Having it All, Having Too Much, Having Too Little: How women manage trade-offs through adulthood

Connie J. G. Gersick, Ph.D. Visiting Scholar, Yale School of Management Senior Research Associate, Lansberg, Gersick and Associates connie.gersick@yale.edu January, 2013

WORKING PAPER
Abstract In June, 2012, an Atlantic cover story, Why Women Still Cant Have It All1 became the most viewed article in the history of the magazines website2. It provoked a torrent of debate about the myth of the superwoman, the dearth of models for combining career and personal life, and the reasons why so few women get to the top. Well into the second generation of full time working women, work-life conflicts remain raw and problematic. This theory-generating study used in-depth interviews to trace the life histories of 40 women, born between 1945 and 1955, from adolescence through middle age. Participants come from 4 occupations and a range of socio-economic and ethnic/racial backgrounds. Close analysis of their stories belies the super-women myth, and suggests three distinct answers to the question Can I have it all?answers which imply three basic strategies for managing trade-offs. Strategies differ in the advantages and risks they pose, the factors that contribute to their working well or badly, and in womens reasons for choosing them. There is no one best way: a strategys success depends primarily on how well it matches a womans own needs and the resources available to her. Further, a womans basic strategy is not irrevocable. Many participants successfully shifted from one strategy to another, in ways that were characteristic to each starting point. Enriched by the perspective and hindsight of mid-life, these stories illuminate authentic answers to the question of whether a woman can have it all, and suggest how they play out over the long run.

Acknowledgements: I am grateful to the forty women who so generously shared their life stories for this research. I am also indebted to many colleagues, friends, and family membersabove all, my husband, Kelin Gersickfor their thoughtful comments. 1
Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2200581

It's a fine line whether I have it all or everything's off. Some days, I feel I've really got it all. Eileen3, Family Business Owner and President, at 54 What could be more reasonable than to aspire to a good standard of living, meaningful work, and a personal life that includes nurturing relationships with family and friends? But for women, and increasingly for men, this set of desires is described in unreasonable-sounding terms as having it all. The question so many women ask themselves, Can I have it all? implies a need to confront trade-offs : If I commit deeply to any one choice, what will I have to sacrifice? If I postpone family to launch my career or the reversewhat am I risking? Will I lose my chance to have both? Exactly how am I going to make this work? And how am I going to feel, in the long run, about the tradeoffs Im making now? Such questions were particularly formidable for the corporate executives, artists, social service agency directors, and family business owners interviewed here. Born between 1945 and 1955, their girlhoods were spent in a society which insisted the ideal for women was to marry, have children, and live happily ever after. They would take jobs if necessary--significant numbers of women have always combined work outside the home with marriage and motherhood4but they would not strive for careers. Their husbands would devote themselves to succeeding in the work world, while they took care of home and family. Two (full-time) halves were supposed to make an unassailable whole, and work-life conflict was not part of the cultures vocabulary. In this worldview, the meaning of All was simple. No woman whose husband provided her with children and a nice home could legitimately question whether she had it.5 But the participants in this study embarked on adulthood just as that ideal started to fracture. Betty Friedans revolution-making Feminine Mystique (1963) dared to describe housewives problem with no name: a longing for more.6 The womens movement of the 1960s and 70s and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 heralded a wave of change that forced doors opena crack. A generation of young women were challenged to reconcile traditional responsibilities and taboos with vast new opportunities. They did not know how or whether they could make it work. Their task was no less than to re-invent adult womanhood. 2
Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2200581

As the stories here attest, these women created a wide spectrum of responses to their new choices, and discovered richly satisfying lives in the process. Because of them and many others like them, our culture has changed profoundly. Women have amassed decades of experience pursuing careers that were once tightly closed to them. Men are more involved at home and more concerned about juggling work and family than ever before.7 Why, then, are young women and men still asking whether they can have it all? Why is How does she do it? not just a clich, but a truly urgent question? The reasons flow at least partly from the terms under which this social revolution began. Women were offered the chance to prove they could make it alongside men; it was up to women to fit themselves successfully into existing frameworks. That is essentially what they did, clocking hours at work on top of hours at home8, and making sacrifices in order to keep up in both realms. The definitions and demands of success stood firm. American institutions still ran on the assumption that men have wives, and women, no matter what else they do, are wives.9 These conditions have not changed much in the years since. Many of the obstacles to combining career and personal life are still in place. Despite the dubious concessions of the Mommy Track10 as well as some wonderful exceptions11, American occupational and social structures are still deeply grounded in the old, gendered division of labor12, and still make huge demands on their members. At the same timefor better and for worseexpectations for women are higher. As one study participant said: It was not the norm, then [to have both a successful career and a full personal life,] but now its the opposite: You cant manage both? 13 In the 1970s, and 80s, doing the impossible packed an energizing thrill, but now, women contend with standards that may sometimes leave them feeling inadequate, or worse, betrayed. The assumption that it is up to women to fit themselves into the status quo creates a huge burden for women to carry, and it also casts a dark shadow. Employees personal lives have mostly been considered their individual concern. Women have coped by piecing together ad hoc solutions in private, revising as they went along. The pathways they have blazed are complex and varied, so much so that their tracks have been hard to discern, and larger, shared patterns have remained hidden.

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Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2200581

Mass media have responded to peoples hunger for guidance by showcasing stories about special individuals or groups: the firsts, the high-powered, the spectacularor the women who dropped off the ladder.14 Academic literature, while much more systematic, has focused largely on elites such as business-school graduates, and professionals in science and technologyor on population-level overviews garnered from census data and large-scale surveys. Together, journalists and scholars have brought needed public attention to the issues, and amassed invaluable knowledge about cause-effect links and long-term national trends. But they have not yielded an integrated understanding of how individuals negotiate the competing pulls of work, career, family, relationships, and lifestyle choices through adulthood. In June of 2012, an Atlantic cover story, Why Women Still Cant Have It All, became the most-downloaded article in the magazines history15. In her essay, Anne-Marie Slaughter aimed to debunk an insidious myth: that a woman can have both a superpowered career and a perfect family life if only (and only if) shes committed enough. Slaughter argued that this myth blames the victim for the dearth of women at the top of American business and government hierarchies. She described how this myth sanctions dysfunctional systems that devour their members time and drive away some of their best talent. She decried the discouraging effects of this myth on young people who want more than a life dominated, 24/7, by career. The story stirred up a torrent of response.16 Can people humanize the workplace or not? How soon, and to what effect? Must women race headlong into career (or family) early in life, if they want both? Is having it all a fantasy? What does all this mean for ordinary women, not just a few stars in the spotlight? The Slaughter article was a powerful reminder of the need for systemic change in the workplace, the community, and the home. The task requires fresh concepts of success in all these realms, and new ideas about how to achieve meaningful, collective change, without relying on super-women to make old systems work. It requires an understanding that new opportunities necessarily create new trade-offs. These goals cannot be achieved without authentic images of adulthood, for men as well as women. People need updated maps to help them navigate todays complicated choices.

This study uses the tools of social science to offer a step toward those goals. It examines the lives of 40 women from four occupations and a wide range of socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds. It shows how they managed the trade-offs of adulthood from late adolescence into their forties and fifties, creating lives that were far richer than their girlhood gender roles ever led them to expect. It illustrates that there are at least three divergent and highly consequential answers to the Can I have it all? question, and it shows that each of these answers can be changed as a womans needs evolve. It lays out the factors that make each answer easier or harder to maintain. There are no superwomen in these pages. The findings offer accessible models, and show that although there are no standard or easy formulas, women can craft trade-offs that serve them well. Foundations of this Study: Context, Concepts, and Methods The research reported here is part of a larger study of womens adult development: the process by which an individual builds, revises, and re-builds her life structure17 through adulthood. In contrast to personality, which concerns what I am like, life structure refers to what my life is likehow, where and with whom I invest my time. A persons life structure is formed by the choices she makes (actively or by default), by the opportunities and obstacles that come along and how she responds to them, and by the interaction of her efforts, resources, and circumstances. As people age, their environments and needs change; the work of shaping, maintaining and revising ones life structure is ongoing, a core challenge of adulthood18. As Daniel Levinson discovered in his seminal research on adult development, the life structure consists of elements: major involvements such as marriage and family, occupation, friendship, avocation, spirituality, and life-style. Only a few elements can be central to a life structure at any given time, simply because human time and energy are finite. A persons central elements organize her life, whether felicitously or not; emphasizing some elements means limiting or forgoing others. For example, a woman may find her youthful commitment to athletics much diminished in the face of a burgeoning career. A man may realize that a globe-trotting job does not fit with the role he wants to play in his family. People can and do change their life structures, but it is not easy. In short, a persons life-structure embodies the trade-offs she has made, in each era of her life.

Over the past thirty years, management scholars have shown increasing interest in how gender affects the trade-offs between two key life structure elements, work and family.19 They have contributed volumes to what we know about how labor and rewards are divided between men and women, at work and in the home20. They have identified many ways in which work and family conflict with or enhance each other21, and pointed out specific factors in individuals, couples, and organizations that make work and family harder or easier to combine.22 This literature has flowed in two major streams. Large-scale population studies have updated the statistics and illustrated long-term trends in mens and womens work-force participation, occupations, economic status and time-use.23 Finer-grained studies, concentrated especially on professionals in business, science, and technology, have examined specific factors that ease or complicate careers, work-life and home-life. To a significant degree, these studies treat work and family as opposite and competing poles on a single continuum. Researchers have also used this duality in classifying people as work-centered, family-centered, or (in the middle) work-and-family-centered, comparing them on career success and personal satisfaction.24 Only rarely have scholars followed individuals over the long term, or looked at a larger set of elements.25 Existing contributions have been crucial for understanding the individual and societal costs of a gendered division of labor, as well as the benefits of overturning it. They are essential for stimulating change. But the literature to date leaves some big questions unanswered: How do women inside and outside a few occupations, with or without children, manage lifes trade-off choices through the decades of adulthood? Although I was influenced by past literature and reviewed it freshly after conducting this research26, I did not set out to test or synthesize it. Instead, this study collected primary data in an effort to generate new ways to comprehend womens adult development. Its guiding question asks: What are the key, shared tasks and dilemmas that women encounter as they construct their lives through adulthood? This paper focuses on one of the the central answers that emerged, the life-long task of managing trade-offs. How the Study was Conducted This research began in 1997, as a qualitative, exploratory27 study of ten senior executives in a global financial services corporation (Gersick & Kram, 2002)28. Over the fol-

lowing three years, I added thirty participants, ten from each of three other occupations: social service agency directors, family business owner-executives, and artists. Modeled on Levinsons (1978, 1996)29 explorations of mens and womens adult development, this sample was small enough to permit in-depth interviewing, but sufficiently varied to foster confidence in the findings30. Participants ages were carefully controlled to maximize the potential contribution of the study. This factor was crucial to their experience in two ways. First, participants life-stage: All the women chosen were between ages 45 and 55 when interviewed. This age range picked up where Levinsons research left off31, and drew participants who were old enough for a seasoned perspective on how their choices had played out over time. Second, their generation: Born roughly between 1945 and 1955, all were part of the historical cohort that embarked on adulthood at the leading edge of a profound social revolution for women. Juxtaposed against these central commonalities, participants occupations were selected to provide key contrasts. The financial services executives had all succeeded in a traditionally male arena. Social service agencies have carried out womens work since the 19th century,32 and might reveal what women could do in a traditionally feminine occupation. Family business, a setting where personal and work roles overlap, offered a view of women as owners, perhaps changing patriarchal workplaces to fit their own requirements. The fourth group, artists, promised a look into a little-studied world, a calling pursued outside the structures of formal organizations. Finally, I wanted to make sure that women of color were included in all four parts of the sample. One Latina and nine African-Americans33 participated. The women were all invited by telephone and with the same basic letter explaining the study. Forty-three women were contacted to yield a sample of forty; only three invitees declined. Of necessity, participants from different occupations were selected in different ways. Financial service executives were drawn from a stratified random sample of 200 women working in the northeast and ranked in the top three earnings categories at one corporation. Personnel files were used to ensure that women of color and women with children, in the right age range, were included. No one in the corporation saw the list of invitees, to protect participants identies.

The social service executives are alumnae of two leadership institutes, run by two university business schools. One of these programs is for outstanding local directors of a nation-wide agency for children, the other is for gifted nurse executives. Participants were chosen from different program classes and geographic locations to minimize their chances of being identifiable to others in the study. Administrators of each university program helped find women in the right age range from their alumnae lists, but they received no information about who ultimately participated. The family business women and artists were harder to find. I eventually located a convenience sample of family business women through family business educators and consultants, from community organizations, and from a request placed in the newsletter of the National Association for Women Business Owners. The womens family firms range in size from small and local to large and multi-national. A convenience sample of artists came from referrals, primarily from the National Museum of Women in the Arts, state and local arts organizations, and other artists. The artists in the study work in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, photography and film, and have exhibited in places ranging from neighborhood venues to museums of international stature. In all, thirty-nine of the forty women were ever-married. As of the time they were interviewed, twenty-seven were married or living in a committed relationship, and thirteen were not married or partnered. Thirty-one were mothers by birth or adoption, one raised step-children from their teens; eight of the forty women did not have children. I interviewed thirty-three of the parcipants in this study myself, speaking with four of the initial ten business women and twenty-nine of the remaining thirty participants34. Each woman was invited to tell her life story, and to reflect on the events, relationships, and choices that shaped her path. (See interview questions in Appendix B.) Interviews were spaced over three or more sessions, for a total of 4 to 9 hours per person. Biographical interviewing35 is collaborative, in that participant and interviewer share the task of creating a faithful picture of the participants life. Each participant is carefully asked the same primary questions to facilitate analysis, but the order of questions may vary, and follow-up questions are tailored to flesh out each narrative as it unfolds. For this study, the space (from several days to a few months) between multiple recorded interviews was critical. It allowed time to transcribe the tapes and study them,

to prepare questions to clarify, fill gaps, and explore connections among parallel threads within each participants story. Searching for patterns in the rich, voluminous material that emerges from so many interviews is a humbling responsibility. It requires an alternation between combing the raw data for important themes; sorting the data systematically so that patterns can become visible; and circling back repeatedly to check whether the raw data, themes, and emerging patterns are mutually consistent36. Overall, the interview transcripts for this study were organized in two ways. Every participants set of interview transcripts was (electronically) cut and pasted to preserve the original text, but to organize it into a chronological narrative. This produced a biography in each womans own words. In addition, all the interviews were searched for emerging themes, for example, marriage, trade-offs, career aspirations, independence, relationships. All statements relevant to the themes were excerpted and grouped. The biographies and themes provided the foundation for all the analyses that followed. Appendix A provides a fuller explanation of the data analysis. Findings Understanding how these women dealt with trade-offs was not easy. Patterns were initially difficult to see amid all the variation in their lives. My efforts to find patterns based on existing paradigms simply did not work. The women refused to break into coherent groups according to whether they put family, career, or both-at-once first. Moreover, major trade-offs were not confined to work and family. Other factors, such as lifestyle (i.e. money, preferences about where and how to live), often entered forcefully into the equation. Women did not sort out by the number of major elements they tried to juggle; by the sequence and timing with which they pursued family, career or lifestyle; or by occupation. Looking literally at who did what, in what order, was bafflingly uninformative about how women fared, or how their choices played out over time. Finally, I realized that such objective observations were misleading. Choices that looked the same on the outside held different meanings for different women, meanings that very much influenced how their paths unfolded.37 The order within the chaos finally emerged from the womens descriptions of their subjective experience with trade-offs.

Their personal answers to two questions went to the heart of the matter: Can I have it all? and How have my choices about trade-offs worked out over time? The first key: womens responses to the central question, Can I have it all? Womens stories made it clear: every participant had asked herself this question, and asked it more than once. By paying attention to womens own answers, rather than outward appearances, patterns that had been obscured came into focus. Three different responses emerged from the group, and each answer implied a particular strategy for making trade-offs. These are introduced here and illustrated in depth later. Answer 1: No, but I can have what is most important. Strategy: Prioritize and Limit. No, I can not have it all, but I can have what is most important to me. I can prioritize which endeavors I will pursue, and which I will limit or do without. This answer is animated by the conviction that a womans highest prioritieswhether related to work, relationships, or lifestyle38command so much attention that she can only truly have one or two, in her lifetime. The quotations below are from two women who took this approach. In a paradigm that would peg women as either work-centered, family-centered, or in-between, these two participants are opposites. Yet their basic philosophy on how to manage trade-offs was the same. Committed to her work (and to financial selfsufficiency), Gwen prioritized art and decided she would not have children; committed to her children, Nell prioritized family over work, even if it meant financial sacrifice: I was trying to find a way to be an artist. And I had to work [a paying job] to support that. And I think supporting children, toowhich I felt would be all my burdenwould threaten both. Because if you don't put enough time into it, the work cant evolve, or its thin and shallow. It has to be a commitment. So, What do you sacrifice? is always the question. And maybe childrenthats what you sacrifice. ... Butyou make choices. Gwen, Artist, at 48 (Caucasian) We always had to figure out what we were going to do with the kids, before I made a decision about a job. If a job was going to impact my life so much that I didnt have any time for home, then it wasnt worth it to me! Nell, Social Service Agency Executive, at 46-7 (Caucasian) Each of these women was prepared to forgo or limit something she saw as good (children for Gwen; higher income for Nell) for something she prioritized as essential. Answer 2: Yes, but not all at once. Strategy: Sequencing: 39 Yes, I can have it all,

but not all at once. I can sequence the elements I want to include in my life, focusing my energies on one until I am satisfied and ready to turn my attention to the next. The women who em-

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braced this answer also felt they needed to invest fully in their top priorities, and could only do justice to one or two elements at a time. However, they hoped to fit competing elements into their lives by scheduling each for a limited turn at center stage. Their ideas about where to start varied widely: career, family, wealth, travel, adventure different elements came first in line for different women. But those who shared the sequencing strategy were much more similar to than disparate from each other, regardless of the specific order in which they lined up their goals. Jan provides a quick example (expanded further below). She had an explicit plan to invest all-out in building the career and lifestyle she wanted until she felt well launched. She would then coast a bit at work, and shift her top priority to family. Her reflections on having become a mother at age 38 suggest both the risk and the happy result this strategy held for her: The plan was that we would not have any kids until we had traveled and done the things we wanted to do. And I guess we finally felt we could handle the responsibility. I still had career aspirations, but they weren't [as consuming]. I wasn't getting any younger either! Q40: Were you concerned about it? I know you were sick, during your pregnancy. I was VERY sick. And you would read about birth defects and things.... We wanted to do it at an age where we would cut down on the possibilities of major problems. And it worked! Jan, Financial Services Executive, at 48 (African-American) Answer 3: Yes. Strategy: Add and Delegate. Yes, I can have it all. I can pursue all the elements I want, and delegate some of the tasks needed to make it all work. In contrast to those who prioritized or sequenced, women who adopted this approach were much less likely to think their choices conflicted with each other so much as to be mutually exclusive. They anticipated adding every major element they wantedin work, relationships, or lifestylewithout significant postponements or concessions. They would keep up by enlisting help, as necessary. It is critical to note that All had different meanings for different women; however, this group shared a common philosophy and experience of managing trade-offs. The excerpt below continues from the quote at the top of the paper. It conveys something of this approach: I've always wanted to do it all. Job, family, travel. ... Ive chosen to work now, full, FULL time. ... So Ive just hired. I hired people to do my bookkeeping at home. I hired people to do my laundry, grocery shopIve always hired somebody to clean. So that I can do this, and spend a lot of time with the kids. Eileen, Family Business Owner, at 54 (Caucasian) 11

Prioritize and Limit, Sequence, and Add and Delegate reflect three different and richly consequential beliefs about what it is possible to fit into ones life. In practice, no ones approach was pure, and as explained below, several women modified their approaches in major turning points. But, whether explicitly or implicitly, every woman relied primarily on one of these broad answers to guide the choices and trade-offs she made as she began to put together the pieces of her adult life. The second key: How did each response work out, over time? Sorting the study participants according to how they started outas Prioritizers, Sequencers, or Delegators-worked dramatically better than trying to line them up on a scale of work-centered vs. family-centered. This insight illuminated womens intentions. However, it was not enough. The three static groups did not capture processes that unfolded over decades. Many women jumped categoriesthey later modified the strategies they had initially chosen. Moreover, strategy alone did not predict the quality of outcomes a woman eventually experienced. I searched for a second dimension to do justice to the womens similarities and differences. The two dimensions together brought a picture into focus. The second key to finding meaningful pattern in womens stories is identifying their experiences41 of how their specific answers functioned for them over timelooking, in essence, at alternative plot-lines within each answer. After sorting participants by their starting-out strategies (three rows), it became clear that each strategic group could be divided into three basic plot-lines (three columns) of how the strategy worked: those who found their first strategy good enough and kept it; those who found flaws in their first strategy and successfully changed it; and those who found their first strategy problematic and suffered regrets. The resulting nine-cell matrix crystallized the distinctive character and internal logic of each approach. This logic was not deductively imposed. It became clear only inductively, after I had dived back into womens biographies and looked closely at each sub-group in turn. The three plot lines are introduced here and elaborated later: 1) Good enough to keep. No serious dilemma can be resolved perfectly. But for a significant number of women, their first answer to the question, Can I have it all? worked well enough for them to stick with it, from their youth into their forties and fifties, when they were interviewied for this study. Whether they had chosen to Prioritize

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and Limit, Sequence, or Add and Delegate, these women looked back from mid-life and described their choices and tradeoffs with general satisfaction and without major regrets. 2) Successfully changed: The women in this column all described points in their histories when they re-examined and changed the choices and trade-offs they had made as young adults. In a few cases, this meant keeping the same basic strategy but exchanging one element for another (e.g. having prioritized life-style and work, they demoted life-style and prioritized family and work instead). In other cases, this meant shifting to a different strategy (e.g. having initially prioritized work and lifestyle, they moved to add family and delegate the overflow). Most of the women in this column described making only one, or sometimes two, truly fundamental changes. 3) Problematic: Caused Regrets. The women in this column described regrets or significant difficulties with the choices and trade-offs they had built into their lives, but they had yet to find an approach that worked better for them. Some portrayed years of hardship that were over but still painful to recall; some expressed lingering doubts over choices they felt perhaps they should have made differently; some talked about ambivalence that would not go away, over trade-offs they continued to make. The tables that follow show how these two dimensionsstrategy and plot-line-intersect. Table 1 (see page 15) reports how many women fell into each cell of the matrix. While it would be inappropriate to draw too many conclusions from this small sample, it is clear that each of the three answers can be viable for some women and problematic for others, and that viability can change over time. Table 2, Overview of Three Trade-Off Strategies (page 16) presents the findings of the study in a nutshell. It summarizes each strategy, the values and beliefs that motivate it, the factors that make it work, the circumstances that lead women to change it, the particular challenges of changing it, and the risks each strategy poses. The pieces fit together closely for each strategy. Put broadly: Women who chose to Prioritize and Limit fared best when their priorities formed a steep hierarchy, with clear distinctions between one or two elements they wanted or needed passionately, and things they could do without. Participants who successfully altered this strategy were moved by deep changes in the values that underlay

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those distinctions; their key challenge was to re-clarify the priorites on which they had built their lives, and then re-align their life-structures to fit. Accordingly, these changes tended to take considerable time. The major risk of this strategy was of having too little, if limits that once seemed acceptable came to feel like sharp losses. Women who chose to Sequence fared best when they had the control they actually needed to schedule their lives according to plan. Their change scenarios were launched by sudden, unforseen obstacles that upset their plans and challenged them to manage the collision of commitments they had wanted to handle one at a time. Successful changes tended to start precipitously as crash courses, then take time to work through. The major risk of Sequencing was, also, of ending up having too little: elements that are postponed may become unattainable if events do not match plans. Women who chose to Add and Delegate did best when they had myriad resources needed for getting everything done, along with the confidence, strength and skill to set limits: to keep what they wanted to do themselves and delegate the rest. Their characteristic stimulus for change was overload, which challenged them to prune. These changes tended to be relatively fast. The biggest risk of this strategy was of having too much, and thus feeling unable to manage or enjoy what one had. The Overview chart adds to these points, but it is spare enough to show the internal consistency of each strategy and to highlight the differences among them. I include it here as a readers guide to the complex personal case material that follows, illustrating the findings in detail.

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TABLE 1 NUMBERS OF WOMEN FOLLOWING EACH APPROACH TO MANAGING TRADEOFFS Good enough solution: kept Prioritize & Limit: satisfied enough with limited elements
Prioritize & Limit

Successfully changed approach Prioritize & limit: exchanged or added elements in developmental transitions: 9 women

Problematic Prioritize & limit: sharply felt lack of key element 4 women

7 women -----------------------2 women: reported feeling satisfied until early 50s, but, current with their interviews, struggling to to add more to their lives

Sequencintg

Sequencing: satisfied enough with sequential elements 4 women

Sequencing: changed timing at crisismoved ahead sooner 2 women

Sequencing: felt missed chance or too-long missing chance. 2 women

Add & Delegate

Add & Delegate: satisfied enough w/full plate+delegation 2 women

Add & Delegate: pared down after moment of sharp overload 6 women

Add & Delegate: felt regret at taking on or delegating too much 2 women

Initial approach worked well enough up to interview time:

Summaries

Initial approach significantly & successfully altered: 17 women: 9 of the 22 Prioritize & Limit 2 of the 8 Sequencing 6 of the 10 Add & Delegate

Problematic: Expressed regrets or significant past hardships 8 women: 4 of the 22 Prioritize & Limit 2 of the 8 Sequencing 2 of the 10 Add & Delegate

15 women: 9 of the 22 Prioritize & Limit* 4 of the 8 Sequencing 2 of the 10 Add & Delegate * 2 women in this group struggling, at time of interviews, to add elements

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TABLE 2: OVERVIEW OF THE THREE TRADE-OFF STRATEGIES

Prioritize and Limit: I can not have it all, but I can have what is most important to me.
Underlying Values, Beliefs, Basic Strategy Deep, exclusive investment: I want to invest unreservedly in the elements I choose, for the indefinite future. Perceived high competition between elements: I cannot do justice to my chosen elements and other things, too. Strategy : I will invest in what is most important to me, and forgo other things. Factors that make it easier, (or without which, harder): > Strong hierarchy of priorities, clear highs and lows. > Delight and fulfillment from chosen elements. > Genuine lack of regret for forgone elements. > Two for the price of one: Ability to combine elements: e.g. strongly desired vocation pays well; cherished relationships are enriched by shared passion for lifes work. Circumstances and Challenges of Successfully Changing this Answer: Circumstances: Priorities change. Different elements or additional elements are wanted. Challenges: Re-thinking and becoming certain of new priorities; learning and doing the work to incorporate the new elements, possibly over several years. Risks or Regrets

Ending up with too little: > Sharply missing forgone elements > Investing exclusively in chosen elements, then feeling empty when they diminish: e.g. when children leave home; when careers wind down into retirement

Sequencing: I can have it all, just not all at the same time.
Underlying Values, Beliefs, Basic Strategy Deep, exclusive investment: I want to invest unreservedly in each element I choose , for a finite and predictable period of time. Perceived high competition between elements: I cannot do full justice to my chosen elements all at once. Strategy: I will invest my peak energy and attention on accomplishing each element in turn. Factors that make it easier (or without which, harder): > Control: close match between predicted and actual ability to achieve each element as planned; careful preparation for moving forward in ones sequence; enough time to accomplish the desired elements sequentially. > Enough luck & flexibility to offset the gaps between actual & predicted control. Circumstances and Challenges of Successfully Changing this Answer: Circumstances: Emergency need to start postponed elements ahead of schedule. Challenges: immediate: sudden overload of adding elements that were to be sequenced: e.g. return to incomeearning work before children launched. long-term: building the skills & resources to master added elements & adjust to overload pace. Risks or Regrets

Ending up with too little: > Actual control does not match plans: e.g. postponed element cannot be added later.

Add and Delegate: I can have it all, by delegating some of the tasks needed to make it all work.
Underlying Values, Beliefs, Basic Strategy Non-exclusive investments: I want a full spectrum of elements in my life, without any one thing claiming all my attention; I will add each element I want when the time is right, on its own terms. Downplayed competition between elements: I can multi-task, with help. Strategy: I do not want or need to do everything myself; I will delegate the overflow. Factors that make it easier (or without which, harder) > Ability to match commitments and resources (e.g. enough energy for multiple commitments; income & capacity to hire trusted help at home and at work; adequate unpaid support from family, friends, community; true partnership vs. help from spouse in parenting, homemaking.) > Workable Logistics: e.g. manageable commutes between commitments, manageable control & flexibility over who does what, when and where, at home and at work. > Comfort delegating as needed, keeping & enjoying whats wanted. Circumstances and Challenges of Successfully Changing this Answer: Circumstances: Overload starts taking an unacceptable toll on the most important elements; often realized as a sudden shock. Challenges: Reducing or switching commitments in full swing, without creating irrevocable damage (e.g. downshifting at work without feeling the move has ended a desired career). Risks or Regrets

Ending up with too much: > Physical & emotional stress of doing too much. > Guilt, frustration of feeling unable to give adequate attention to commitments, or to fully enjoy them. > Crashing: Being too stressed & depleted to respond productively when overload gets out of hand.

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Answer One: No, but... Strategy: Prioritize and Limit. No, I can not have it all, but I can have what is most important to me. Over half the participants in this studytwenty-two womenstarted out with this answer to the question Can I have it all? One reason the proportion is so high is that almost all of the artists are represented here. The artists stories highlight the interlinked factors that drove this approach and its outcomes for all the prioritizers: a) the strength and clarity of their priorities, and b) the extent to which the elements they wanted in their lives either competed with or accommodated each other. These points were starkly expressed by Gwen: [T]he work... has to be a commitment. So, What do you sacrifice? is always the question. She and many of the other artists emphasized that art demands lots of time, energy, and sustained attention, yet it is meagerly rewarded financially, and it must often be a solitary pursuit. Accordingly, many of the artists talked about the key tasks of adulthoodachieving meaningful work, securing a lifestyle, and forming and maintaining relationshipsas three separate and competing endeavors that imposed tough choices almost inevitably. So it is understandable that the artists, above all, felt they needed to prioritize and limit. Choosing art, for many, required hard thinking about what do you sacrifice? The artists were acutely aware of this trade-off and had to deal with it in a relatively extreme form, but they were not alone in experiencing it. In general, women were prioritizers when they felt a fervent commitment to one or two main elements above others, and when they believed their chosen elements would take too much of their attention to leave room for other major pursuits. They regarded their commitments as choices for a lifetime. Good Enough to Keep: What made Prioritize and Limit work well? Three conditions helped this strategy succeed. First, not surprisingly, the seven women who were content to keep this approach expressed deep passion for and delight in their choices. The priorities they identified for themselves were powerful, clear, and enduring. Secondly, even though they weathered some hard times, they were reasonably comfortable about giving up other things to protect room for their top priorities; they were able to say no to their non-essentials. Third, and more subtly, these women often found ways to recover at least one of the elements they thought theyd have to give up, within the chosen centers of their livesmuch as if they got two for the price of one. 17

Laurie, for example, happily put her children first and trimmed her passion for art to fit into the margins; meanwhile she also got two for one by initiating a bountiful array of artistic activities in her childrens schools. Cindy, a social services agency executive raised under straitened circumstances, was plumb tired of having financial stress by her late twenties. She cared deeply about developing her professional knowledge, but knew she needed life-style security. Cindy turned down opportunities for advanced study at several points in her career, to take well-paying administrative postswith real wistfulness over the academic path not taken. Happily, she got twofor-one by infusing her work with learning and intellectual adventure. She chose a series of especially challenging positions, in workplaces which she consistently led to become centers of innovation. Gwens story offers a dramatic, multi-faceted example of how the Prioritize strategy can blossom through adulthood. Describing her girlhood as the daughter of a domineering father and a subservient mother, Gwen explained her youthful conviction that marriage and family would end her freedom and ruin her chance to be an artist. Her strategic choice was to prioritize her work, and to protect it by remaining single and self-sufficient. But in her late twenties she met Ted, a charismatic older man and a wellrespected artist. He seemed miraculously respectful of both her career and her independence. Still, their desire to be together kept them both from their work. The solutionironic and scary as it wasappeared to be to move closer to him: For the three months we dated, we saw each other every single day. And when you have two separate places, you either don't see each other, or you don't do your work. It was the first time I'd ever had to confront"OK, I do want a relationship, and I do want to be able to do my work. How do you do both? It was the scariest thing, moving into HIS place! ... Gwens fears about moving in with Ted were quickly assuaged. When she came home after work, her second day of living at his place, she found that Ted had begun to renovate the house so that the privacy she needed for her art would be literally built into their shared space: You could come and go like two separate tenants, really, if you wanted to... It gave me a beautiful studio, and defined Teds and my live-work life. From there, and with every subsequent move together, Gwen and Ted lived in places that they designed first and foremost as studios, almost incidentally equipped with bathrooms, kitchens, and sleeping areas.

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As an artist, Ted understood and shared Gwens world. Senior in his career, he enjoyed mentoring her: Ted was very clear about what my ultimate goals were, and about helping me achieve those goals. Gwen could have both art and a relationship two for the price of one because she and Ted put art at the center of their joint lifestructure. They chose not to have children, and kept other elements peripheral. Gwen managed the other significant trade-off in her life, the competition between pursuing art and securing a lifestyle, by setting stout boundaries between them, and keeping income-earning work subordinate. She described a series of choice points where she forcefully pulled herself out of financially rewarding employment in order to get back to the day jobs that would pay her share of the bills but leave enough energy for her real work. Her description of the choice she made at the pivotal age of twentyninewith Teds encouragementis typical and illuminating. The problem was that she had become too successful in a design job (doing commercial, not fine art) that she had taken to support herself. With each new promotion, the conflict increased: I always knew Id have to work [to support myself]... and hopefully the work wouldnt take so much out of me, so thered always be a lot left over, to make art. Its hard. I'd work from 8:00 to 5:00, and paint til midnight. My motto was, Dont lie down. If you lie down, youre done for the evening. Id even eat dinner standing up! But CreativeInk was SO exciting! Having time in the studio became more and more of a problem. And I was making a lot of money for a kid. I didnt make that much again for another fifteen years. But I was twenty-nine, and I was standing at a crossroads. I loved that job, but I knew I had to quit. My painting had always been what I wanted.... To take the next step, I had to put as much time into my art as I was putting into my job, and the job had to be subservient. I went to work as a paste-up artist for five bucks an hour at the Sentinel. From being art director! (laughs) The hours were from 4:00 til midnight, so you had no social life, but you had all day to paint. That was a really good period in my life, cause I was doing my work, andthe things that were hard were not emotionally hard, they were physically hard! (laughs) Ten years later, Gwen headed into a major mid-life transition. Two new developments in her story combined to preserve her Prioritize and Limit approach, but to soften it. First, as her stature blossomed in the art world, she had become a sought-after lecturer. Having long preferred jobs that were separate from her art, she began to discover that not only did she enjoy teaching, but it just seemed to really reinvigorate my work. She accepted a prestigious university post which, because of the eminence she had earned as well as the nature of the job, she could better shape to her creative aspirations than the design post she had left earlier. At the age of forty, then, the competition

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between work-for-income and art eased for Gwen. She still put art first, but without having to trade it off so strictly against financial security: she could get two for one. The second change unfolded over the course of her husbands diagnosis of cancer, his illness and his death. Gwen described how, in the face of a cruel reality, she and Ted gently opened a door in the wall they had built to protect their work from intrusion: Ted started raising birds. That was a hobby that just started one day when I was in here painting. We did not disturb each other when we were working. That was the rule. Well, one day there was a knock at my door, and I go, "What?!" I've got paint brushes in my hand. I go to the door, and Ted goes, "Commere!" And there was a little yellow parakeet sitting in the middle of the street. Which I caught! That's what started it. And I think Tedbecause he was sickhe really took to this. We started breeding, and learning the genetics. All the birds [in my aviary] are birds that we raised. So our life became a little more human, and a little less workoriented. At the time I interviewed her, Gwen had begun to emerge from the trauma of losing her husband, and was eagerly anticipating building a new house for herself. She spoke about the architectural plans as a metaphor for how she wanted to continue opening up her life. On the brink of turning fifty, she was recognizing that her art was rooted firmly enough to flourish even if she allowed herself a little more balance: The way we set the studio up really fit us then.... But I think the house symbolizes the next phase of my life. The studio will be separate from my house for the first time since [I moved in with Ted, twenty years ago]. I've gone back to gardening, readingspending more time with friends. I want to go back to some of that come home at night, and don't lie down, but not out of that young, "I've got to prove myself, and if I lie down, I'll get behind!" but because making the work is part of my life, as much as eating dinner. Having [my desires] be modest, and easily realized now. And providing, if not supreme bliss, contentment. And just, at the end of the day, you feel, "I had a good day." Gwens story shows how a young woman, convinced that family would strangle her work, could bring one special man into the center of her life. It shows how she protected her top priority of fine art by walking away from a glamorous job. Finally, it shows her late-forties realization that she had become comfortable enough as an artist to allow herself some new priorities without diminishing her work. Successfully Changed: Why and how did women change Prioritize and Limit? Of the twenty-four women in the prioritize and limit group, nine made significant changes in their trade-off solutions, as their internal priorities shifted. In some cases, women discovered they wanted to substitute one priority for another: they still wanted to concentrate on just one or two choices, but they changed their sense of what was most important

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and what they could do without. Others found they wished to take on moreto add elements which they had initially ruled out, but had come actively to want. The revision process that many of these women went through differs intriguingly from the more linear development you can see in Gwens story above. The key developmental changes that Gwen made over the decades were designed to keep her lifestructure aligned with a stable constellation of priorities: she kept art at the center and expressed no regrets at what she had given up for it. In contrast, the women in this group found themselves questioning the trade-offs on which they had built their lives. Re-thinking these choices, and then taking action to make changes, could be frightening and difficult. It sometimes required high investments of energy and nerveand it sometimes took years of preparation from the time they felt something was off kilter, until they were able to put their newly prioritized elements into place. The story of Karens42 decision to become a mother on her own is a rich illustration of a woman altering her priorities. After escaping an abusive marriage at age thirty, Karen felt her chance to have a family was destroyed. As she worked to recover her sense of purpose, she told herself If I wont have this, then at least Ill have a career! Through the next decade, she prioritized career, and the exciting lifestyle it provided, above all. She took every possible opportunity to grow professionally, enjoyed lots of adventure, and avoided any romantic attachment that would slow her down. As she turned forty, Karen still loved her career and still considered marriage too costly to risk, but something was missing. She realized that she still wanted childrenenough to have them on her own. This was a radical decision for a woman raised in an era when unwed mothers were shamed. From the time she started the process in [her] head through months of unsuccessful attempts at artificial insemination, to deciding she would adopt, to moving from her cherished city apartment into a suburban home, to reshaping her duties at work, it took about two years before she had her daughter. Career and financial independence remained high priority, but she gave up her freewheeling lifestyle and added family. That was one of the faster changes. Arlene43, a family business owner, provides a fuller illustration of the demanding process of understanding that ones priorities have changed and then reconfiguring ones life-structure to fit. While Karens major change was to reclaim a lost priority and

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add family to career, Arlenes was a broader re-shuffling of what mattered to her. Arlene described her fathers low expectations for her as a girl with a mixture of pain and defiance. She became a teacher to stay in his good graces, but by her late twenties she was frustrated with a system where it seemed she would never get ahead. When she stumbled into a multi-level marketing company, she found herself becoming a star. The affirmation was exhilarating. She decided to stick with it despite her parents and friends disapproval. Success and the lifestyle that went with it were compelling priorities for her, and she was willing to trade off that success against the cost of alienation from her home community: I got into Dynaco, a multi-level marketing business. My parents didn't like it at ALL. Everybody thought it was a scam, and something I shouldn't do. But as I got into it, I learned a lot.... It turned out I was good in sales! . I was one of the first women promoted to Silver level, and I got a lot of recognition. I got speaking engagements with big audiences. (laughs) Stay in a nice room! Sign the tab to eat out, and do anything you want for a week-end. It was very nice! Dynaco taught Arelene a lot about business and contributed enormously to her confidence. But when her success started to flatten out, she began to feel less happy and committed to it. At the same time, her efforts to combine her work there with a relationship were failing. The jet-set around her did not include the kind of person she wanted; there was no two for the price of one in that situation. Her priority for rebellious achievement over home and community began to weaken, as the trade-offs inherent in her choice began to tip from positive to negative. Arlenes life stayed centered in Dynaco for four years after she recognized her dissatisfaction. It took courage and a lot of hard work for her to re-clarify what she wanted, to search for a new career setting and more satisfying personal relationships: I'm not saying Dynaco wasn't really good for me, and until I changed my mind, it was FINE. [But around my mid-thirties I realized] I wanted to get married, and that, within Dynaco, I probably was not going to meet the person that I wanted to. [Back home] nobody is doing multi-level sales. I was seeing I'm probably not going to get to the top [at Dynaco] anyways [I started taking classes and going on retreats, trying] to find out, Where do I want to go with my life? I really did a lot of introspection. Then I met this friend in Real estate, and it was much more like where I grew up! I thought, This is something I can do. Real estate is straight and narrow. I didn't meet Phil until I was 40. I only knew him for, like, three months before I got married. We started to see each other, and then I met his kids. It was good, and my parents liked him. I was very lucky. His kids were happy to have a mother in the house, and they were very sweet to me. It really got me closer to my family. ALL of my family. 22

Now I belong to a country club, and all the girls I know have kids around the same age. And when I talk to themmy life is like all of theirs is. Arelene found a comfortable new profession that drew on the sales expertise she had honed at Dynaco. As she gradually shifted her involvement from Dynaco to Real estate, her straight and narrow new surroundings opened doors for her. She found a marriage partner who helped her rejoin her home community and brought her into a family with children. A few years later, her revitalized ties with her parents, plus the skills and confidence she had earned, primed her successful entry into the family business. It took four years, but by age forty she had significantly reshaped her life structure, in line with the changes in her priorities. Problematic, Caused Regrets: When did prioritizing cost too much?. The central risk of the Prioritize and Limit approach is of putting ones eggs in one basket, sacrificing too much and having too little. Two groups of women got caught by that risk, in very different ways. Like the women for whom Prioritize and Limit worked well, the choices made by these two groups were gripping and highly enduring. The problem was, so were their costs. The six women in the larger of the two sub-groups communicated a sense of undeniable loss, and a feeling that they had not really had much freedom about the trade-offs they had made. One woman44 spoke of the exciting dreams of career and travel she lost as a teenager, when she became pregnant and had to marry and drop out of high school. Divorced with three pre-schoolers by the time she was twenty-one, her options were limited. She put her children first, and after much hard work, became director of a social service agency. Choosing a safe, solid career and giving up on glamour helped her regain a sense of direction while staying close to home and supporting her family. But her regret for what might have been was still keen forty years later. Another single mother was proud and grateful that she could provide her family with ample security by working very hard as a financial services executive45. But she wrestled with her sadness that her long hours at the bank left precious little time to spend with her children. The stories of two artists, in particular, reflect some of the anguish of feeling one has made choices based on strong priorities, but things are still not right. Ashley46 was indelibly committed to her art but it cost her dearly, in financial security: Oh, theres lots of jobs, if I want to give up art! ... I dont have a penny! I have no savings. How many 23

years can I do this? At mid-life, she had not found a way to reduce the competition between art and money, nor could she shift her priorities to make the trade-off easier. Jackie47 described the art/money impasse from a different angle. Financial security had always been a serious concern for her, alongside her need to pursue her art. Resourceful and determined, she committed to art and got through college and graduate school on a combination of scholarships, government aid, and part time jobs. After years of being scared to death wondering if I was going to live the rest of my life on welfare, her abundant talent and hard work won her a faculty position at one of the best art schools in the country. She spent a few wonderful terms there, then was recruited to a tenured position in another universityat a much higher salary. She was uneasy about how she would fit in, as a straight African-American woman in a mostly gay, mostly white group. But she had struggled with poverty for almost twenty years, and now she wanted the best for her daughter. She decided it was time to edge financial security above artistic paradise. Things were fine for a while, then her fears began to materialize. She described feeling like a pariah in a group that devalued her best work, trapped by the trade-off of money against art: [When I started here] I was making about four new pieces a year, and lecturing, and teaching, and trying to make a difference. But [in my late forties, the politics] just started to wear me down. I had the best two years of my entire art career and was robbed of any monetary or promotional gain from my job, because of the vindictiveness of this department. It's hard to leave a tenured position and find another tenured position! So tenured in HELL is what I call myself. And your soul gets damaged! I had stopped making art. [My daughter has] seen how unhappy I am, in the past year. So, "Mom, why don't you just quit?!" But I cant exactly stop paying the bills right now! This comes back to all the lectures my parents gave me when I told them I was going into art. "Find a way to make a living!" The idea of supporting yourself justgets in there and holds on with VERY long fingernails! Disheartened as she was by her situation, Jackie nevertheless forced herself to search for a solutionif necessary, one that involved leaving the academic security she had worked so hard to earn: I tell my daughter, that's what courage is. Its being afraid, and doing it anyway! (laughs) The postscript to her story is a testament to her artistic achievement and to her grit. When I contacted her a few years after our interviews, I found her settling into a new position at a much more welcoming university. At long last, her trade-off between art and income had become significantly less painful.

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In the examples above, Prioritize and Limit hurt because womens top choices cost them too much. For a second subset, this strategy became costly, in part, because it worked so well for so long. Only two women in the study fit into this category, but the challenges they described are important and easily recognizable. Each expressed her confidence about the priorities she had selected, up to the time of her interviews. Each had invested passionately in her preferred elements, to the exclusion of other choices. But when these central commitments began winding down of their own accord, each woman suddenly faced a daunting prospect of emptiness48. They were just starting to think about changing their trade-off equations, and their outcomes were uncertain. One of these women49 introduced her predicament by saying that Up until quite recently, my kids--and the business--were the focus of everything. I had no other passions. Having felt little need (or time) to cultivate friends or outside interests, she experienced a huge loss when her children graduated out of the center of her life. When I interviewed her, her well-run business no longer challenged her. She was struggling to find something new to inspire the joyful sense of purpose she had felt as a mother. A brief comment from Sophia50, a financial services executive, reflects the same problem from the view of someone who had invested primarily in career and had not had children. Sophia was clear that she had always enjoyed her work tremendously, but, at forty-eight and newly divorced, the excitement of success was waning. She felt her life had become too lopsided; her greatest fear was just being a lonely person. In her interviews, she talked about adopting a child: In your thirties, you say, "I want to become CEO." You just get this job done, and move to the next job. But once you work 20 years, no one's into "I want to be CEO" anymore. They want to enjoy what they're doing, have a sense of accomplishment, make some money at it, and be happy. Thats not just all work, thats a balance with something else. I have enough money, I travel, I do what I want to do. But thats not enough.

Answer Two, Yes, but... Strategy: Sequencing. Yes, I can have it all, but not all at once. Like Prioritize and Limit, the Sequencing strategy signified womens strong commitment to the major elements they wanted in their lives, and a vivid sense that these elements would compete with other endeavors. Most saw the chief clash as between

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family and anythingnot just workthat would engage them deeply outside the home, whether that meant developing a career, securing a lifestyle, or enjoying leisure and avocational activities. But unlike the Prioritizers, this second group of women did not anticipate choosing one or two life-long commitments and giving up others. Instead, they felt the answer was to highlight each of their chosen elements in turn. They hoped to devote themselves to a first element until it was established (or satiated) enough to require less of their attention, and then to focus on the postponed elements that they also wanted. That way, they felt they could minimize the competition between elements, yet give each their best energies. Of the forty participants in the study, only eight chose this answer. (That proportion would likely be higher today, as more young women feel both opportunity and pressure to plan, early on, how they will fit career as well as family into their lives). Of the eight cases, half expected to postpone career and establish their families first. Half expected to postpone family: one for career, two for combinations of lifestyle and career, and one to build financial security. At least for this small sample, then, there were a number of different elements women wanted or needed to separate from what they felt to be the huge responsibilities of becoming a wife or mother. As usual, there was tremendous variation in the specific plans they mapped out for themselves, but these women all expected that they would be able to delay at least one major element that they wanted, until they were more free or more ready to pursue it. The key determinant of how Sequencing worked out for them was the combination of luck and control they actually had, to make things happen according to the schedule they wanted. Good Enough to Keep: What made sequencing work well? The range of specific sequences that worked well for the four women in this subgroup is suggested by the broad contrast between Deborahs and Jans experiences. Deborah51 had two children in her twenties, and felt it was a no brainer to put them first. From young adulthood into mid-life, she placed her real careeron hold, and kept her artistic side firmly within the boundaries of a part-time teaching position. At forty-seven, with her youngest child starting college, her day of reckoning arrived: My whole life Ive said, When the kids finishWhen this happens So I knew, time was up! Better put your ass on the

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line! After a shaky start, she gathered her courage and activated a planned ramp-up to the rhythm of serious studio work. Her re-entry culminated in an exhilarating onewoman show. She was back to her art. In contrast, Jan52 threw herself into an ambitious career right out of college. She continued working full time, but shifted her priorities to family-first-career-second when she had a child, at thirty-eight. Her narrative reflects the central reasons that women chose Sequencing, what it risked, and what made it work well: She invested deeply in whatever she did, and wanted to be prepared to give her best attentions to each of her top priorities in turn. She knew she was taking a chance by delaying an element that was very important to her; she was strong-willed in keeping control of her life, as well as lucky that her plans succeeded. From her girlhood in a working-class, Midwestern family, Jan was determined to strive for the good life as she saw it on 1950s television, complete with a comfortable income, a chance to travel the world, and then a family of her own. She poured tremendous energy into securing her lifestyle, and succeeded brilliantly as a financial executive. She also expected to pour tremendous energy into being a good mother. She hadnt thought too much about how? in her twenties, but after marrying and buying a house, the complexity of combining career and parenthood became much more real. She saw that she would have to keep working to provide everything she would want a child to have, but in Jans experience, the ideal mother stayed home: To tell you the truth, I was scared to death! I thought, How am I going to do this? [My mother] stayed home, had dinner cooked did the curtains!. A central pillar of the solution for Jan and her husband was to delay parenthood until they had traveled and done the things we wanted to do, and until, as Jan said, she still had career aspirations, but they werent to the point where thats all I could think about. The risk of this kind of sequencing was that it might be too late for her to bear a child by the time she and her husband were ready. In fact, their gamble proved successful. By their late thirties they had achieved most of their lifestyle goals and were doing well in their careers. Then, although Jans pregnancy was frighteningly difficultshe had to stay in bed the last several monthsshe was fortunate enough to have a healthy baby. Above all, what made this approach work well for Jan, as for the other three women in this sub-group, was that she and her hus27

band had (almost) as much control over their lives, in reality, as they assumed they would have in their dreams. Being prepared and pro-active was central to this sub-groups way of handling trade-offs. Whether it meant lining up child-care well in advance of a babys birth, or taking refresher courses to gear up for career re-entry, these women wanted to manage their sequenced transitions very deliberately. But the control necessary to make sequencing work did not end with the arrival of a child or the start of a postponed careerand it was not all predictable. These women also had to adapt actively, in unexpected ways, after they made their major planned shifts in priorities. One artist53, who delayed childbearing until we could afford to have help found she needed to reinvent her painting style to fit the choppy tempo of life as a mother. She went from a big-brush, conceptual approach (which required long, unbroken periods of work time) to a lush concentration on detail, because you can be interrupted in the middle of a leaf! And that surprised me. My whole pace changed [to] really enjoying the process of painting. A social services director54 who cut back to a part-time, private therapy practice when she had her son, discovered after three years that he needed her less at home, and she needed the camaraderie of working in an office. She happily increased her post-motherhood work load when she was invited to help start a new program at her old agency. For Jan, it took a few years to realize that she needed to make her life easier, not just by relaxing her career ambitions, but by moving from her nail-biting job to a calmer spot within the corporation. Eleven years into parenthood, her description of how she structured her life shows in more detail how she had adjusted to make it work. Showing a Sequencers deep commitment to chosen elements, Jan and her husband maximized their time with their son, delegating only sparingly. They re-centered their leisure time around him, and Jan actively welcomed her child into her own work world. For them, (as for successful Prioritizers) such two for one efforts were satisfying, unexpectedly enjoyable ways to reduce the competition between parenting and leisure or work: [There are] JOYS of being a working mother! I don't overshadow him, because I have a lot of other things to take up my time. And it helps to build the relationship, because he has his world, I have mine, and we interact. We'll talk about what's going on at school. He often asks me about what I did at the office. Or if I traveled, "Was there anything in particular that I enjoyed doing? I take a lot of pictures for him, because he likes to see [where Ive been]. 28

We make a special effort to spend a lot of time together. We try to eat together every day. And Im not one for baby-sitters unless its necessary. I feel if Im working all day, hes at school all day, we need to spend time together. We have a housekeeper whos there when he gets home from schoolbut other than that, like weekends, if we go to the movies, its always got to be a movie that the three of us can go to. We travel--hes with us. He's the only kid I know who, at the age of four, had a frequent flyer card! (laughs) Jan fully anticipated a time when her active involvement in motherhood would taper off, and she would take on new challenges. She was already doing a little groundwork for her next chapter: Once Terry is in, probably, his second year of high school, I would love to go back to school. I'm really into nutrition, and foods, and the body. I think, in my second life, I probably want to be in some form of health profession. But for Jan at age 48, the balance of trade-offs in life was where she wanted it to be: There's not a lot that I would want to do, or change at this point. It's almost likeI'm in a holding pattern! (laughs) I'm big on setting priorities. And right now, my priority is raising a physically and mentally healthy individual. My mother did it for me. My father did it. What I've done is try to reach a happy medium. Not stepping out of the professional world, but maintaining a balance, as best I can, to give him the support that he needs, and to also do what keeps ME balanced and focused. There was more to come in the progression of commitments Jan imagined for her life, but having worked so hard to craft a balance that suited her, she wanted to stick with it for a while. This wish to maintain well-fitting holding patterns was echoed by participants using all three strategiesand it is a fundamentally important contradiction to corporate norms that say only employees who show unremitting drive for the top should be considered high-potential55. Finally, Jans statement reflects a satisfaction that all four women in this sub-group shared. They discovered that their lives were not only changed and more complicated, but also wonderfully enriched as they moved forward in their sequences. Successfully Changed: Why and how did women change their Sequencing strategies? There are only two participants in this sub-group, but their experiences fit well with a basic pattern one might predict. Each had planned to sequence family and then work, wanting to dedicate considerable time to her children. But the journeys they had imagined for themselves did not play out as expected. Each changed her strategy though not her high expectations of herselfin response to sudden events outside her control. Essentially, these women cut their anticipated sequencing short, added elements they had hoped to postpone, and delegated more than they had wanted. Rather

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than being as prepared as they had hoped to be, they had to act precipitously, and they spent years scrambling to deal with overloads that caught them off-guard. At the same time, the elements they added led to significant achievements for these particular women. In the short term, they got by because of their own strength, because of family members support, and because of the flexible work arrangements possible in their work worlds ( a family business for Tracy, nursing for Colleen). They each regained their footing over the long term, as their children matured and as they developed a sense of mastery in their hastily re-started careers. Tracy56 married at twenty-three and contentedly settled into nesting. She described her early thirties as idyllic. She had three small children, an active role in her community, a rewarding part time joband the explicit expectation that she would resume her career as a journalist when the kids are grown. Then her husbands business failed, and her planned sequence capsized. The ensuing crisis catalyzed a revolution in Tracys life. She was forty-seven when I interviewed her, and just coming into her own at the helm of her family business. But a brief quote here shows the immediate disruption and chaos she experienced at thirty-three, when she suddenly had to pile breadwinning work on top of her responsibilities at home: We had no money. I really had to work. I didn't WANT to, because [my youngest was still an] infant. My mother would take care of the baby, or I had a woman that would take care of her. My idyllic life-style left. All of a sudden, I was into all the issues that working women have to deal with. And commuting. Driving all over the place with the kids. It was hard! And then I had to come home, and I didnt have any household help, because we couldnt afford it. The house was a wreck! I was just tired. As it was for Tracy, Colleens57 break in sequencing constituted a major turning point in her life. She had dreamed of having a large family and then working part time as a nurse when her children were older. A true sequencer, she started taking courses one at a time so she could begin to prepare for nursing, yet concentrate her energies on the children while they were little. During her third pregnancy, Colleen faced the reality that she had married an alcoholic whose drinking was escalating fast. She suddenly saw herself becoming her mother, trapped, with eight kids and a drunk for a husband! She decided that she must stop childbearing and step up her education, so she could get the hell out of this joint! As she plunged into nursing training, Colleen suddenly found, like Tracy, that she bare-

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ly had time to sleep. She described herself, back then, as trying to keep it all together with a minimal amount of guilt. I wanted to be a good mother, and the good homekeeper, and a good student, and a good nurseI wanted to be the good everything! I was in tough shape. She got through the next several years partly by driving herself like a crazy lady, and partly by working the evening shifts and flexible hours available for nurses. Once started on her revised path, Colleen kept at it even when her original reason subsided: her husband saw what was at stake, and sobered up. Gradually, he became a genuine partner in the work of caring for home and family (making their lives better on many dimensions), and she rose to an executive position at a major care facility. Colleens decision to throw out her planned sequence, grueling as it was for a time, ended up becoming significantly rewarding for her family as a whole. Problematic: Caused Regrets: When did Sequencing cost too much? The two stories in this category highlight, again, the factors essential to making sequencing work: control and luck. In the first case, Tania58 lost her bet that she could have a second child even if she waited until her career was well secured. She found she had less control over her own fertility than she had expected. And her disappointment was greater since, in hindsight, she felt that her career would have been just fine anyway. When her interviewer talked with her about her family planning decisions. she said: In retrospect...I would have had my children younger. But I was so afraid I was going to lose time on my career track. Youre not supposed to blame yourself, but you say, you really should have done that before. ... I think it wouldnt have made a bit of difference in my career. Although she did not dwell on her loss, the depth of Tanias wish to have had more children is attested to by the two miscarriages she suffered, and by the rueful decision she and her husband made when she was in her early forties, that it had become too late to attempt in vitro fertilization: It got to the point where that was kind of borderline, soyou say, HeyNot to be, not to be. I look back and I think, maybe [if I had] started a little younger and just had my children and moved on The second story in this sub-group underscores the lack of easy, clear-cut solutions to the problem of managing trade-offs. It is not obvious that either children or career should come first in the schedule, for women who want both. For Tania, career preempted children, and her consciously-planned sequence did not work out. In

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Yvonnes59 case, children and financial needs pre-empted careernot permanently, but for long enough to leave painful scars. Yvonne described a series of unexpected events that, again and again, disrupted her efforts to plan the sequence she wanted. Fertility was once more the primary element that escaped control, but money, a husbands work, and elder care also entered the picture. When she became pregnant in her senior year of college, Yvonne and her thenboyfriend decided to marry and start their family earlier than she had expected: I loved him. I was pregnant.It just felt like the right thing to do! Yvonne then planned to postpone work until her baby was older. But the next year her husbands employer suddenly closed up and left town. Bills had to be paid, and she went back to work with a three-month-oldmuch earlier than I had wanted to. The position she hastily found met her familys financial crisis and fit her constraints as a mother, but pulled her off the professional track for which she had tailored her education. By her mid-thirties, Yvonnes husband was thriving in his work, but his success put him on the road eighty percent of the time. She was raising two children virtually alone. Unlike Colleen and Tracy, above, Yvonne did not shift from Sequencing to an Add and Delegate approachperhaps because she saw no leeway to do so. She felt her parental responsibilities required her to put career aspirations on the back burner, and temporize with a manageable job. It was a deliberate yet frustrating sequencing choice for her: I went to a very prestigious college, and my friends were pursuing their careers. They were moving on, and I was home with these children. I had babies! And I felt like I needed to focus on that. I was a lot of steps behind my peers. Cause they were attorneys, by then, [or] finishing med. school, and I was still struggling. So that was a period, for me, of some turmoil. Perhaps the most difficult blow came at the close of the year Yvonnes father died. She took time completely off work to put his affairs in order, and when she tried to sequence back into employment, the responses she got were humiliating for her: I had never, ever had to look for a job, before! Every job I ever applied for [in the past], the interviews were easy! But people would look at your resume,Why is there a gap in your employment? What happened? My father passed away. I took some time off to get his affairs in order. Well, maybe that wasnt good enough? Who knows what an interviewer is thinking? But it was VERY, very devastating for me to go on interview after interviewand I wouldnt get anything!

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After eighteen months at a job she took in desperation and hated, Yvonne was rescued. The talent she had lavished on volunteering while her children were growing up earned her an enthusiastic invitation out of the blue, to head up the agency where she had contributed. The job was perfect for her, and she excelled at it. At the time I interviewed Yvonne she was 46 years old, her children were launched and she was exuberant to have finally made it to the second chapter she had postponed for so long. She even felt some advantage over classmates who had put off family and sped ahead of her, as she now watched them scramble to balance work and parenthood. Nevertheless, the struggle of her early adulthood was still vivid: I feel more on par with [my classmates] now than I did in my twenties and thirties. But it took until this point, because of the choices that I made at that time. Answer Three, Yes... Strategy: Add and Delegate Yes, I can have it all, by delegating some responsibilities to others. Beneath the important differences between Prioritizing and Sequencing, there are a few critical similarities. Both approaches imply strong and specific vocational, family, and /or lifestyle priorities. Both imply a conviction that the major elements in a womans life will compete with each other; one must choose some and deny others, either permanently (Prioritizers) or temporarily (Sequencers). And although they differed in their tactics, the women who took these two approaches shared a common, underlying solution: commit to your choices and minimize the competition. They traded-off the promise of investing deeply in the elements they wanted, against the risk of ending up with too little. The nine participants who chose to Add and Delegate tried a fundamentally different solution, with the opposite risk. The force behind their strategy was a determination not to let any one element prevent them from experiencing the full-spectrum life that they wanted (or thought they should be able) to have. They traded-off the hope of having it all with the risk was that they would end up having too much, and becoming overwhelmed. All nine Delegators are business women: six financial services executives and three family business owners. They cared a great deal about being free to pursue interesting, challenging work, but they were not committed to a particular vocational identity (like 33

the artists) or mission (like the social service agency executives) for which they were prepared to sacrifice other elements. All said that, as teenagers, they had assumed they would probably marry. But their early feelings about family had mostly ranged from neutrality to wariness of becoming tied down. The seven who were married at the time of their interviews had chosen husbands who were, at minimum, respectful of a wifes right to her own career, and at most, active partners in making a home and family. The two women who were divorced emphasized that they would rather stay single than remarry, if a husband would burden their brimming lives with more demands. These participants were fully aware of the competition among the elements of a womans life; their hope was to defy it. Like everyone, they used a combination of approaches, but they spoke less than the others about what limits they had set or how they had scheduled the pieces to fit around each other. At least starting out, they added every element they wanted, initiating each addition when it felt right on its own clock biological, career, or otherwise. They allowed commitments in different arenas of their lives to overlap, and delegated the overflow. The first key to how well this answer worked for them was the match between the demands a woman took on and her resources for meeting them. This match was partly determined by the combination of energy, wealth, and help from others that each woman had to draw on. However, those were not the only factors. The control she had over how she deployed her time, the locations of home, work, childcare, schoolsand the daily logistics of getting themselves and everyone else where they needed to be, when they needed to be therewere also central to this equation. The final key was each womans ability to draw boundaries: to both delegate enough and to keep enough of the elements she wanted in her life. Good Enough to Keep: What made Add and Delegate work well? It is perhaps no surprise that this approach was the hardest to achieve, at least as a starting strategy. (Several women successfully shifted into Add and Delegate later in life, after discovering they wanted more than they had first Prioritized or after having to add elements they had planned to Sequence. Those women already had a head start with either family or career, and even for them, adding took lots of hard work.)

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Only two of the nine participants who started with Add and Delegate found that it served them well, unmodified, up to the time of her interviews. Their stories demonstrate that this strategy can work, but raise serious questions about whether a young woman can successfully Add and Delegate within a traditional marriage or a traditionally male workplace. Both these participants husbands were active partners, not just helpers, in parenting and homemaking. Both participants were making high incomes. Finally, flexibility and control at work made a great difference to them both, positively for one, negatively for the other. Rachels60 story shows a woman with tremendous resources at her command: business ownership and wealth, confidence and initiative. Her ability to shape her life, her skill at delegating, and her good fortune all contribute to the work and home environments that make her life sail. Her resolve to have it all is clear in her descriptions of her work, of her family, and of how she put the pieces together. As a young woman, Rachel wanted challenging work and she wanted to make a positive difference in the world, but she was not focused on a specific vehicle for doing so. She also knew that she wanted a lot more than career in her life. She thought long and hard before deciding to join her familys businesson her own terms: [In my twenties,] people said, What do you want to do in business school? and I would say, Get out of the [family] business. Doing inventories on New Years Eve was not my idea of a good time!* So I was already into life balance issues. [Then my father] started recruiting me to come work here. He would say things like, Describe to me your perfect job. And I would say I didnt want to be in this 24/7 situation, I wanted to have more free time, and I liked variety. So he ended up crafting a job for me. I started setting my sights on becoming president. I figured, Im ambitious, so I might as well go for the top. Every time I felt Id mastered what I was doing, Id come to my father, and say Now Id like to take this on. And he was very good about that. Once on her career path, Rachel climbed the ladder enthusiastically. She paced herself mainly by the speed of her own learning, withour detouring around other commitments. At age 31, Rachel became vice president of marketing in her familys multinational company; eleven years later, she took over as president. Rachel shaped her marriage as proactively as she shaped her career. She knew what kind of partner she needed and held out for nothing less, choosing a man who was
*

Her familys business is part of an industry that runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

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secure enough to cheer her on, not restrict her ambition. She had described her decisions to end previous relationshipsone man was overpowering, one was too clingingso I asked her what it was about her husband that clicked. She said, He was very independent...a person in his own right. He wasnt threatened by me and my career. She married Pete at age 32, soon after her first major promotion. With children as with career, Rachel moved when she felt the time was right, based on purely personal considerations. Two years into their marriage, Pete said he wanted to start a family, and Rachel quickly agreed: If were going to do this, we might as well DO it. She did not schedule motherhood around career. Eight weeks after her first baby was born, Rachel went back to work full time, and she had her second child less than two years later. I asked her, What was your picture of career plus kids? That I was going to do it all! And wed bought a house that had [space] for live-in help61. That was the way that I was going to set it up! [As vice president, I hired additional] people underneath me, so that helped. And while I was, even, on maternity leave, Id be on the phone a few hours, staying connected to work. I had good people, and they rose to the occasion. I just did it! If the kids had a doctors appointment, Id just take off I go to every sporting event [Pete and I] both do! ... I never was accountable to anyone for my time. Rachels answer embodies the Add and Delegate strategy, and suggests the resources and advance groundworkhiring and training helpers, creating infrastructurethat make delegating easier when it is required. Rachels careful planning continued as her children got older and their needs changed. She set up their activities so that everythingdance classes, piano lessonswas close to home and easy for her kids and nannies to manage. (The grand scale of Rachels story should not distract from its relevance. The preparation needed for good delegation is important for anyone, even in matters as small as finding a trusted baby-sitter for a night out.) At the close of our interviews, Rachel summarized her full life as Great! I have a wonderful family, two great kidsvery supportive husband and a really dynamic and interesting career! Like Rachel, Miranda62 relished all the elements of a many-faceted life. Like Rachel, she spoke lovingly and appreciatively of her husband as a close partner in raising their family. Initially unsure she wanted to be a mother, she enjoyed their first child so much that she had two more. A few sentences suggest how affectionately and well she had protected her time with them: Your relationship with your kids...changes as they age. In a very nice way. Ive got a range, from the twenty-two year old whos graduating from college, whos a real friend-- He called this 36

morning and said, I want your advice on something. With the thirteen-year-old, Im still in love with the kid! We can have some giddy, laughing times together, and just fun. Even just the other daywe laughed so hard! In her work, Miranda said, she had found something I really, really like, and that, according to my boss, I do very well. She was also thrilled about her recent training as a small-craft airplane pilother way to facilitate family trips to the ski slopes. When her children were little, she said that an excellent nanny made working and being a mother ...a piece of cake, really. The family later moved to the university town where her husband taught, and Miranda attributed her ability to have her full life to his flexiblility as an academic as well as his facility with homemaking and parenting. Her comfort and confidence with delegation made it easy for her to combine work and motherhood. But the logistics of Mirandas life were very different than Rachels. She had no slack. Miranda described her corporate workplace as an internal environment so competitive [its like] a boiling pot. Her working hours and location there were unbending. And in contrast with the convenient geography of Rachels life, Mirandas home, work, and childrens activities had flown apart when the family moved from city to suburb. She had accepted the distances as the price of having a high-powered, big-city job and a comfortable family home, and the finest opportunities for her children. But the sheer burden of commuting stretched her days taut. During the course of Mirandas interviews, her father had a heart attack; he would need more attention, going forward. This sobering encounter with frailty, along with the extra time and worry of taking care of him, pushed hard on her limits. The extraordinary stress of that moment in her life may have been temporary, but it is instructive to see the alternatives she considered as she struggled to re-evaluate her trade-off options: Almost losing him on that Tuesday-- You just realize how fragile this thread is that were all on. Were not guaranteed tomorrow. And that's driven home that this is not a really fun way to live. Do I want to spend four hours [every day] of my life commuting? Its not going to get easier as I get older. Running up and down stairs in Metro Station, running for trains. My husband is concerned about this. He said We should find something closer to home. Are there banks near here? Yeah, but Global spoils you. Its big, its exciting, its diverse, its into everything. And then to go to something that just takes deposits and makes loans-- Boring with a capital B. If, financially, it wasnt an issue, could I stay home? I cant see myself playing golf all day. . I could either stay with my dad [in the City] one night a week or I could work from home. I could start working less hard. But thats not like me. I guess I was raised with, Do it right or not it all. 37

When asked whether she could arrange to work part time at the bank, Miranda said that would be a first for anyone above the lowest temp worker; there were no parttime officers. She speculated wistfully about the idea that Global might change: Wouldnt that be lovely? It would make a world of difference for most women... But she came resolutely back to three options: to stay in the City a few nights a week, to stay home, or to change jobs, and thats probably right now the leading candidate. Miranda is a true Add and Delegate case. She rejected the idea of dropping any major element of her life. She knew she didnt want to stop working, although she considered it; she did not even consider reducing her time with her family. Her comments suggest that she could handle all the pieces she wanted, if only she could close the space between them. Her search for solutions focused on two leverage points. First, she looked at logisticsdifferent ways to deploy her time, different locales for working, different ways to cut her commute. Secondly, she looked at her job. Much as she loved the pressure, the magnitude and impact of her work at Global, she felt she needed an exciting job, not her specific job. Mirandas story, like Rachels, indicates the wonderful rewards a woman can have when she is able to fill her glass to the top, as well as how easily one more thing can cause a spill. It also shows the high costs organizations extract from people by requir-

ing long, rigid hours spent in central locations, especially in cities where housing is exorbitant and employees commute. At the close of Mirandas interviews for this study, it was not yet clear whether those costs would be paid out of her personal life and health, or paid by her organization, in losing her. Successfully Changed: Why and how did women change the Add and Delegate strategy? Of the nine who started with Add and Delegate, over halffive women eventually chose to Prioritize and cut back. Even so, these women still kept more in their lives than the one or two exclusive commitments that mark those who had chosen the Prioritize and Limit strategy from the start. For these five, the changes were moves from way too much to a lot. They reduced their loads in a variety of ways: by moving to a job closer to home, by shifting to more manageable work or to work that afforded them more control over their time, by shedding commitments they had made on top of family, work, and avocational activities that were central to their identity.

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Despite considerable variation in the details, the immediate catalysts for the changes these particular women made were remarkably similar: they were all about mothering. Each described a moment that galvanized her to wrest more time to be with her child from some other part of her life. I picture this moment almost as a shove on the chesta whump that knocked a woman to the ground, interrupting her scramble to fulfill all the demands streaming at her. In most cases, the whump came not as part of an adjustment to a new baby, but some years into motherhood. Sometimes it came from a husband, sometimes directly from the child: When she was about five, my daughter told me she would NEVER be a lawyer, Herminia63 reported, because lawyers did not have time to spend with their little girls! ... It was awful! Epiphanies with their children shocked these women into action, but in each case, context and history provide a truer picture of what happened in their lives. In contrast to the vigilant delegating and limit-setting epitomized by Rachel, these five women had taken on more and more. It was hard for them to say no to any claim, whether from work, from family, from volunteer commitments, from their social livesuntil they were staggering under the weight of all they were carrying. They echoed Herminia, quoted above, who said she felt like I had to be Superwoman in everything I did. This comment, consistent with Anne-Marie Slaughters 2012 essay, evidences the destructive myth that a well-organized, confident woman can have it all and do it all superbly. There is a also a second theme in participants stories, one that reflects extensive research on gender role prescriptions. Women are expected to be nurturing, giving, and communal. Saying no to anyone risks harsh sanctions64, from others and from oneself. But these women gave their children the power to break the spell of meeting every demand.65 An excerpt from Maureen66 illustrates the pattern: I took on that job, and I immediately got involved. I was on the road two or three hours a day, besides working at night, on week-ends, all of that. Towards the end of my first year there, my daughter came to me one morning, and said, "Mommy, I don't see you any more! I really miss you!" I realized I was compromising too much with her. OK, now what do I do?...Maybe I need something where I can be more available to her. A few months and some important changes later, Maureen found herself partnering with her brother to run their family business. Her work day condensed to eight hours,

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spent close to home and close to her daughters everyday life. As it turned out, Maureen had finally found work that satisfied her wish for challenge and contribution. A third story spotlights the resourceful adaptiveness shown by women who successfully modified their Add and Delegate strategy. Irene67, a financial services executive, began implementing this demanding strategy as a single mother, and made it work for several years. She was skilled at finding the support structures she needed, whether in hiring help or maintaining informal networks. She explained her ability to handle so many elements as a combination of several factors: her drive to have a child something I wanted so much, I didnt even question itplus an actively supportive environment at work, plus a caring home community, plus enough income, plus a relentless problem-solving attitude. When something went wrongas when a nanny suddenly quitshe said: You just gotta fix it! Shall I wallow in it, or make four calls? Its like constant resourcefulness. You ride the train in the morningthe women always sit together, which is kind of funny and fineand theyre all working mothers. Its like, Who do you know? and Give me the name,and, Heres what to do You take action. For Irene, Add and Delegate tipped into overload when she moved out of the City. At the time of her interviews, she had been living in a rather distant suburb for almost a year. She had relocated for the excellent schools and the warm community life, which her son loved. But the resulting commute of four hours a day was way too much, throwing her little family into a crisis. The whump, for her, came when her son let her know he needed to see more of her: A kid who was never in my bed before at 5:00 in the morning, would set the alarm to come into my bed. If I dont see you now, Mommy, Ill never see you! I said, Oop, this is a signal! Thank goodness its loud enough Im not going to miss it.... In contrast with Jan, the Sequencer above who postponed motherhood until she felt her career had progressed enough for a time, Irene wanted to Add and Delegate: she was younger than Jan when she had her child, and she had career ambitions yet to fulfill. Her challenge was to relinquish enough at work to gain more time for her son, but keep enough to preserve her career. Irene could hardly believe her luck when her unit was incorporated into a division headquartered near her town. Her boss and mentor, Mike, helped her transfer to a job where she could work locally several days a weeka change that greatly stabilized her

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life. Her son, happy and relieved, told Mike that his moms new job was the greatest Christmas present ever! Irene was clearly grateful and thrilled with her newly manageable life, yet her fear of taking a detour from the career ladder comes through in her story, as does her sense of dependency on a mentor to protect her. Her comments illuminate a little of the career risk she took to be with her son, and provide another reminder that these trade-offs were neither clear-cut nor easy: Im kind of layered now, with somebody in between me and Mike. It is fine, and it isnt fine. When I had this discussion with Mike, he said What are you worried about? I said You getting hit by a truck. He told me fifteen times how many senior managers have taken a quote, step backwards to manage a smaller business...like Im doing, [to get] that experience so they can go on. So he sees it as strategically part of the career path But Im less visible right now. I probably feel a little vulnerable that Im not in the home office. But the trade-off is completely worth it. My kids a nice, happy little fun-loving fellow, and I feel that I am making a contribution to the business and doing what I need to do. I like the juggling actkeeping all the balls in the air, but theyre quality balls. I wouldnt want to throw the balance off, so I see the next eight years being variations on a theme until my son goes off to college. I have enough responsibility and enough freedom and enough opportunity to grow. Maybe [later, Ill try] a different sort of career opportunity...but for right now, what I look for is balance. Irenes explanation of her own strategic choices highlights the difference between the women who adjusted Add and Delegate and the Sequencerswho postponed major elements as a way to protect themselves from what they would have experienced as intolerable overload. Apart from her concerns about her companys assessment of her, Irene was proud of her ability to keep all the balls in the air, and pleased with the changes she had made in her Add and delegate strategy. She had worked hard to

realign her resources and responsibilities into a life-structure that worked well, and she wanted to maintain it for a while. Like many others in this study, she wanted to keep learning and growing, but to hold her chosen level of demand (whatever that might be) relatively steady for a time, in the midst of a career that was important to her. Again, corporations who want to keep employees like Irene need to appreciate how this contradicts the assumption that an employees commitment is immediately measurable by her drive for constant advancement.68 Problematic, Caused Regrets: When was Add and Delegate too costly? Of the nine women who initially chose to Add and Delegate, seven reached a point when they felt their strategy was not working. Five of them made important changes (as illustrated

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above), reducing their overloaded lives by Prioritizing and setting Limits. The remaining two women expressed serious regrets about the trade-offs they had made with the Add and Delegate strategy. Each described being torn between wanting to be a good mother and wanting the exciting career that kept her working long hours. Both had made some attempt to alter the mix, and both felt dissatisfied with the results, though for different reasons. Jean69 essentially held fast to her career and felt she had changed too little, too late for her relationship with her children. Quotations from her story illustrate the fundamental risk of Add and Delegate: having too much, and getting stretched too thin to enjoy it or to feel one has managed it well. I didnt have a lot of energy at night for the kids. And I sometimes think theres a lot of guilt for that now. I mean, I was there, but was I really there? When you get up every day at five-thirty and you beat your brains out in [a frantic business environment].... Theyre great kids, but.... Maggies not very close to me. Did I cause this by being, sometimes, very stressed? ... Shortly before her interviews, Jean had taken a small step away from her old, neurotic days, when she felt heavy pressure to prove herself at work. She used to leave for the office before her children woke up in the morning and return hours after they were back from school. When the family doctor told Jean her son was too thin, it pulled her up short. She decided to fix her teenagers breakfast herself, even if it meant coming to work a little later. To her surprise, no one at the bank minded. She felt her kids appreciated the change, but her sense of unease remained: I sometimes sit and think, well things are pretty GOODwhats wrong? Pretty nice apartment, and weve got nice kids. I have a husband I love being with. So what am I missing? ... Its always rush, rush, rush. [At night,] I walk in the door at 7:00, and Whats for dinner? Five minutes, they eat, and back in their rooms. I clean up the kitchen. I sit down and read a book, and then its time for bed! ...Maybe what Im missing is a sense that I have time to enjoy ANY of it. Jean was convinced that any time away from her career would have scuttled it, and she knew she would be unhappy without such stimulating work. Yet, because she was not home on those vanished afternoons when her children were little and bursting in the door ready to talk, she feared she had irrevocably lost her chance to be close to them. For her, Add and Delegate resulted in an overload that diminished all. The cause of Roses70 disappointment was the reverse of Jeans. She downshifted her career when she thought it was taking too much time away from her child, but then

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felt she had become trapped in a professional backwater. Her story spans the whole dilemma of trade-offs: she framed her situation almost as a forced choice between too much and not enough. Her initial experience of Having it All indicates the struggle: I thought I could do it all. I thought I could have a child, do all these things. ... Actually, my timing was kind of poor. [My son] was born at the moment of my peak productivity and earning feast, so he sort of took away from that. When he was very young, I was very conflicted because I was putting in these incredible hours [at work] and really enjoying it, and yet he was a baby, and I wanted to be at home with him. Those were very rough years, but they werent rough on my self-esteem. They were great years in terms of that. My job was consuming me. It was so exciting. [But] I felt this pain that I wasnt with him. Now, Im around more [and] we communicate easily[but] its the years before that I worry about I wasnt around him enough to really ever deal with problems. When Roses child was about four years old, she decided to ratchet down from her Add and Delegate approach. But unlike the women who modified this strategy successfully, she was was not able to respond well when she found that she had overshot the mark and given up too much in her career. Wooed for a new, less challenging job, she took it, thinking it would give her more time at home. The job was far less exciting than she liked, but she expected it would gradually improve. Then the people who had recruited her were fired. Her status plummeted, but she did nothing about it. Meanwhile, she continued to worry about having damaged her child. At the time, she told herself that her son needed her, the politics would eventually change, and she would be fine. Unfortunately, she became demoralized instead: It didnt work out that way. Ive already decided to retire as soon as I can. Im not proud of what I do. Despite their differences, Jean and Rose shared three telling difficulties that hampered their ability to create more satisfying solutions, once they found themselves overloaded. Their problems differentiate regret from the successful strategic changes described above. Each problem is an interaction between obstacles in the external environment and obstacles in the womans ability to negotiate what she needed from it. First, Jean and Rose both felt vulnerable at work71. Each expressed a sense that she had an all-or-nothing choice to make in an unforgiving corporate environment: either meet all the demands of a high-powered job, or reconcile yourself to the mommy-track. Neither had the kind of mentor that Irene (above) depended on to protect her career when she downshifted72; neither had the level of power that enabled Rachel, the family business

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owner, to design her own perfect job. Each one also felt that perhaps she could have demanded more from her organization, and was disappointed in herself for not doing so. Second, Jean and Rose both described getting less than optimal assistance at home. Their husbands, who worked as long or longer hours than they did, seemed to be helpers but not partners in domestic life such as Rachel and Miranda had. And neither Jean nor Rose portrayed their hired child-caregivers as anything like the trusted stalwarts described by other Delegators like Miranda. Finally, Jean and Rose both expressed a strong and pervasive sense of guilta feeling that may have made it harder for them to delegate confidently what they did not want to do, and that almost certainly made it harder for them to enjoy what they kept. Discussion It has been over forty years since the participants in this study assailed the gender restrictions of their girlhood, yet conflict between work and personal life remains a wrenching problem for many women and increasing numbers of men. Despite vast changes in the shape of American families and institutions, fundamental gender restrictions persist: Organizations top echelons are still overwhelmingly male, and mostly reserved for those willing and able to devote themselves unreservedly to work. And though men participate more at home, women are still widely expected to be the primary nurturers. As a result, women today still confront hard questions about whetheror howa woman can have it all. Can they become superwomen with stellar careers and happy families, or will the combination of soaring expectations and traditional demands leave them exhausted, relieved to drop off the ladder? When the participants in this study embarked on adulthood, they were challenged to defy traditional roles: to learn what they really wanted in their work and private lives, and go get it. With few role models to follow, and facing an ethic that it was their personal responsibility to figure it out, women made up their own solutions as they went along. The pathways they created have been complex, idiosyncratic, dynamic, and so richly diverse that they have been hard to discern. This exploratory study did find patterns in womens explicit responses to the question, Can I have it all? Three distinct answers emerged, each with an accompanying strategy for making it work. The first two answers, No, but I can have what is most

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important, and Yes, but not all at once, implied strategies labeled here as Prioritize and Limit, and Sequencing. Though they follow different trajectories, both of these strategies are based on a womans expectation that the major elements she wants in her life will demand high commitments of time and energytoo much to allow her to do justice to more than one or a very few at a time. These two strategies reduce conflict between elements by setting careful limits on how much a woman takes on, either in total (Prioritize and Limit) or during any one chapter in a multi-chaptered life (Sequencing). The first strategy relies particularly on a womans having very clear, steeply differentiated priorities, and the self-discipline to let go of non-essential desires. The second demands control over the scheduling of commitments in her life, and the ability to prepare well for the transitions in her planned sequence, when she shifts focus from one major element to another. These two strategies aim to minimize competition between commitments. They offer the promise of full-tilt engagement with ones highest priorities, and share risk of giving up or postponing too much, and ending up with too little. The third answer, Yes, I can have it all expresses a determination not to end up with too little: to have all the elements one wants, without major concessions, whatever it takes. The strategy of Add and Delegate involves pursuing desired goals on their own timetables, putting forth whatever effort is required and and delegating responsibility for the overflow. I use the term delegate broadly, to indicate that most of these woman could not personally perform all the maintenance tasks that kept work, relationship, and lifestyle responsibilities going. They hired paid help at work or home, got assistance and resources from family or friends, or partnered with a spouse who played a range of roles from co-equal to primary caretaker in the home. They sacrificed, strategized, and organized, but they resisted compromising. The experience of participants in this study suggest that this third answer, while certainly possible and potentially rewarding, may be the most difficult to execute. (Importantly, this strategy and its risks have garnered much of the journalistic spotlight, affording much less attention to womens other strategies or to their abilities to change strategies over time.) Apart from the obvious need for abundant resources, it calls for constant effort and great skill in making the best use of time, in personally enacting the

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high priority activities and in delegating (rather than abandoning, postponing, or holding onto) the secondary activities. The clear risk of this strategy is of having too much, and becoming overwhelmed. The pathways that worked best for the women across all three strategies were neither as obvious, nor as serene, nor as symmetrical as the popular phrase work-life balance suggests. There was no one best compromise, and every woman had to make trade-offs of some kind. Fortunately, even though no perfect answers emerged, there was room to correct the imperfect ones. A woman did not have to pick one correct solution on the first try, or else face a lifetime of regrets. Over half of the thirty women who were satisfied with their trade-off strategies at midlife had made one or two major revisions at some point in the past, as their needs, wishes or situations changed. Overall, the key to satisfaction was not any specific configuration of choices. Satisfaction came from a womans ability to craft a good match between her particular answer to Can I have it all?, and her particular values, circumstances and resources. Implications for individuals. The realities that each woman must put together her own unique set of commitments in life, and that ones right answer may change, mean there are no off-the-shelf recipies for success. But that is not to say there are no lessons to learn from the participants here. To the contrary, the women in this sample shared a small and orderly array of basic alternatives described above, and their stories provide the personal details needed to make role models accessible. The Overview of Three Answers and Strategies recaps the character, advantages and risks of each approach. It offers a structure to help people think systematically about their preferences and resources, and evaluate how each of the three basic strategies might work for them. Implications for Institutions. In keeping with this studys focus on adult development, the personal experience of making trade-offs holds center stage here. However, the larger environment of choiceparticularly the institutions of work and family life strongly influence the options available for people to consider. Study participants talked quite a bit about challenging the traditional division of labor in their family lives. The changes they made on the home front, and the agreements they worked out with their spouses and other family members, were framed largely as relationship issues: dilem-

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mas of womens responsibility to themselves versus their responsibility to others (I explore those issues in another segment of the larger study). In contrast, and with very few exceptions, these women did not contest their employers requirements for doing a job or succeeding in a career. Their response to conflicts between work demands and private needs was not to agitate for general change, but to move themselvesto a different job, to a geographically different home or work location, or to a different employer where the new situation would be easier for them. They seem mostly to have assumed that the requirements of their jobs were simply there, to be accommodated, worked around, or possibly tweaked in small ways. This could have been, in part, a function of their cohort and history. The forty partipants in this study were among the first women to break into traditionally male careers in significant numbers. It is not surprising that they were more concerned with proving they could play the game than with challenging the rules73. But any effort to make it easier for women and men to have full lives, both inside and outside the workplace, will require considerable changes in the rules of the game. These stories are consistent with central axioms of organizational behavior scholarship: that the ways we do our work on a daily basis and the ways we structure our careers over time are social constructions. They were invented, and they can be changed. Organizations who fail to adapt to a changing workforce will lose talent. In the past ten or fifteen years, research has begun to clarify and elaborate these points, with specific attention to work-personal conflict. Scholars have examined the costs to businesses of losing or under-using talented people who do not want to sacrifice their personal lives for conventional careers, as well as the benefits of FFWP: family friendly work practices.74 They have pointed out the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of operating as if employees have unlimited time to squanderfor example on unnecessary or poorly planned meetings and assignments, or on trying to work amid constant interruptions in bustling central offices75. They have commented on the benefits of reevaluating the rigid model of career as an uninterrupted climb76. And they have provided concrete examples of how traditional practices can be restructured, to the considerable benefit of women, men, families and organizational productivity. 77

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This study was not designed to evaluate corporate practices, but it does provide a vivid portrayal of the human costs of work-personal conflicts for women. More specifically, the findings highlight a few issues that are already prominent in organizational literature. The wide variation in participants strategies for managing trade-offs, even in this small sample, underscores the need for organizations to offer diverse, flexible options to help individuals fit their work and personal lives together.78 Similarly, these findings underscore the danger of pigeonholing employees, prejudging their commitment and thus their chances for promotion, based on family status79: Choices about family and lifestyle that look the same on the outside can carry very different meanings for different people, and employees needs and priorities can change markedly over time. Participants stories also show the importance for women of times when they can maintain holding patternsperiods when they can keep the personal and work arrangements they have put together, that function well for them, without the threat of being discarded unless they keep moving up the ladder. Organizational norms that push for relentless climbing threaten individuals ability to solve work-personal conflicts. Finally, this study provides vivid illustrations of a familiar message: the crucial importance of employees control over logisticswhere and when they carry out their workto their abilities to craft reasonable lives. Implications for research and theory. Much scholarly research has aimed to comprehend the causes and effects of conflict between work and personal life by classifying women according to their observable choices. Work and family are often portrayed as the conflict of interest. The dimension of womens centeredness in work versus family has become a key variable, measured alongside a host of other variables such as marital status, number and age of children, occupation, income, hours worked, and education. Where subjects fit (or how they move) on a work-vs.-family dimension has been used to predict career and personal outcomes, with findings complicated by myriad qualifiers and control factors. A basic finding of this exploratory study is that characterizing women as work-vs. family-centered did not capture their efforts to piece their lives together over the long term. The paths they followed were shaped most powerfully by their strategies for managing trade-offs, not by the specific content of their choices. In addition, other ele-

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ments besides work and children were essential to many womens personal equations (e.g. the pursuit of wealth, avocations, and other lifestyle choices). Consistent with this finding, a few scholars have noted that concrete, observable facts such as number of children or hours worked can have very different meanings for different individuals, and thus are not such reliable measures as they would appear to be80. The insight is crucial, but what should we be measuring instead, to understand how people manage the complex trade-offs of adulthood? This qualitative, exploratory study suggests the value of searching beyond work and family as opposing anchors on a single dimension; its analysis of biographies suggests how deeply patterns can change over time. In short, the study suggests that researchers begin to look directly at peoples long-term answers to the key question Can I have it all? The three answers and strategies examined here offer some concrete research alternatives. They suggest the potential benefit of asking people more open-ended questions, to identify the main commitments in which they invest their time and energy. These will include expected elements such as work, marriage, family, avocation, accumulation of wealth, pursuit of life-style choices and avocational interests. But asking for, rather than pre-specifying the answers, could generate valuable discoveries. People could be asked, further, to what extent they see these elements as competing vs. compatible with each other: are they exclusive or can two or more elements be combined? How clear and confident are people about their priorities? Preferring one or two strong choices over others would have very different consequences than being unsure, or conflicted about many competing priorities. How comfortable or uncomfortable are people with setting boundaries and delegating, both to keep what they want to do for themselves, and to farm out their lower priority activities? Another key set of questions could explore the extent to which peoples resources match their needsand fit the particular strategies they choose. These questions could be asked about subjects use of time, energy, and control over who does what, when and where. It would be critical to cover multiple time-frames with such questions, from daily tasks to long-term issues of fertility and elder-care, geographical moves and career paths.

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Overall, this study points up the need for longitudinal, inductive research on peoples strategies for managing lifes trade-offs. Such research is not likely to overturn existing studies about the interaction between work and family, but it might help to integrate the literature, and provide future findings with a more recognizable human face. Conclusion Years ago it was the dark ages. I never, never, never, NEVER, imagined my life would be where it is now! I never imagined I would have a stable relationship. Never imagined I would have children and be happy. Never imagined I would have the kind of career that I have, which is phenomenal! ... [Being a mother] does come fairly naturally... [but] everything else was an incredible battle! So I feel SO blessed. Every day, its such a joy! Olivia, artist, at 51, (Caucasian) Having grown up in the 1950s, most of the women in this study tried for and got considerably more than the narrow gender roles prescribed for them in girlhood. It wasnt easy for anyone, and a meaningful fraction of participants expressed real regrets over some of the choices they had made. But, at mid-life, 75% of this group had found a life-structure that worked well for them. They have come closer to having it all than either partner, man or woman, in the traditional formula. It may have taken them many years to get it right and it may have been exhausting at times, but with thoughtful choices, hard work and help from others, most of these forty women crafted rich, full lives for themselves. There is a lot we can learn from them.

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Appendix A: A Fuller Description of the Data Analysis

This paper reports on one part of a larger study. Sample selection, data collection and data analysis methods are outlined in the text above. The research was exploratory, designed to develop grounded theory81, not to test existing hypotheses. Analysis was a painstaking, iterative process of combing through qualitative data, condensing and arranging it in data displays to raise the chances of detecting patterns, then checking emergent hypotheses back against the raw data. This appendix describes in more detail the process through which I moved from interview transcripts to a conceptual model. As already noted, the set of three or more interview transcripts for every participant was electronically cut and pasted to preserve the whole text, arranged into a chronological biography in each womans own words. Clips were numbered and formatted so they could be traced back to their place in the original transcripts. Based on the biographies, I constructed one-page time lines for each woman, showing critical or formative life events, identified by year and age, and tagged to locate the information in the transcripts. For example: year age

1992 39 Fire at agency; major challenge (129) Computer training at [top local college]; beginning of my interest in automation (141) Oldest daughter to arts school; vicarious involvement in daughters performing (146) 1994 41 Start, year of marriage counseling (after 6 mo. cut off communication) (94-5) Important outside recognition: won grant for training center at her agency (134) 1997 44 Youngest daughter started college: Chapter ended; Im in 2nd chapter now (143) Part of 2nd chapter: renewing relationship w/ husband; more travel w/ him (159) Some of the women's comments seemed independently important, or did not fit into chronological narratives, so these were also excerpted from the transcripts and grouped by theme, e.g. husband/marriage, trade-offs, mentors/mentees, aspirations, independence, relationship with parents, career orientation, etc. Subsequent analyses were based on the biographies, time lines and themed comments. I referred back to original transcripts to add detail and context, and check whether tentative interpretations held up. When managing trade-offs emerged as one of four key, shared developmental tasks82, I went back through each woman's biography and comments, pulling out every statement related to that developmental task. As a first step toward organizing that data, every excerpt was prefaced with a bold-faced "headline." For example: finds mothering and working easy: resources, support 139 I've raised him myself his whole life. In some ways I think I have one of the easiest lives I know. Other people look at it and they go, 'Oh gosh,

Numbers in parentheses refer to numbered paragraphs in original transcripts. Different typefaces were used to transcribe first, second and third interviews.

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she's done all of this herself!' It never enters my mind that I might be perceived as having it tough, because I have a great support system of friends and family, I've always had full-time help, I've always travelled. trade-off of lifestyle/income vs. family: need enough income before starting family 138 We had always decided we'd have a family when we could afford to have help. And my husbandHe started [inventing special equipment for a lucrative industry] Then he started really making some money. It was likeOK! You can afford a family! I was really waiting for THAT. Taken together, the above steps reduced over 3,500 pages of interview transcripts to 228 pages of headlined excerpts related to the developmental task of managing trade-offs, arranged by individual, grouped by occupation, and traceable to their sources. I then took three steps to distill the data into more tractable displays. First, I went through all the headlines and organized them into a rough outline of topics, refining and adding topics as I went. Given the complexity of the comments, some headlines were listed more than once. Eg: Feelings about trade-offs: You can / cant have it all: [name]: you cant; have to make trade-offs in relationships (14) [name]: not feasible to adopt a child alone: other responsibilities; couldnt drop down to lower-paying, less demanding job (43) [name]: How do I want to make this happen so I can stay a sane person & be good to my kids? I need a good-enuf, well-paid enuf career to work w/out needing 3 jobs & no time for kids (36) [name]: rushed college: feared running out of $: $ safety over fun (6)

Trade-offs, general: Whats traded off? $ vs. vocational goals [Name] slight sold out feeling re choosing nursing vs. feminist, creative choice, but at least Ill be able to earn a living. (26) This data display captured what participants had to say about trade-offs in an economical form, from which I could go back to original transcripts. Alongside this compendium of the groups collective experience, I created a paragraph for each participant, summarizing her management of trade-offs across her life story. Finally, I made a notecard prcis for each woman. The notecards provided the pieces for a moveable data display: Using (well-informed) trial and error, I searched for dimensions that would allow me to sort the notecards and lay them out in a pattern that made sense and stayed true to the data. Several initial attempts failed, but finally a three by three matrix emerged. The three strategies and three plot lines (trajectories over time) explicated in this paper formed a nine-cell matrix with strong face validity. The women whose notecards fit within each cell looked consistent with each other and different from those in other cells. Delving back into their biographies and themes, one cell at a time, revealed rich similarities within sub-groups. It showed there were important differences across sub-groups and it clarified the distinctive character of each of the three strategies for managing trade-offs.

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Appendix B: Interview Protocol

Professor Kathy Kram and I created this protocol for the first sample of ten interviewees from a multinational financial services company (Gersick & Kram, 2002). A few questions proved less informative and were dropped for the subsequent thirty women. Participants were all given a copy of these questions at the start of the interview process. Although the questions are divided into three segments (past, present and future), most of participants time, over three or more interviews, was spent on Segment I, question 3, which asks "how did you get from there to here?" (from your adolescent self and expectations, to your current life situation). Each interview was transcribed soon after it occurred, and searched for gaps, inconsistencies, or points that seemed to merit expansion. Later interviews began by summarizing "where we left off," by asking if there was anything the woman wanted to comment on from the last interview, and by posing the follow-up questions arising from the previous transcript(s). The interview protocol given to participants: Introduction In this series of biographical interviews, I hope to learn about your life now, and the path you took to get here. I would like to form a picture of the activities and relationships that are important to you, the major satisfactions and frustrations you have experienced, and the factors that have helped or hindered you along the way. I will start by asking for a brief description of where you are today, and then trace your life history up to this point. In later interviews, we will focus more on what your life is like now, and on how you are thinking about the future. I hope you will feel comfortable speaking candidly, without feeling pushed to say more than you want. I would like to use a tape recorder to best capture your words, but if you would like the tape recorder turned off at any time, just say so. These interviews will be kept strictly confidential, and participants will be thoroughly disguised in any presentations or publications that come from the study. SEGMENT I: THE PAST 1. If you ran into an old friend you hadn't seen in 20 or 30 years, and you wanted to catch her up on where you are now, how would you describe yourself and your life today? 2. We talked a little about what your life looks like today. If you went back in time to yourself as a kid, how does this picture match your early images of what you thought your life would be like when you grew up? 3. I'd like to understand some of the choices, circumstances, and relationships that shaped the path from those early images to your life today. How did you get from there to here? I am especially interested in your adult life, [from about age 30 onward,] but please begin as early as you'd like. Bracketed phrase was dropped. [4. Sometimes people think about themselves and their lives in metaphors: like a journey, a game, a river, a growing plant, or a book being written. Are there any metaphors or images you have used to think about your life? If so, could you explain these? Describe how they have changed over the years?] Question dropped.

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SEGMENT II: THE PRESENT [Segments II and III usually fit into a participant's final interview.] 1. Learning doesn't stop at any particular age. What skills or lessons do you feel you may be working on now? 2. What parts of your life claim the biggest share of your thoughts and energies now, for whatever reasons? 3. Are there aspects of life that you feel are especially important because they are missing right nowthings you would like to include or develop more? Are there things you wish would become less a part of your lifethings you would like to phase out? 4. Overall, what things do you find most satisfying in your situation at present? SEGMENT III: THE FUTURE 1. We all know about stories that end with the main characters living "happily ever after." If you had your own private "happily ever after," what would it be like? 2. One way to think about the future is to consider "possible selves" you may become. What are one or two possible selves you would most hope to become in the future? What are one or two possible selves you would most fear becoming? What are one or two possible selves you would consider most likely for the future? 3. Do you think there's anything in particular for you to do now, to move toward the future life you would like? If so, what kinds of things relationships with others, circumstances, factors in yourselfhelp your ability to do that? What kinds of things hinder you? 4. Personalized summary of themes covered in the preceding interviews. Are there major questions or issues we didn't cover, that we should have, to understand what your life has been like and how you think about the future? 5. How are you feeling about having participated in this study? [6. At this point, how do you think you might feel if, five years from now, we asked to talk with you for a follow-up study?] Question dropped.

See Markus & Nurius, 1986.

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Endnotes
Slaughter, A. June 24, 2012, Why Women Still Cant Have It All, The Atlantic Magazine. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-itall/309020/ 2 Cohen, N. June 22, 2012 Behind the Screens, between the lines Media Decoder http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/the-breakfast-meeting-on-having-it-all-orsome-and-cracks-at-nbc-news/ ; Kantor, J. June 21, 2012 Elite Women Put a New Spin on an Old Debate http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/elite-women-put-a-new-spin-on-work-lifedebate.html?ref=media 3 All names are pseudonyms, and quotations are edited to protect participants identities. The first quotation from each participant identifies her age at the time she was interviewed, occupation and ethnicity, either in the text or as an endnote. Eileen is Caucasian. 4 In 1950, 42% of women and 82% of men aged 18 and older participated in the labor force. In 1975, the year the U.S. Census Bureau began publishing data about labor force participation by women with children, 47% of mothers with children under 18 participated in the U.S. labor force. See Galinsky, E; Aumann, K., and Bond, J. 2011 Times are changing: Gender and generation at work and at home National Study of the Changing Workforce 2008, Revised 2011. Families and Work Institute. 5 See Coontz, S. 2011 A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s Philadelphia, PA: Basic Books 6 Friedan, Betty 1963 The Feminine Mystique New York: Dell 7 The majority of fathers in dual-earner couples (60%) report experiencing some or a lot of workfamily conflict today, up from 35% in 1977. Galinsky et al. (2011) 8 Hochschild, Arlie 1989 The second shift: Working families and the revolution at home Viking Penguin. 9 Bailyn, L. 2006 Breaking the mold: Redesigning work for productive and satisfying lives: Second edition Ithaca and Longon: ILR Press. Hoobler, J., Wayne, S., & Lemmon, G. 2009 Bosses perceptions of family-work conflict and womens promotability: Glass ceiling effects. Academy of Management Journal Vol.52 (5): 939-957; Kirchmeyer, C. 2006. The different effects of family on objective career success across gender: A test of alternative explanations Journal of Vocational Behavior Vol.68: 323-346. Mainiero, L., & Sullivan, S. 2005 Kaliedoscope careers: An alternate explanation for the opt out revolution. Academy of Management Executive Vol.19(1):106-120. Moen, P. & Yu, Y. 2000 Effective work/life strategies: Working couples, work conditions, gender and life quality. Social Problems Vol.47 (3): 291-326. 10 For research on the chilling effect of the mommy track on womens careers, see, Bailyn, L. (2006); Galinsky et al (2011); Hoobler, J. 2007 On-site or out of sight?: Family-friendly child care provisions and the status of working mothers Journal of Management Inquiry Vol. 16: 372380. Noonan, M., & Corcoran, M. 2004 The mommy track and partnership: Temporary delay or dead end? The annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Vol. 596 (1): 130-150. For a contrasting finding, see Hill, E., Martinson, V., Ferris, M., & Zenger Baker, R. 2004 Beyond the Mommy Track: The influence of new-concept part-time work for professional women on work and family Journal of Family and Economic Issues Vol. 25 (1):121-136. 11 For a rich and concise set of corporate examples, see descriptions of winners of the Catalyst Award: http://www.catalyst.org/page/69/catalyst-award-winners . Deborah Henry describes family-friendly alternatives among law firms in Law and Reorder: Legal Industry Solutions for Restructure, Retention, Promotion & Work/Life Balance 2010 American Bar Association. 12 Bailyn, L. (2006); Boushey, Heather March 29, 2010 Its time for policies to match modern family needs Center for American Progress http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/report/2010/03/29/7418/its-time-for1

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policies-to-match-modern-family-needs/ ; Meyerson, D.; Fletcher, J. 2000 A modest manifesto for shattering the glass ceiling. Harvard Business Review Vol. 78 (Jan) : p.126-136; Moen & Yu (2000); Williams, J., & Boushey, H. January, 2010 The three faces of work-family conflict: The poor, the professionals, and the missing middle. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/report/2010/01/25/7194/the-three-faces-ofwork-family-conflict/ 13 See also: Slaughter (2012); Macko, L. & Rubin, K. 2004 Midlife Crisis at 30: How the Stakes Have Changed for a New Generation, And What to Do about It. Saint Martins Press; Williams & Boushey (2010). 14 Stories on women as firstsappear regularly in U.S. newspapers; Researchers have examined the phenomenon systematically in Asiae.g. Lee, F. 2004 Constructing perfect women: The portrayal of female officials in Hong Kong Newspsapers Media Culture & Society Vol. 26 (2):207-225; Lee, J. 2006 Perception of women managers in Singapore: A media analysis in V. Yukongdi & J. Benson, Eds.: Women in Asian Management New York: Routledge. For a U.S. example see Dabbous, Y., & Ladley, A. 2010 A spine of steel and a heart of gold: newspaper coverage of the first female Speaker of the House Journal of Gender Studies Vol. 19 (2): 181-194 For a high-impact article on women dropping out, see: Lisa Belkins October 26, 2003 cover story: Q: Why dont more women get to the top? A: They choose not to. Abandoning the climb and heading home New York Times Magazine. 15 See note 2. 16 See note 2. 17 Adult development is viewed differently by different scholars. My approach springs from Daniel Levinsons seminal work. See Levinson, Darrow, Klein, Levinson & McKee 1978 The Seasons of a Mans Life New York: Ballantine ; and Levinson 1996, The Seasons of a Womans Life New York, Knopf, pp.22-23. 18 See Levinson (1978), pp. 53-54 19 Amstad, F. T., Meier, L. L., Fasel, U., Elfering, A., & Semmer, N. K. 2011. A meta-analysis of workfamily conflict and various outcomes with a special emphasis on cross-domain versus matching-domain relations. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology Vol. 16(2): pp 151169; Eagly, A., Eaton, A., Rose, S., Riger S., & McHugh, M. 2012 Feminism and psychology: Anlaysis of a half-century of research on women and gender American Psychologist Vol. 67(3):211230; Eby, L, Casper, W., Lockwood, A., Bordeaux, C., & Brinley, A. (2005). Work and family research in IO/OB: Content analysis and review of the literature (19802002). Journal of Vocational Behavior, 66, 124197; 20 E.g. See the American Time-Use Survey: 2010 Results Bureau of Labor Statistics News Release: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf ; Galinsky et al (2011); Galinsky, E., & Matos, K. 2011 The future of work-life fit Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 40 (4): 267-280; Hartmann, H., & Rose, S. 2004 Still a mans labor market: The long-term earnings gap. Washington, DC: Institute for Womens Policy Research; Moen & Yu, (2000). 21 E.g. Haun, S., Steinmetz, H., & Dorman, C. 2011 Objective work-nonwork conflict: From incompatible demands to decreased work role performance Journal of Vocational Behavior Vol. 79 (2): 578-587; Greenhaus, J., & Beutell, N. 1985 Sources of conflict between work and family roles Academy of Management Review Vol. 10(1): 176-188; Greenhaus, J., & Powell, G. 2006 When work and family are allies: A theory of work-family enrichment Academy of Management Review Vol. 31 (1): 72-92; Westring, A. & Ryan, A. 2011 Anticipated work-family conflict: A construct investigation Journal of Vocational Behavior Vol. 79 (2): 596-610 22 e.g. Allen, T., Johnson, R., Saboe, K, Cho, E., Dumani, S., & Evans, S. 2012 Dispositional variables and work-family conflict: A meta-analysis Journal of Vocational Behavior Vol. 80 (1): 1726; Bakker, A., Brummelhuis, L., Prins, J., & van der Heijden, F. 2011 Applying the job demands-resources model to the work-home interface: A study among medical residents and their partners Journal of Vocational Behavior Vol. 79 (1): 170-180; Moen & Yu (2000); Valcour, M.,

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Ollier-Malaterre, A., Matz-Costa, C., Pitt-Catsouphes, M., & Brown, M. 2011 Influences on emloyee perceptions of organizational work-life support: Signals and resources Journal of Vocational Behavior Vol. 79 (2): 588-595 23 See resources such as: the American Time Use Survey: http://www.bls.gov/tus/ ; research conducted by the Center for American Progress: http://www.americanprogress.org ; the National Study of the Changing Workforce and other research by the Families and Work Institute: http://familiesandwork.org/site/work/workforce/main.html ; the annual Global Gender Gap Report produced by the World Economic Forum: http://www.weforum.org/issues/globalgender-gap ; studies by the Institute for Womens Policy Research: http://www.iwpr.org/ 24 Greenhaus, J., Peng, A., & Allen, T. 2012 Relations of work identity, family identity, situational demands, and sex with employee work hours Journal of Vocational Behavior Vol. 80 (1): 2737 ; Hakim, C. 2002 Lifestyle preferences as determinants of womens differentiated labor market careers Work and Occupations Vol. 29 (4): 428-459; Lobel, S., & St. Clair, L. 1992 Effects of family responsibilities, gender, and career identity salience on performance outcomes The Academy of Management Journal Vol. 35 (5): 1057-1069; Moen & Yu, (2000); Powell, G., & Mainiero, L. 1992 Cross-currents in the river of time: Conceptualizing the complexities of womens careers Journal of Management Vol. 18 (2): 215-237 25 There are notable exceptions. Lee, Kossek and colleagues have focused on meta-level patterns of change, proposing that women allot their attention between work and family in long-lasting waves as well as acute episodes. e.g. Lee, Kossek, Hall & Litrico 2011 Entangled strands: A process perspective on the evolution of careers in the context of persona, family, work and community life Human Relations Vol. 64 (12) 1531-1553. Mainiero and colleagues propose different ways in which women sequence children and career; e.g. Powell & Mainiero, L. (1992) 26 Eisenhardt, 1989, discusses the value of initiating theory-generating research without pre-set hypotheses: Building Theories from Case Study Research The Academy of Management Review Vol. 14, ( 4): 532-550 27 Qualitative research is well suited for exploring new territory, to generate theories grounded (Eisenhardt, 1989) in open-ended observation. Such research is designed to discover hypotheses not prove them; findings must be tested subsequently to see if they hold true. This contrasts with theory-testing research, appropriate when enough is known to specify precisely what questions to ask (and what menus of answers to design). For example, surveys can cover large numbers of people by asking pointed questions with pre-set multiple choice or rating-scale answers. Laboratory experiments can compare carefully controlled variables that are clear enough to be meticulously defined. 28 Gersick, C., & Kram, K. 2002 "High achieving women at mid-life." Journal of Management Inquiry, 11: 104-127 29 Levinson et al (1978) ; Levinson (1996) 30 A theme or pattern that appears important for people in very different settings may be generally important. In contrast, a pattern found only in one setting inspires less confidence because it may only reflect something about that particular setting. 31 Levinson interviewed participants between 35 and 45 years old. 32 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nursing#World_War_I 33 Since different ethnic communities experiences vary considerably, I chose to focus on one group after the pilot study: African-Americans. See Catalyst research on differences in the experiences of Asian-American, Latina and African American women (e.g. Women of Color in Corporate Management: Opportunities and Barriers, July 1999; Connections that Count: The Informal Networks of Women of Color in the United States, May 2006). 34 The other six financial service executives were interviewed by my co-author on the pilot study, Professor Kathy Kram, and research assistant Anne Morehouse. A graduate student research assistant, Elissa Grossman, spoke with one of the artists. 35 Gersick & Kram (2002) and Levinson et al, (1978) explicate this type of interviewing.

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For an overview and list of helpful references on qualitative research methods see Chapter 12, Qualitative data, analysis and design in Suter, N. 2011 Introduction to Educational Research: A critical thinking approach Second edition, Sage Publications 37 CF studies that show the importance of understanding womens intentions, strategies, and subjective experience, not simply raw facts about career and fertility patterns, in predicting outcomes: Gersick & Kram (2002); Greenhaus et al (2012); Hakim (2002); Lee, M. D. 1994. Variation in career and family involvement over time: Truth and consequences. In M. Davidson & R. Burke, (Eds): Women in management: Current research issues. London: Paul Chapman, Publishers; Lobel & St. Clair (1992); Powell & Mainiero (1992) 38 As explained in a chapter from the larger study, work refers to vocation, career, and/or achievement; relationships refers to ties of love, family, friendship and/or spiritual commitment; life-style refers to the material resources and comforts, the cultural and physical environments, and the economic and social status that a woman has or pursues. 39 After describing sequencing as a trade-off strategy in our 2002 paper, Kathy Kram and I found that Mary Dean Lee had already proposed Sequencing among six long-term patterns in her theory-generating study of womens careers. Lee identified two variants: sequencing: career-family-career and sequencing: family-career. Lee, (1994); Mainiero and colleagues also proposed that women alternate primary commitments between career, family and both-at-once. e.g. Powell & Mainiero (1992) 40 Q and non-italicized text indicates a question or comment from the interviewer. 41 No information was collected from anyone besides the participants themselves. 42 Financial Services Executive, interviewed at age 48 (Caucasian) 43 Interviewed at age 52 (Caucasian) 44 Social Service Agency Director, interviewed at age 55 (African-American) 45 Interviewed at age 48, (Caucasian) 46 Artist, interviewed at age 47 (Caucasian) 47 Artist, interviewed at age 51 (African-American) 48 The women are placed in the top row in Table 1, in the good enough column, but their doubts as of interview time are noted. 49 Family business owner, interviewed at age 48, Caucasian 50 interviewed at age 48, Caucasian 51 Artist, interviewed at age 47, Caucasian 52 Financial services executive, interviewed at age 48, African-American 53 Interviewed at age 53, Caucasian 54 Interviewed at age 50, Caucasian 55 Benko, C., & Weisberg, A. 2007 Mass career customization: Aligning the workplace with todays nontraditional workforce Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press; Moen, P. & Sweet, S. 2004 From Work-family to flexible careers Community, Work & Family Vol. 7 (2): 209226 56 Family business owner, interviewed at age 47, African-American 57 Social Service Agency Executive, interviewed at age 49, Caucasian 58 Financial services executive, interviewed at age 46, African-American 59 Social Service agency head, interviewed at age 46, African-American 60 Family business owner, interviewed at age 47, Caucasian 61 Note that Rachel literally said she was going to do it all, but immediately referred to live-in help. Delegatinghaving but not doing it all, is essential to this strategy. 62 Financial Services Executive, interviewed at age 52, Caucasian 63 Financial services executive, interviewed at age 51, Latina 64 See research by Heilman and colleagues, e.g. Heilman, M.; Wallen, A.; Fuchs, D. & Tamkins, M. 2004 Penalties for success: Reactions to women who succeed at male gender-typed tasks. Journal of Applied Psychology Vol. 89: 416-427
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Counter-intuitively, important research indicates the startling degree to which men and women ignore health crises as signals that they are far too overloaded at work. Michel, A. 2011 Transcending Socialization: A Nine-Year Ethnography of the Body's Role in Organizational Control and Knowledge Workers' Transformation Administrative Science Quarterly Vol. 56 (3) 66 Family business owner, interviewed at age 46, Caucasian 67 Interviewed at age 44, Caucasian 68 See note 56, and: Bailyn (2006); Galinsky & Matos (2011) ; Hoobler et al (2009) 69 Financial services executive, interviewed at age 55, Caucasian 70 Financial services executive, interviewed at age 50, Caucasian 71 See Matos, K., & Galinsky, E. 2011 When work works Workplace flexibility in the United States, A Status Report Families and Work Institute Society for Human Resource Management http://familiesandwork.org/site/research/reports/www_us_workflex.pdf for a recent review of persisting employee beliefs that using flexibility options will damage their careers. http://familiesandwork.org/site/research/reports/www_us_workflex.pdf 72 See Moen & Yu (2000); Hoobler et al (2009); and Galinsky et al (2011) on the importance of supportive supervisors for reducing stress from competing work-personal demands. 73 Gersick, C., Bartunek, J. & Dutton, J. 2000 Learning from academia: The importance of relationships in professional life The Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 43 (6): 1026-1044 74 Bailyn (2006); Hewlett, S., & Luce, C. 2005 Vol. 83 (3):43-6, 48, 50-4 "Off-ramps and on-ramps: keeping talented women on the road to success." Harvard Business Review Vol. 83 (3): 43-6, 48, 50-4; Konrad A., & Mangel R. 2000. "The impact of work-life programs on firm productivity." Strategic Management Journal Vol. 21(12): 12251237.; Mainiero & Sullivan (2005); Matos & Galinsky, 2011 http://familiesandwork.org/site/research/reports/www_us_workflex.pdf "Work-Life Balance and the Economics of Workplace Flexibility" March, 2010 Executive Office of the President, Council of Economic Advisers: http://www.whitehouse.gov/files/documents/100331-cea-economics-workplace-flexibility.pd ; See also Siegel et al's comments on family friendly policies in multi-nationals that derive economic advantages from hiring women executives: Siegel, J., Pyun, L., & Cheon, B. January 7, 2011 Multinational Firms, Labor Market Discrimination, and the Capture of Competitive Advantage by Exploiting the Social DivideHarvard Business School Working Paper 11-011: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6480.html 75 Bailyn, L. , Fletcher, J, & Kolb, D. 1997 "Unexpected connections: Considering employees' personal lives can revitalize your business" Sloan Management Review Vol.38 (4): 11-19; Meyerson & Fletcher (2000) 76 Benko & Weisberg (2007); Moen & Sweet (2004) 77 Sources for notes 75, 76, 77 and others present pragmatic suggestions. 78 Bailyn (2006); Galinsky et al (2011); Hakim (2002) 79 See Hoobler et al (2009). 80 Galinsky, et al, (2011); Hakim (2002) ; Lobel & St.Clair (1992); Westring & Ryan, (2011). 81 Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. 2009/1967 The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research Rutgers, New Jersey: Aldine Transaction 82 The developmental tasks identified in the larger study may apply to men as well. But for women, being on the frontier of deep (and contested) social change complicates matters. Each task comes with a dilemma, reflecting the tension between traditional male and female prescriptions for meeting the tasks: 1. Money, and the Task of Securing My Lifestyle: Dilemma: Independence Versus Dependence; 2. Work, and the Task of Developing My Passions and Gifts: Dilemma: Ambition Versus Drift; 3. Priorities, and the Task of Managing Tradeoffs: Dilemma: Having Too Much Versus Not Having Enough; 4. Love, and the Task of Forming and Nurturing Relationships: Dilemma: Responsibility to Self Versus Responsibility to Others.
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REFERENCES Allen, T., Johnson, R., Saboe, K, Cho, E., Dumani, S., & Evans, S. 2012 Dispositional variables and work-family conflict: A meta-analysis Journal of Vocational Behavior Vol. 80 (1): 17-26 American Time-Use Survey: 2010 Results Bureau of Labor Statistics News Release: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf Amstad, F. T., Meier, L. L., Fasel, U., Elfering, A., & Semmer, N. K. 2011. A metaanalysis of workfamily conflict and various outcomes with a special emphasis on cross-domain versus matching-domain relations. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology Volume 16(2): p 151169 Bailyn, L. , Fletcher, J, & Kolb, D. 1997 "Unexpected connections: Considering employees' personal lives can revitalize your business" Sloan Management Review Vol.38 (4): 11-19 Bailyn, L. 2006 Breaking the mold: Redesigning work for productive and satisfying lives: Second edition Ithaca and Longon: ILR Press. Bakker, A., Brummelhuis, L., Prins, J., & van der Heijden, F. 2011 Applying the job demands-resources model to the work-home interface: A study among medical residents and their partners Journal of Vocational Behavior Vol. 79 (1): 170-180 Belkin, L. October 26, 2003 Q: Why dont more women get to the top? A: They choose not to. Abandoning the climb and heading home New York Times Magazine. Benko, C., & Weisberg, A. 2007 Mass career customization: Aligning the workplace with todays nontraditional workforce Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press Bloom, N., Kretschmer, T., & Van Reenen, J. 2011 "Are family-friendly workplace practices a valuable firm resource?" Strategic Management Journal Vol. 32 (4): 343-367 Boushey, Heather March 29, 2010 Its time for policies to match modern family needs Center for American Progress http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/report/2010/03/29/7418/its-timefor-policies-to-match-modern-family-needs/ Catalyst: Women of Color in Corporate Management: Opportunities and Barriers, July 1999; Connections that Count: The Informal Networks of Women of Color in the United States, May 2006 Center for American Progress: http://www.americanprogress.org Cohen, N. June 22, 2012 Behind the Screens, between the lines Media Decoder http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/the-breakfast-meeting-onhaving-it-all-or-some-and-cracks-at-nbc-news/ Coontz, S. 2011 A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s Philadelphia, PA: Basic Books Dabbous, Y., & Ladley, A. 2010 A spine of steel and a heart of gold: newspaper coverage of the first female Speaker of the House Journal of Gender Studies Vol. 19 (2): 181-194 Eagly, Rose, Riger & McHugh 2012 Feminism and psychology: Anlaysis of a halfcentury of research on women and gender American Psychologist Vol. 67(3):211-230

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Eby, L, Casper, W., Lockwood, A., Bordeaux, C., & Brinley, A. (2005). Work and family research in IO/OB: Content analysis and review of the literature (19802002). Journal of Vocational Behavior, 66, 124197 Eisenhardt,K. 1989 Building Theories from Case Study Research The Academy of Management Review Vol. 14, ( 4): 532-550 Friedan, Betty 1963 The Feminine Mystique New York: Dell Galinsky, E; Aumann, K., and Bond, J. 2011 Times are changing: Gender and generation at work and at home National Study of the Changing Workforce 2008, Revised 2011. Families and Work Institute. Galinsky, E., & Matos 2011 The future of work-life fit Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 40 (4): 267-280 Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. 2009/1967 The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research Rutgers, New Jersey: Aldine Transaction Gersick, C., Bartunek, J. & Dutton, J. 2000 Learning from academia: The importance of relationships in professional life The Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 43 (6): 1026-1044 Gersick, C., & Kram, K. 2002 "High achieving women at mid-life." Journal of Management Inquiry, 11: 104-127 Global Gender Gap Report produced by the World Economic Forum: http://www.weforum.org/issues/global-gender-gap Greenhaus, J., & Beutell, N. 1985 Sources of conflict between work and family roles Academy of Management Review Vol. 10(1): 176-188 Greenhaus, J., Peng, A., & Allen, T. 2012 Relations of work identity, family identity, situational demands, and sex with employee work hours Journal of Vocational Behavior Vol. 80 (1): 27-37 Greenhaus, J., & Powell, G. 2006 When work and family are allies: A theory of workfamily enrichment Academy of Management Review Vol. 31(1): 72-92 Hakim, C. 2002 Lifestyle preferences as determinants of womens differentiated labor market careers Work and Occupations Vol. 29 (4): 428-459 Hartmann, H., & Rose, S. 2004 Still a mans labor market: The long-term earnings gap. Washington, DC: Institute for Womens Policy Research Heilman, M.; Wallen, A.; Fuchs, D. & Tamkins, M. 2004 Penalties for success: Reactions to women who succeed at male gender-typed tasks. Journal of Applied Psychology Vol. 89: 416-427 Henry, D. Law and Reorder: Legal Industry Solutions for Restructure, Retention, Promotion & Work/Life Balance 2010 American Bar Association. Haun, S., Steinmetz, H., & Dorman, C. 2011 Objective work-nonwork conflict: From incompatible demands to decreased work role performance Journal of Vocational Behavior Vol. 79 (2): 578-587 Hewlett, S., & Luce, C. 2005 Mar;83(3):43-6, 48, 50-4 "Off-ramps and on-ramps: keeping talented women on the road to success." Harvard Business Review Vol. 83 (3): 43-6, 48, 50-4 Hill, E., Martinson, V., Ferris, M., and Zenger Baker, R. 2004 Beyond the Mommy Track: The influence of new-concept part-time work for professional women on work and family Journal of Family and Economic Issues Vol. 25 (1):121-136.

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Hochschild, Arlie 1989 The second shift: Working families and the revolution at home Viking Penguin. Hoobler, J., Wayne, S., & Lemmon, G. 2009 Bosses perceptions of family-work conflict and womens promotability: Glass ceiling effects. Academy of Management Journal Vol.52 (5): 939-957. Hoobler, J. 2007 On-site or out of sight?: Family-friendly child care provisions and the status of working mothers Journal of Management Inquiry Vol. 16: 372-380. Hoobler, J., Wayne, S., & Lemmon, G. 2009 Bosses perceptions of family-work conflict and womens promotability: Glass ceiling effects. Academy of Management Journal Vol.52 (5): 939-957. Institute for Womens Policy Research: http://www.iwpr.org/ Kantor, J. June 21, 2012 Elite Women Put a New Spin on an Old Debate http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/elite-women-put-a-new-spin-on-worklife-debate.html?ref=media Kirchmeyer, C. 2006. The different effects of family on objective career success across gender: A test of alternative explanations Journal of Vocational Behavior Vol.68: 323346. Konrad A., Mangel R. 2000. "The impact of work-life programs on firm productivity." Strategic Management Journal Vol. 21(12): 12251237. Lee, F. 2004 Constructing perfect women: The portrayal of female officials in Hong Kong Newspsapers Media Culture & Society Vol. 26 (2):207-225; Lee, J. 2006 Perception of women managers in Singapore: A media analysis in V. Yukongdi & J. Benson, Eds.: Women in Asian Management New York: Routledge Lee, M. D. 1994. Variation in career and family involvement over time: Truth and consequences. In M. Davidson & R. Burke, (Eds): Women in management: Current research issues. Sage. Lee,M.D., Kossek, E., Hall, D., & Litrico, P. 2011 Entangled strands: A process perspective on the evolution of careers in the context of persona, family, work and community life Human Relations Vol. 64 (12) 1531-1553 Levinson,D. , Darrow,C., Klein,E. , Levinson, M., & McKee, B. 1978 The Seasons of a Mans Life New York: Ballantine Levinson, D. 1996, The Seasons of a Womans Life New York, Knopf Lobel, S., & St. Clair, L. 1992 Effects of family responsibilities, gender, and career identity salience on performance outcomes The Academy of Management Journal Vol. 35 (5): 1057-1069 Macko, L., & Rubin, K. 2004 Midlife Crisis at 30: How the Stakes Have Changed for a New GenerationAnd What to Do about It. Saint Martins Press Mainiero, L., & Sullivan, S. 2005 Kaliedoscope careers: An alternate explanation for the opt out revolution. Academy of Management Executive Vol.19(1):106-120. Matos, K., & Galinsky, E. 2011 When work works Workplace flexibility in the United States, A Status Report Families and Work Institute Society for Human Resource Management http://familiesandwork.org/site/research/reports/www_us_workflex.pdf Meyerson, D.; Fletcher, J. 2000 A modest manifesto for shattering the glass ceiling. Harvard Business Review Vol. 78 (Jan) : p.126-136

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Michel, A. 2011 Transcending Socialization: A Nine-Year Ethnography of the Body's Role in Organizational Control and Knowledge Workers' Transformation Administrative Science Quarterly Vol. 56 (3) Moen, P. & Sweet, S. 2004 From Work-family to flexible careers Community, Work & Family Vol. 7 (2): 209226 Moen, . & Yu, Y. 2000 Effective work/life strategies: Working couples, work conditions, gender and life quality. Social Problems Vol.47 (3): 291-326. National Study of the Changing Workforce and other research by the Families and Work Institute: http://familiesandwork.org/site/work/workforce/main.html Noonan, M., & Corcoran, M. 2004 The mommy track and partnership: Temporary delay or dead end? The annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Vol. 596 (1): 130-150. Powell, G., & Mainiero, L. 1992 Cross-currents in the river of time: Conceptualizing the complexities of womens careers Journal of Management Vol. 18 (2): 215-237 Slaughter, A. June 24, 2012, Why Women Still Cant Have It All, The Atlantic Magazine. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-haveit-all/309020/ Siegel, J., Pyun, L., & Cheon, B. January 7, 2011 Multinational Firms, Labor Market Discrimination, and the Capture of Competitive Advantage by Exploiting the Social DivideHarvard dBusiness School Working Paper 11-011: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6480.html Suter, N. 2012 Introduction to Educational Research: A critical thinking approach Second edition, Sage Publications Valcour, M., Ollier-Malaterre, A., Matz-Costa, C., Pitt-Catsouphes, M., & Brown, M. 2011 Influences on emloyee perceptions of organizational work-life support: Signals and resources Journal of Vocational Behavior Vol. 79 (2): 588-595 Westring, A. & Ryan, A. 2011 Anticipated work-family conflict: A construct investigation Journal of Vocational Behavior Vol. 79 (2): 596-610 Wikipedia, history of nursing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nursing#World_War_I Williams, J., & Boushey, H. January, 2010 The three faces of work-family conflict: The poor, the professionals, and the missing middle. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/report/2010/01/25/7194/the-threefaces-of-work-family-conflict/

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