Career And Family: Can We Really Have Both?

But it's not true that your children necessarily get shortchanged; studies show that working women spend almost as much time with their kids as do stay-at-home moms. And what working mothers get in return for their labor is priceless: not only the incomparable joy of family life plus the tremendous satisfaction of earning their own individual successes, but also the peace of mind in knowing they can always take care of themselves and their kids if something happens to their partners.

Or to their partners' incomes. A few months ago, the company where my husband worked was sold. The new owner fired my husband's boss, replacing her with a younger man who informed my husband that his services were no longer needed. Nothing personal: just business. Out with the old team, in with the new.

My husband works in a field that was hard-hit by the recent recession. Jobs at his level are scarce, and we were both very worried. But I still had my job, and we knew we could survive.

As it turned out, he found another job immediately. But I shudder to think about the terror we would have felt if I had been a stay-at-home wife and he had endured a long period of unemployment. How would we have managed?

My career has given me far more than a salary, however.

There have been many days when I agonized over the inevitable conflicts between work and family. But in the 16 years I've been a working mother, I have never once regretted my immeasurably rewarding life as a married woman with children and a career.

And after all, the job of raising children doesn't last forever. As my kids turn into ever-more-independent teenagers, the prospect of the empty nest looms in the not-so-distant future. I know I'll miss them desperately when they go off to college, but I'll still have my own exciting, intellectually stimulating life to focus on. I can't imagine how bereft I'd feel if I didn't have my work to sustain me when they're gone.

"Having it all" may be out of fashion now, but there hasn't been a single moment when I didn't feel unbelievably lucky to have engaged in the struggles necessary to attain that goal. To my husband, I am an equal partner in a marriage founded on the premise that we share all the responsibilities for our family, both financial and domestic. And my children see me as having just as important a professional identity as their father does. Neither my daughter nor my son has to look further than our own home for role models on how to combine work and family life, no matter what your gender.

If having it all is a myth, you sure can't prove it by me. As far as I'm concerned, this is as good as it gets.

*Names in this story have been changed.

Leslie Bennets is a journalist, mother, and wife.