What Does Having It All Mean Anyway?
When Marissa Mayer was announced as the new Chief Executive of Yahoo yesterday, like many women around the world, I cheered. Seeing a woman in such a high profile tech position reinforced my beliefs that if you work hard enough for something you can get it.
When I read Mayer was pregnant, I cheered again. I applauded Yahoo for being so forward thinking and at the same time wondered how this is still considered to be “out there” when it should be the norm.
Then I read this:
“My maternity leave will be a few weeks long and I’ll work throughout it.”
Woah. Hang on a minute!
Am I the only one who sees a problem here? I recognise that it’s Mayer’s life and up to her what she does with it but I can’t help but wish she hadn’t shared her plans publicly. I can’t help but feel this is placing even more unrealistic expectations on us normal i.e not superhuman working mothers who might actually like to see out our maternity leave for as long as we can feasibly afford to.
Is it even classed as maternity leave if you are working throughout it?
So many women already have a hard time when they announce they will be taking their full maternity entitlement, what impact, if any will her statement have on companies around the globe?
So this got me thinking about the recent articles asking the age-old question, can women have it all? Does Mayer prove we can? Or does it prove that we can only have it all if we give up certain things like spending time with our newborns or missing out on our children growing up?
Is this what having it all means or is having it all dependent on what your “all” is?
I’d love to hear your views on this. What does “having it all” mean to you?
I think that the concept of “having it all” is so illusive and so personalized. For me, as I look out onto my future, I don’t want the same pretty lil’ life pattern that I’ve seen in the evangelical Christian culture I’ve been surrounded with. The “go to a Christian college where you can meet a handsome man and make pretty babies and then you raise your babies to go to a Christian college, find a husband, and make you some pretty grandbabies” that I’ve seen in so many.
For me, having it all means that I’ll be doing something that matters. That I’ll be using my life as a creative servitude towards those around me. This may hopefully include serving a husband and kids, but also those outside in the messy world (and serving alongside a husband and kids – making it a fierce team effort). I want to be running startups and nonprofs in the midst of driving kids to soccer practice (or football as it OUGHT to be called) and volunteering in the soup kitchen. That’s what having it all looks like to me in my future. Balance. Priorities.
Does that make sense?
Thanks for your comment Olivia! I’m glad you added your thoughts as you are at a different life stage to me and it is interesting for me to see your point of view. It turns out it is not so different from mine :)
I think balance and priorities are what life is all about. A bit of give and a bit of take. You can certainly juggle serving others with raising a family and I know you will do a fantastic job :)
Having it all seems to have a double meaning, that means we actually can’t have it all, as proven with Mayer. I guess it is a personal choice of how we perceive ‘having it all’. But i do not agree with the message Mayer will be sending out by working through her maternity leave, it really does not bode well for women in the corporate sector.
It was a crazy statement to say and I don’t know what she was thinking. Maybe she wanted to prove the pregnancy and baby will not affect her job role but instead she has drawn more attention to it as women all over the world react to it.
Having it all for me, is letting go of the unimportant things and prioritising the important things. Important for me = family and kids, unimportant = making more money than I could ever use in my lifetime. I love my work but if I’m ever worth millions like Mayer, I would not miss out on time with my children for it.
I have most of what I want right now – a lovely family, a home and a growing business. I don’t want the headaches that come with more ‘stuff’… a bit more money to help with the bills wouldn’t be terrible, but I don’t want all the latest gadgets and gizmos to make my life complete.
We seem so hung up on keeping up with what we’re told are the latest and greatest things… but if anything, we’re just creating a vicious cycle – see the new big thing, buy the new big thing, work more to pay for the new big thing. No where in there is anyone making more time for family or friends, it’s all about amassing more stuff.
I’d love to see society start turning back to a point where life isn’t a great big competition. Who cares, in the end, who has the biggest TV or the most expensive car? I want my life to be remembered as one where I spent time with great friends and my family and enjoyed it.
As for Mayer’s statement about her maternity leave, it’s typical for American women to only have 6 weeks of leave as it is. Compared to what we get in Canada (52 weeks) and in Europe (I’ve heard 1-2 years in some countries, feel free to correct me), American women are rushed back to work and are barely able to recover from the birth of their child – who, at 6 weeks, will get put into daycare most likely. There’s no rhyme or reason, beyond the lack of consideration the corporate – and government – world has for women (and men, too, because paternal leave is starting to take off) having children. It’s an ugly truth and one that needs to be resolved quickly.
Thanks for this, Isa :)
You’re right it does need to be resolved fast! Children are the future and if parents aren’t able to parent them because they are at work, where does that leave society? Is it any wonder that youths are getting in trouble with the law, failing classes, have a lack of manners, when they hardly see their parents? I read an article recently saying that more and more 4 and 5 year olds are starting school in the UK not even potty trained yet! If parents are working 8am-6pm and the kid is in nursery how can the parent train them?
The UK offers 12 months of maternity leave most of that unpaid so many go back to work after 6 months. I took the full year with my son but was unfairly dismissed (they tried to pass it off as redundancy) because I dared to ask for family flexible working so I could shift my office hours to hours that worked with the local nurseries. The industry was male dominated and they didn’t want to accommodate my measly request. (I asked to cut my lunch break from 1 hour to 30 mins so I could leave 30 mins earlier at the end of the day).
With maternity leave so short in the US no wonder Mayer doesn’t seem to understand the point in it. Hopefully she won’t get a huge shock if her reality is different to what she is expecting.
Love this article, Isa. It’s a subject dear to my heart.
I could write a full length article about my own maternity leave horror story in reply to this post, but I’ll save you the drama. lol I don’t think women can “have it all” without someone giving up something. And all too often it’s more than one person who has to sacrifice. Most certainly if a new mother is working during her maternity leave, it cannot possibly be as healthy for her recovery, nor as healthy for the child (and other family members) as it could be having the mother just focus on the family unit. Common sense will tell us that. Sadly, I think the message being sent by Mayer is that “work comes before baby. Baby just happens to be thrown into the mix… like a speed-bump on the road to business success.” I don’t doubt that Mayer will have the finances to hire caregivers around the clock, but no matter how fabulous a caregiver is, a newborn should be given time to adjust to his/her new world in the arms of the mama. I’m perhaps old-fashioned in my thinking, but there you have it.
I think the Anne-Marie Slaughter article was well written and realistic. I saw her on a talk show speaking about the subject… how she knew her children needed her so she changed career paths to be with them… and her children are teens!
“Having it all” in Mayer’s terms is not really “having it all”, in my opinion. I do think women can have a career and have children, but not all careers are conducive to being an attentive mother.
Thank you for the great post :)
Thank you for your insightful comment Patti. I agree with you entirely about the message Mayer seems to be sending and I worry that other women will feel like they have to show their employers that they are just as dedicated to their work with family being a close second for them, just so they can advance.
Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article was eye-opening for me! All this time I’ve been telling myself that once the children go to school I’ll be able to work full-time as they will need me a bit less during the week but Slaughter’s article shows that your kids always need you, even as teenagers, just in different ways. One of the benefits of being our own bosses is being able to choose what hours we work so I hope I can continue to be there when my kids need me.
Thanks for this post Isa! When she was announced this week and when I heard people talking positively about her being pregnant I thought I was going to read about how she was able to have this job and also take her 3 month maternity leave that is customary for larger companies. I thought that this would be such a triumph for working mothers everywhere. I did find it unfortunate that she said a couple of weeks and I am happy to read here on your blog that I was not the only person to feel this way. I have never gone back to working full-time after having my two boys and part of that is because my husband helps support us and part of it is me finding ways to fulfill my desires to work while also being there for my kids. This summer I have realized that I actually try to do too much and both my work and kids suffer by me not having separate times for both. Overall though I do feel that I have it all and that I am very fortunate to be a mom and have work that I love!
Oh Marissa, Marissa, like all women around the world you are so quick to plan head when you have no idea what is going to hit you when your baby is born… Raise your hand if you were one of those women that before birth thought to herself “well, if billions of other women around the world did that I will be able to do it too, right?”
WRONG! Birth and motherhood are impossible to categorize, our reaction to it varies from pure bliss to dark desperation and all that’s in between.
I worked the day I gave birth, worked from home during my 3 months maternity leave, hired a nanny, paid said nanny 10,000 euros for a year, become more and more depressed by the void that having it all was leaving in my heart. It took me more than 2 years to understand that I missed some of the best moments of my son’s life and of my experience of being a mother.
Marissa example for me turned from a victory (aha! we can do it! we can be big badass bosses) to disappointment (of course to do that we have to forget that we are women…)
What can I say? Best of luck to all the Marissas in the world!
Thank you for your comment and honesty Francesca. We can only do what we feel is right at the time so don’t beat yourself up over the decisions you made in the past. Society makes women feel like the only way to succeed is to be perfect in every way, the perfect wife, mother, daughter, employee, business owner. We strive and strive to achieve what other people define as perfect even though inside we might not be happy.
I’ve had a few different pregnancies and each one resulted in different set of circumstances to deal with afterwards. I needed time to heal physically and emotionally so with those experiences to draw from I can’t help but wish luck to Marissa and other mothers who think giving birth then slipping back into their old life will be seamless.