Can Women Have It "All"?

To begin this post, I will answer that question.

NO. No, we cannot.

The internet lately has been full of articles about the 2012 woman - she works, she parents, she plays, she volunteers. She seems to have it "all." But does she really, and can she? Is it even possible?

Well - yes. And no. She can have a little bit of it "all." But she can't have all of it "all". This is why:

I am a mom. For most of the last eight years, that has been my main job. The Mom job description involves a lot of things - cleaning, laundry, holiday preparation, birthday parties - you name it. Today's Mom is expected to be mega-involved in her child's school. So in addition to the normal Mom duties, she volunteers at school too. Homeroom mom, School Advisory Council, PTA. She helps out with auction baskets and Fun Fridays and banquets.

Now, eventually Mom wants to expand her horizons a bit. So she begins to volunteer outside of the school. Girl Scouts. The Junior League. She chairs committees, and attends trainings and generally tries to help others while gaining some experience.

Experience. Because eventually, as the kids get older, people start to ask "When are you going back to work?" Which is funny, really, because the Mom job is already plenty of work. Full-time work.

But the kids are in school, and people are expecting you to move away from your bon-bon eating, leisurely pedicure-getting lifestyle, and get a "real job."

Mom starts out part-time - as a school aide, and a substitute teacher. But the pay is awful, and it's not really worth taking the time away from the other Mom duties.

So Mom starts working more or less full-time, doing something exciting and interesting. But the rest of the Mom stuff starts to suffer. Less time with the kids. Less time volunteering. Things start to stack up. The dishes and laundry and school projects don't go anywhere - there's just less time to get it all done. So Mom spends her "free time" doing all the Mom stuff she did before. After dinner, late into the evening.

By the time Mom gets to bed, she's wiped out. There's little time for husband. There's little time for friends. Things start to slip.

Mom forgets to make that doctor's appointment she needs to make. Oh crap - was that birthday last week? How long has it been since the oil was changed? The little stuff stacks and stacks and stacks, until the whole things weighs on her shoulders.

The point here is - that the more you do, the thinner you're spread. Things suffer, if not in one area of your life, in another. Choices have to be made, and sacrifices too.

So you can have the family, and the job, and the friends, and the home. But the family gets tired of you being tired all the time. The job sometimes suffers, because you can't give it your undivided attention. You might go months without seeing your friends, and years without a weekend away with your spouse. The house is a mess pretty much all the time, and the to-do list just keeps growing.

It really sucks that we CAN'T really have it all. But is sucks even more that society expects us to anyway.