I’m trying to come to terms with how my career really fits in my life when I want to spend time with my children, and when I want to give them my good energy. I feel the need to push in my work, to be a player, and to get important assignments. I want to be taken seriously, but to get there and to stay there takes so much. I love my career, but I’m torn by my family’s needs as well.
Janet Schiller, National Television
Producer, NBC’s Today show

I have fulfilled my dreams and more. Who thought that a young girl from the South Side of Chicago with no family in the media business and very little exposure to New York City could come here on her own and get started and love it, and become president of a large division of a corporation? I get up in the morning and am excited about what I’m going to do that day. I have a wonderful marriage, two great kids, and a very interesting career. I feel like I have it all.
Cathleen Black,
President of Hearst Magazines

Our successful women struggled and sacrificed to balance the roles of mother, wife, and professional. They sometimes experienced fertility problems caused by delayed childbearing. Some women redirected their careers or took time off to spend more time with family. As a result, they sometimes felt penalized in their careers. Women in some careers commented on "glass ceilings" and "sticky floors." There were times when they sensed that being a woman offered either a distinct advantage or clear disadvantage, but only rarely could they be certain that opportunities or the lack thereof was gender-based.

EXPECT THE BALANCING ACT TO BE A STRUGGLE

You may have many choices about the timing of your career and whether or not you want to combine your career with marriage or family life. You can expect to struggle psychologically with those issues, and a race against the calendar for family planning is not unusual. You may choose not to marry; you may choose to marry but not have children. If you should decide to marry and have a family, expect to pioneer in devising ways to balance career and family life. Balance is a dynamic process. It means that sometimes things may get off-center in one direction or another. There’s not one perfect, ideal way to perform life’s balancing act.

©2001 by Sylvia B. Rimm.  All rights reserved.  This publication, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without written permission of the author.

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