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. Continue reading →

This is a must-read article from the New York Times (8/4/2010):

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/business/economy/04leonhardt.html?_r=2&emc=eta1

“Women do almost as well as men today as long as they don’t have children.The data make this case. So does the disproportionate number of prominent women who do not have children – Ms. Kagan, Ms. Sotomayor, Janet Napolitano and Condoleezza Rice, among others. Obviously, many other successful women (including Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) have children. Through a combination of talent, hard work and good fortune, they have managed to beat the odds. Continue reading →

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. Continue reading →

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. Continue reading →

Has anybody read the article on “Faminist Theory” in the NY Observer last week? (http://www.observer.com/2010/culture/faminist-theory). The term, coined by Irina Aleksander, has created quite a buzz. Readers were not only confused by the intent of the article, and therefore by the meaning of this new phrase, but were even enraged by it. As I see it, “faminism” is not regressive, turning the clocks back on feminism and telling women that they should focus solely on motherhood and family. Rather, similar to the stories in my upcoming book, “I’m No Superwoman,” “faminism” is about embracing family/motherhood as an integral part of feminism. Continue reading →

When I read last week that a former Goldman Sachs vice president– a woman– was suing the firm for firing her a week before she returned from maternity leave (NY Times, 3/24/2010), I felt like we had regressed back to the pre-Gloria Steinem era. What good was the women’s lib movement, after all, if women are still unable to hold down big jobs and have kids, too? Continue reading →