Time Management
Mythbusting at midlifeWhen Dr. Barbara Moses' son was three years old, she was invited to do a speaking tour of New Zealand. She turned it down. Hmmm. Is this really the kind of career sacrifice a liberated woman should be making? Whatever happened to "having it all?" LAUREL SHERRER |
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 [ 2006-04-26 ] |
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When Dr. Barbara Moses' son was three years old, she was invited to do a speaking tour of New Zealand. She turned it down.
"Why? Because my son would never be three again. New Zealand would always be there," she says.
Hmmm. Is this really the kind of career sacrifice a liberated woman should be making? Whatever happened to "having it all?"
Therein lies the root of much of the malaise hitting Baby Boomer women in midlife, Moses believes. The myth of "having it all" has done more harm than good for a lot of women.
"I think when you try to have it all, you end up with nothing," says Moses, who was in Ottawa recently promoting her book, Dish: Midlife Women Tell the Truth about Work, Relationships, and the Rest of Life (McClelland & Stewart, $24.99).
"You end up in this grey zone where none of your needs are met."
TROUBLING '80S IMAGE
The best-selling author and consultant on work-life issues, who holds degrees in psychology from the University of Toronto, the London School of Economics and McGill University, says the image of "the '80s woman in her power suit with her power briefcase," holding a baby in her free arm, has only served to make women feel anxious and inadequate.
"A lot of women think there's something wrong with them because they can't do it all, and for many women, quite frankly, they don't want to do it all but they feel they're supposed to."
To Moses, it's more important to think of your life in chapters, and to devote each to satisfying one need.
"You can't have it all, at least not all at the same time," she writes. "You need to be ruthless in identifying what you absolutely must have to feel happy."
Anxiety over balancing work and family is just one of many issues that came up as she surveyed more than 1,000 midlife women for her book -- midlife defined as late 30s to mid-50s, depending on a woman's circumstances and state of mind.
Throughout the torrent of brutally honest responses was the recurring theme of a need for change at midlife.
Often this was due to women's sense that their authentic selves had been repressed in earlier stages, when they were expected to always be the "good girl" who tends to others' needs.
"Women are tired of engaging in people-pleasing behaviours," Moses says. "They're saying, 'it's my time and I want to express my voice and not be concerned about how palatable it is to the people around me.' "
By midlife, she writes, "we have a polite, agreeable exterior. But we tell our friends the awful bitchy truth."
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