I had lunch with some friends today, all of them working women. Among the four us, for college degrees, we have two from Harvard, one from Caltech, and one from Peking University – supposedly the Harvard of China; for Ph.D. Degrees, two are from Berkeley, one is from MIT and one from Stanford. What did we discuss vigorously for almost two hours? We spent 95% of the time discussing our respective issues, concerns and frustrations with kids, with the rest of time on our observations or wishful thinking regarding the husbands. At the end of the discussion, one of them said, "now kids occupy at least half of my brain. I guess men don't have such discussions. " The other said, "it's not that they don't care. But they really don't care at the same level."
It reminded me of a blog forwarded to me by a friend at Google, which apparently is widely read at Google - http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2012/09/14/how-to-plan-a-career-in-your-20s-to-stay-home-with-kids-in-your-30s/. According to a latest survey, 84% of working women would prefer to stay home if they can afford it. Then the author went into a discussion on which Myers Briggs personality types would prefer not to stay home, while singling out ENFJ as the type that has the hardest time with both career and kids, because they want to do well at work like men, and raise kids as well as devoted housewives.
Come to think of it, the phenomenon of working women is just a few decades old. No wonder there is so much discussion on-line and off-line on topics related to working women with family. It is a modern challenge.
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