementary school campus, we did not schedule extracurricular activities during the week. On the weekends, neither of us would commit to spending our weekends shuttling for activities. We needed to preserve down time for ourselves. If a chunk of every Saturday had been devoted to soccer and if a good part of more Sundays had been devoted to Hebrew school, it would have crowded out the already slim opportunities to spend the weekend just hanging out around the pool, or cooking recreationally, or seeing our own friends, or doing my beloved knitting and ceramics, not to mention grocery shopping and other errands. Sometimes I rationalized this whole set of decisions as a wise way to avoid the trap of over-scheduling the kids. But the truth is that our kids watch too much TV and spend too much time on the computer because we did not immerse them in other activities. For me, this is a case of not being able to have it all or provide it all.
When we added an apartment over our garage for my husband’s parents, I thought we might be able to expand the possibilities. Before undertaking the construction, my husband and I had some earnest conversations with his parents about the types of boundaries that would make such close living workable. For example, we agreed that there would be a separate front door for the new unit which would serve as its primary entry. We would not enter one another’s living space without calling first. There were other things which were assumed but not discussed. I assumed that the grandparents would want to take on some supervision of the kids. I envisioned that they would provide after school shuttle services for various activities. Alas, those ideas turned out to be fantasies. They are busy with their own lives and rarely even babysit for an evening. They are next door neighbors with whom we have dinner every week or two, and who we can especially count on in case of emergencies, but not integral to the work of raising the kids.
In 2010 I began the process of becoming officially certified as an executive coach, adding to my professional toolkit by getting advanced training in something I had been doing for years. Part of mastering the coaching methodology is applying it to oneself. I crafted a vision statement: To love what I do, do what I love, and have the time to spend with my family to make our life together the best it can be. I also created a set of goals to get my life aligned around my vision, including making more space for ceramics, exercise, family vacations, and intimate time with my husband. When I wrote out my vision for a day in my imagined life, it started with a walk for exercise, not an international phone call at 5am. To regain control over more of my time, I would need to stop working global hours. As the leader of the executive coaching program pointed out, it would be an opportunity to change my relationship to striving.
Not working globally would mean giving up some of what I loved to do. The best part of my work life was leading a worldwide program at IBM to advance more women to executive roles. Key themes of the program were intent and choice. By inviting more women to deliberately choose to aspire to executive positions, and demonstrating to them that they are wanted and needed in those roles, and equipping them with the missing skills they would need to make it, and connecting them to the sponsors and decision-makers who select executives, I was making a difference for women at IBM and for the corporation. Some of the women in every cohort - - all high potentials - - would express (usually in private) that they didn’t want executive advancement. I remember women in India who told me that they were already out-earning their husbands and didn’t want to increase the pay gap and thereby the friction it caused. That hit close to home.
I was trying to figure out how to make some changes in managing my time when an opportunity came along. The job description was similar work, which I would still love, with a North and South America geographic scope (only five time zones!), working for a boss in my own time zone, a company with a great reputation, and a comparable salary. I decided to make a change. Moving on to a new job was exciting for me, as I looked towards what was coming next, and at the same time I felt wistful and nostalgic as I reflected on the relationships and experiences that I had with colleagues over the years. The transition was sort of magical. I had a sense of renewal and a heightened focus on the importance of living in a way that is aligned with my values, positive energies and personal vision for the future. Nine months on, I continue to feel like I am on the verge of something. And yet, I also have pangs of loss. I do miss talking with clients scattered across the world and I don’t have any big international trips to look forward to.
It helps to remember that taking on something new usually means giving up something old. I am proud that I’ve made intentional choices about what to take on and what to shed. It’s true that I haven’t “had it all,” but not because someone forced me to settle. I’m responsible, even for the things that I’m not proud of (like the extracurricular activity gaps), and even for my responses to bad things that have happened (like my husband’s job loss). My choices about child-bearing and child-rearing are interwoven with decisions about my career and management of my life as a whole. Unlike Slaughter’s conclusion, I don’t think we need more government policies to make it easier for women to “have it all”. I think we need more women (and men, too) to do the soul searching about what they really want, and then to chase those dreams, accepting the tradeoffs that go along.
And for me, in particular, it’s about accepting the tradeoffs without scolding myself. What I’ve realized in my own soul searching is that even when I get what I want (like the opportunity to exercise in the morning instead of taking phone calls), I can sabotage the opportunity. There is something strangely compelling about NOT having it all. And maybe that’s a good thing in the end…a reminder that we are all a work in progress.
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