Time to Plan Your Life

Susan H. Greenberg

When Katherine Goldstein was growing up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., her mom, an artist, was usually home waiting for her after school. Goldstein, now 26, is grateful that her mother was around. But she plans to do things differently. A recent graduate of Harvard Law School, Goldstein works as a clerk for a circuit-court judge in Cleveland and is engaged to be married in October. "I view having a full-time job and children as an eventuality and a reality," she says. Already she is anticipating what it will take to combine a law career with raising a family. Her calculation: tackle the more demanding facets of her profession—like trial law—now, before she starts having kids. That way, "I can transfer to a more family-friendly role when I have children," she explains. She has been deeply influenced by one of her "mentors," a law partner in her mid-30s who recently gave birth to her first child. "She told me that when she dies, she just wants to say that she was a good wife and mother," says Goldstein. "It's less important to her to become a federal judge or a fearsome trial lawyer. I find that advice really compelling." Ever since women first entered the work force en masse in the 1970s, they have struggled to balance career and family. The movement's pioneers often sacrificed marriage and children to the larger cause of breaking down barriers in the workplace. Subsequent generations made careers their priority and stumbled into marriage—and childbearing—late. Today's young women have seen enough harried superwomen to recognize that blending full-time work with raising children is hardly "having it all." At the same time, the idea of not working is unfathomable to many of them. So they have invented their own compromise: having some of it all. Many plan to work hard for a few years, take time off to have children, then return to a less-demanding or part-time job. "The emerging attitude toward work is flexibility, and building one's career by making choices rather than getting on a ladder and hoping it will take you to the top," says sociologist Kathleen Gerson, author of "Hard Choices: How Women Decide About Work, Career and Motherhood." "[Women] are more concerned with finding a balance between public and private, family and work."

Most women need to work for financial reasons. And today they have more career options than ever. They are well educated, confident and technologically savvy, and they are entering a labor market that still desperately wants them. According to the Census Bureau, in 1998 nearly 60 percent of all women over 16 worked, compared to 43 percent in 1970. New mothers are, on average, returning to work more quickly: in 1998 nearly 62 percent of mothers with children under the age of 1 were working, up from 31 percent in 1975. And they are having children—or at least planning for them—at an earlier age: Andrea Truncali, 27, says she began thinking about having kids during her first year of medical school, when she learned about the risks of advanced maternal age. Indeed, the new generation places great importance on establishing their families. "These young people on the whole have grown up as children of divorce," says Sheila Wellington, president of Catalyst, a nonprofit" research organization that studies women in business. "They may tend to value family more. If so, they're going to recognize that family time is precious."

The key to more family time, of course, is fewer hours in the office. After her daughter, Jordana, was born a year ago, Lizzy Bornstein, 29, switched Chicago law firms so she could work three days a week. She says she enjoys having "my own thing that I can feel good about" while also spending time with her daughter. A recent study by Catalyst found that more than 80 percent of both men and women use "some kind of flexibility at work, either formal or informal," says Wellington. That means anything from working a three-day week to occasionally leaving early to catch a kid's soccer game. And many employers are sanctioning such moves: Isabel Schultz, 31, an advertising manager in Chicago, says her employer, Starcom Worldwide, a division of Leo Burnett, is open-minded about flexible schedules and offers a telecommuting pilot program.

Some young women are even choosing professions based on the flexibility they afford. Anne Maxson, whose class at the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine is 76 percent women, says women might be more likely to consider veterinary medicine because it offers more freedom. Chicagoan Sally Rosen, 24, says she is well aware that her skills as a computer scientist can easily be employed from home. And Beverly Brettmann, 28, says she derives satisfaction from her career as a freelance writer and teacher in New York in part because "I won't have to alter my lifestyle much when it comes time to include marriage and children."

But a part-time schedule isn't without risks. "Often the part-time options don't have any benefits attached to them, and don't have any job security," says Donna Stewart, chair of the American Psychiatric Association's committee on women. Part-time jobs are also the first to go in an economic downturn. Still, many young working women are willing to make that trade-off for the prospect of afternoons at the playground. "If they expect to have meaningful, useful, fulfilling part-time work," says Wellington, "the odds are they'll get it."

In fact, if forced to choose between a high-powered career and raising children, several of the women interviewed for this article said they would ditch the job (at least temporarily). Diane Thompson, a 25-year-old cancer-research specialist in Los Angeles, says she would "probably choose to raise kids" and then "go back to[my career] later." For now, the biggest obstacle women like Thompson face is finding an acceptable mate. Though they are hopeful that they will find men who will be equal partners, they are well aware that few women, including their mothers, have achieved that: women still do the bulk of the housework and child care. "We've been going in the right direction," says Peggy Orenstein, author of "Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids, and Life in a Half-Changed World." "The ultimate goal is to have real choice for men as well as women, which means women have to be capable of fulfilling their economic potential and men their domestic potential." Brettmann's goal is much simpler. "I'm just waiting to date someone who isn't a jerk," she says. In that respect, at least, what women want has remained remarkably consistent.

From Newsweek, Jan. 8, 2001