Posted on 04/07/2007 6:40:22 AM PDT by shrinkermd
...A lot of success early in life can be a real liability — if you buy into it. Brass rings keep getting suspended higher and higher as you grow older. And when you grab them, they have a way of turning into dust in your hands. Psychologists — from Alice Miller to Madeline Levine — have all kinds of words for this, but the women I know seem to experience it as living life with a gun pointed to their heads...
Many, I think, never figure out how to handle the emptiness that comes when the rush of achievement fades away, or the loneliness — the sense of invisibility — when no one is there to hand out yet another “A.” The fact is: when you are narrowly programmed to achieve, you are like a windup toy with only one movement in its repertoire. You’re fine when you’re wound up; but wind you down, and you grind to a halt.
I think this is partly why so many grown-up amazing girls with high-earning husbands find themselves having to quit work when they have kids...
I know exactly how they feel. And soon enough, I fear, this rising generation of superachievers may, too. And they’re not going to solve the problems merely — as optimists say — by doing a better job than my generation has done in advocating for policies that promote work/family “balance.” They’re going to have to balance some things out in their own minds. They’ll have to realize that — no matter what our culture shrieks, no matter what their college counselors push them to do in the name of achieving “well-roundedness” — they can’t be all things to all people, at all times, and still have something of meaning left over for themselves.
(Excerpt) Read more at warner.blogs.nytimes.com ...
i think it implies that a woman who chooses a family over
pressure to excel professionally is a failure. that’s tragic!
The truely successful women are the ones who get that extra account for the business. The failures are the ones that raise really good people.
No, the author does not say that. Actually, if you read her previous columns and books you will find she says the opposite.
It’s A hard life
When you feel down
.
And nobody understands you.
They leave you hanging around
You waste all your days
Miss all your nights
Sittin ‘round just dreamin
You can’t do nothing right
When
It’s a hard life
your alone
Cramped in your lonely little room
Under dressed like a bone
You Walk in the streets
And people are so blind
Won’t give you there pennies
They just don’t have the time
Oooooooh It’s a hard life
Up on the road
You better check it well first
Before you meet all the blows
For you won’t like the walkin’
You’ll get caught in the rain
And to sleep out on the highways
Lord you’ll wish you never came
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It’s a Hard Life
as performed by Roger Daltrey
Writers: Leo Sayer & David Courtney
I agree. I think the author is expressing the
sentiment that many second and third generation
“liberated” executive womnen, are finding out
that being a successful business person
is not all it’s cracked up to be. Women, going
through “mid life crisies”....What do *they*
buy instead of sports cars? :o)
‘Feminist Buyers Remorse’????
Im looking forward to seeing what my ex does in regards to this situation once she gets married. Since I think shes pregnant yet two years out from her PHD. Funny to see what she does.
Choose one:
1) Haagen-Dazs by the metric ton;
2) Plastic surgery followed by boy-toys.
Cheers!
“Feminist Buyers Remorse”???
I happen to believe that it is not only feminists. Many men I know are really miserable in their jobs because they think power and money are the things to go after in life because that is what they have been told will make them happy and important. Until people determine the values in life that are really worthwhile, depression and discontentment will continue to rise.
Odd that she cannot conceive of a woman confronting and excelling at the endless challenges of motherhood and parenting, and finding satisfaction there.
Why do these idiots always have to slam the Woman who chooses family over career success? My wife did a hell of a job raising our son leaving a very promising Air Force career to provide him a solid base in the basics in civil behavior and instilling an outstanding work/study ethic. I was too busy flying around the world or pulling SAC Alert. He is now working his was through Pharmacy School at Idaho State University (proud dad). Now she works that he has left the nest to keep herself sane and it also allows us to live a fairly comfortable life style.
ping
You have to give up something to regain self worth. Either you push yourself along the path to destruction, or you find a new Way.
That’s what I did.
Again, i agree. I think that men have been dealing with
this since the beginning of the industrial revolution
and not all have dealt with it very well. But
it’s been known about “forever”...The “What if-ers”, what if i had gone for the football tryouts at 19, What
if i had married my schoolgirl sweetheart instead
of my “career of her own” wife...or vice-a-versa.
...but i wanted the “edgy babe” instead of the
good cookin earth mom... or vice-a-versa.
Who i now have nothing in common thar
i care about...
Or, why did i allways put my career and party
friends, ahead of of the effort to develop
a lifetime companionship...did i think the
women would allways be there for me?? even
now that i’m middle aged and in my lonely
batchelor pad...and no one with me when the revelers are gone?
“Until people determine the values in life that are really worthwhile, depression and discontentment will continue to rise.”
I agree. This is a trap for both sexes. It goes back to at least the sixties when family values no longer carried the weight it had previously. What mattered was individuality. A lot of women wondered what happened in the legal field once they graduated from law school. The competition for partner was incredible. A study showed that by the mid-seventies, the required “billable hours”— which is a measure of your commitment to the firm and not at all indicative of the actual time invested—increased to almost double what had been expected before. The amount of time needed to fulfill those hours meant absolutely no time for personal lives beyond eating, sleeping and laundry. Some thought the move was anti-woman but others noted that it was a trend in all businesses to disregard the health of an employee and the needs of that employee’s family. In law firms, the idea changed from hiring potential partners and letting them prove their mettle with good experience and requirement of some extra billable hours to hiring three or four candidates for each potential partnership and letting them compete with each other for the prize. Associates with no family commitments naturally had an advantage over those who wanted balance in their lives.
In times past, an employee’s family life was considered a factor in that employee’s value. Good family values, ties to the community, community service, community profiles of spouses and kids, driving records, honors and so forth were counted as assets to the company. Today too many companies consider the family a liability and drive everyone to compete as though they were a single and single-mindedly ambitious individual. After all, why should a company look at an employee’s family life values when the CEO was disposing of long-time spouses for arm candy? Add to that the rise of the managerial class since McNamara and his coterie of war planners and you now have a nomadic group of managers and administrators with little or no ties to a particular industry, let alone the community in which they are temporarily sojourning. It is a disconnected life and a push to continue it or be considered “weird”.
That some women and men are breaking out of the rat race is good. That others are villifying them for doing so is ridiculous. We are seeing the destructive impact of separating livelihoods from family life and it isn’t good. The depression and discontent evident today reflects the deep-down instinct that family and personal lives are important.
I am a law school graduate who practiced fulltime until my two children were infants. With my husband’s support, I then went down to free-lancing legal work while they grew. Last Saturday the eldest child married. This next Wednesday we are delivering kid number two to college (her third year) and planning for her summer wedding. At that time, I will re-enter the workforce fulltime. It won’t be as a partner in a high-profile firm but it will be a decent income with the knowledge that I have given my kids the best possible start in life I could manage. That is satisfying.
We used to say they were majoring in “MRS”. But the most well-balanced business women I have ever met realize that you can’t “have it all”. Life is about making choices and being responsible for them. The Left wants to live in a fairy tale.
Then one day, my dear mother-in-law told me that I was doing the most important job on earth. First, I’m serving the Lord by teaching my kids his ways. Their decision to chose immortality is celebrated in heaven. Second, I’m shaping characters not only of my own children, but my grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In the greater scheme of things, what happens in this life is important only so far as it affects what happens when we leave this place. My goal changed. I sought to get to heaven and to take as many people as I could with me, especially my own family members.
Suddenly, suing people didn’t seem so important anymore.
Today, two of my older kids are almost launched. People often ask me how I raised them to be so grounded. I did so by seeking the Lord first and by struggling to put my own desire for worldly self importance last. Kids' lessons are caught more than taught. That takes making kids a priority and offering them the gift of precious time.
“Not willing to join NYT to read article, but the tone of the excerpt assumes the typical screed about “success” being professional accomplishments, and raising children and running a household fulltime as being the equivalent of “quitting”. And assumes that well-educated women quit the workplace because they are “forced” to do so.”
Same here!! But I had a different take on it. It seemed to me that many women are feeling more forced to be achievers and join the work force than being housewives and mothers. Feminists have sold them a bill of goods that goes against their nature and many are now realizing that.
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