I was working with a highly successful CEO this week who, at 38 years old suddenly finds herself consumed by a desire to have a family.
Having dedicated herself to her career for the last 20 years and having got used to achieving her goals in short timeframes she is experiencing real frustration that achieving her current goal of a family unit is far from straightforward.
She wonders whether she did meet the right man but at the wrong time when she was in her 20s and whether she was too hasty to sacrifice relationships for promotions.
Now, a decade later, she is wealthy, successful and popular but also single and childless.
Another client of mine in her early 40s runs a department of an investment bank and is married with two children.
She is consistently feeling guilty, either for not spending as many hours at the office as she feels she really should be or for not spending as much time with her husband and children as she feels that she should.
In both cases these women find themselves asking the question, ‘Is it really possible to have it all?’
It is not an uncommon scenario. In my own circle I have a number of glamorous, intelligent, high powered female friends who once in their mid 30s took a breath and realised that something was missing.
The lifestyle was jet set, bubbling with champagne and filled with trips abroad, nights out at the ballet and dinners with friends.
But there was a small knot in the stomach, which started to niggle and grew until there was no avoiding the fact that the champagne was tasting a little flat in the absence of a family life to go alongside the professional one.
Once the family and professional lives are running in parallel, there is often a feeling that neither is getting the attention that it truly deserves.
I also grew up devouring magazines that promised me great happiness if I focused on my career through my 20s and early 30s.
It is possible to have it all they shouted, get the career sorted, be financially independent and the handsome, fun husband and beautiful, angelic children will simply fall into place.
Whilst I accept that for the few this might be the case, I would argue that for the huge majority it is not.
If you’re going to assume top-level power and responsibility in your professional life, and be a fulfilling partner and mother at home you’ll be forced to make sacrifices somewhere.
In the corporate world, for all of our achievements, a woman still has a very different role and responsibilities from her male colleagues.
However many diversity and equality forums HR departments run this is simply a reality.
There are several options for the highly ambitious amongst us but each will involve a trade-off.
One option is the ‘house husband’, another is to work flexible hours, a third is to have really good childcare and a fourth is to take a sabbatical in order to have your children.
All involve compromises, which most male professionals never have to make.
In our erra of sexual equality, the ‘house husband’ seems on the face of it to be a perfect solution.
We simply swap traditional gender roles with our partner thereby allowing the children to be cared for by a genetic parent and allowing both adults to satisfy their own ambitions.
However, in many such situations all is not as rosy as it might seem. Both men and women can find the reassignment of roles difficult to accept, and I know of very confident women who refer to their househusbands as Consultants to explain their lack of a set working day.
Likewise, men can find it uncomfortable organising play dates with other mothers, attending toddler groups or coffee mornings and many report feeling isolated and ‘frozen out’ by the other mothers who find the role unnatural.
Flexible working arrangements are becoming more commonplace and give a woman the chance to balance parenting and working but it is unlikely to allow the woman to reach the top of the heap.
The reality is that the crucial client meeting is always going to happen at the clients convenience rather than your own and if you are not available 24-7 you will inevitably lose out to colleagues who are.
Good childcare allows more freedom in ones professional life but generally is restrictive in terms of hours.
In addition it must be a compromise on the life half of the work/life balance as it dilutes the parenting experience with someone else being there to see the first steps or hear the first words.
Taking a sabbatical is a high-risk option, as the space that you leave, even temporarily, in your workplace must be filled in order for the company to continue to function successfully.
For the highly skilled, it is possible to come back after a sabbatical to the top but for many, particularly in difficult economic times, a gap on the CV puts you at a disadvantage to others who have not made the same choices.
The woman who wants both a high flying career and a family faces other daily challenges; when the school calls they ask for mum, when your child is sick they will want their mum, when friends want to organise a dinner they will check the diary with a woman.
Sociologically women bear most of the weight in running a family and raising children and for those of us who wish to combine this with a career path there needs to be an acceptance that it will be a path of compromise.
Even Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo who looks like she has achieved the dream admits that whilst she makes every effort to see her daughter every day and balance her work/life responsibilities there are times when she has to compromise her parenting experience.
She says, ‘women have more of a burden on them to manage the house and manage the children and manage the school interface.’
The key therefore is to accept early on that there will be compromises to be made and to choose what those compromises will be in your own situation.
Energy spent feeling guilty at what you have not been able to do would be much better spent focusing on what you can.
Work out a schedule for your week ahead, ensuring that work and family are assigned time and try to stick to it whilst accepting on Monday morning that the week will inevitably look different to the plan by Sunday evening.
Try to enjoy the moment and get what you can out of the present rather than living in the past or the future and remember to appreciate what you have instead of always looking for something else.
Executive and Life Coach, Rachael Wood, www.ogilviedavies.com can be contacted at Rachael@ogilviedavies.com
Tags: Advice for working mums, Carol Bartz, equality in the home, flexible working, Rachel Wood, Women in the boardroom, work-life balance, working mums
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