The Third Combination

Today a friend of mine alerted me to a Vogue article on the neuroscientist Cori Bargmann, and a few of us had a discussion on how often women have no choice but to make silent sacrifices. http://www.liebertpub.com/mcontent/files/October_2013_Vogue1.pdf

In the article, when asked, Bargmann said that given the choices of a scientific life, a personal life and a family life, one could only have two out of the three, but not all three. She observed that it's true for men as well. 

When I thought about it, I think her observations are mostly correct, with one exception. It's possible for men to have any one of the three combinations, but women can only have two out of the three combinations. Hence the never-ending discussions, articles and books written on related topics. 

It's possible for women to have a thriving/satisfying career that is absolutely not compromised and a personal life. Maybe the personal life will not be as extravagant as that of Dr. Bargmann's, which includes operas and ballet every other week, fine dining every night and designer clothes plus many other luxuries. Nevertheless, it's possible to have both a career and a personal life to the maximum for a woman. It is of course also possible to have a family life and a personal life for a woman, whether or not she works full time or partime.  The key is to not treat her "job" as a career, but rather a job. A friend succinctly put it, "You just have to be willing to say who cares every time you are skipped over for promotion, when others advance while you are on maternity leave or taking care of kids."  I know plenty of women who raise kids nearly perfectly (even if their kids may not be perfect or even have serious issues to start with, the way they raise the kids is surely near perfect), and maintain a very lively personal life, complete with hobbies, parties, friends and interior decorating. 

But it's not possible, as Dr. Bargmann thinks, for a woman to have both a real career to the fullest extent of her abilities and a family life where she's happy. Obviously, she thinks so because there are examples out there in the public domain, such as Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer. However, as one of my friends observed, "maybe these women don’t' care if the kids are raised by nannies, or have issues or develop issues." And of course, vast majority of women don't have access to the resources available to them to enable such ambitious careers. 

It is, however, possible for men to have all three of the combinations, including career plus family, even if they don't have access to extravagant resources. I think it's largely because the expectations for a man to have a "family life" often implies spending a few evenings a week at home. Therefore, while family life with kids on its own may be net taxing for a woman, it could be net nourishment for a man, whose wife usually has chosen (either voluntarily or involuntarily) to put family life first. When women did not put family life first, as perhaps Anne-Marie Slaughter did not when her kids were younger, they were forced to pay the price later. And to be clear, Ann-Marie Slaughter's husband presumably took up most of the burden while she was busy with work for years. We don't hear that Jeffrey Immelt realized after many years as CEO of GE that he should not have neglected his daughter. These men have wives who put family life first, without negotiation. In summary, when there are kids in the family, someone has to put the family life first. When family life is put first, how can one compete on careers with others who put careers first? If Dr. Bargmann had a frustrating day at work (as she claims correctly that research often is frustrating), she would go on to a metropolitan opera to rejuvenate. The worst that could happen is that she might have to skip opera and ballet a few times because of deadlines. But that kind of sacrifice is totally manageable. However, if after receiving rejections of a paper she submitted and after a frustrating day at work, she went home to discover her kids with issues that are even more challenging than research, where would she get the rejuvenation? For men, often the assumption is that the kids' mothers would be there to do all the worry. But women can't leave it to others, because there are often no others who would care more. 

When women choose a career plus family as the combination, thinking (erroneously) that they could do both very well, they will be disappointed in either the career or how they are raising their kids, or perhaps both. Both are taxing, and require sacrifices, and the situation is exacerbated if it's a challenging and competitive career field, or the kids have issues. 

As a result, kudos to the enlightened men who are secure and selfless enough to put family first and determine to be the best fathers more than anything else! That's the only time when their wives are truly given the choice of the third combination – career and family life.