This just in, ladies: Balancing a job and a family is hard! And, a recent study out of the University of Washington shows, the less difficult you expect it to be, the more likely you are to be depressed when the rubber meets the road -- when your expectations smack up against reality.
Color us unshocked.
The trouble, the study suggests, has as much to do with our own expectations as it does with a workplace that's still designed as though every employee had the benefit of a full-time wife at home, someone to take care of the kids ... and all of the day-to-day business that keeps a life running smoothly. Not insignificant: American women are attempting to do it all in a country with rather dismal structural support for working mothers, in terms of time off after childbirth or subsidized day care. And as real -- and important -- as those issues are, there's more to it that that.
Women today are raised being told they can have it all, though rarely are they let in on the way this charming slogan translates to the real world -- as if through an evil game of telephone -- that, more than likely, they'll have to do it all, that what they'll really have "all" of is the work. We're raised to believe that feminism is old news, the fight has been fought, the battle won -- even while we're presented with an ideal so impossible it would be laughable, if it weren't so oppressive: While the Enjoli woman of yore was intimidating enough with her bacon and her pan, today the ideal involves even more balls in the air: In addition to raising her children perfectly (and feeding them only organic bacon) and making the most of her potential at the office, she's untouched by the hands of time, doing work that's deeply satisfying and meaningful for the world at large, finding personal and spiritual fulfillment and capable of a perfect downward-facing dog.
All of which is not to say that women are better off staying at home; to the contrary, in fact. Stay-at-home moms were more likely to be depressed than working moms. So how to handle it? The researchers of the study suggest that the best way to deal is to "Be gentle with yourself and accept that balancing work and family feels hard because it is hard, rather than feeling guilty or unsuccessful if you can't devote as much time as you would like to your job and to your family."
And we'd agree. As Ramini Durvasula, Ph.D. -- a clinical psychologist, professor of psychology and director of the psychology clinic and clinical-training program at Cal State Los Angeles --told us when we spoke to her for our book, "What I want to communicate to young women is, 'You can try many of these things, but there are going to be challenges. If you think you're going to be able to screw your husband, raise your kids, clean your house and go to work, you're mistaken. You're going to have a messy house, an unscrewed husband, kids you're not always with, and a job you can't always do."
Or, from a write-up on the study in U.S. News & World Report, "Working moms may be happier when they delegate and let a few things slide -- in other words, let someone with more time run the bake sale, make sure your husband is doing his share of the laundry folding and limit your work hours when you can."
And we'd add to that: Every choice entails a trade-off. If you're reading this article right now, you are by definition not frying up organic bacon in a pan, or baking a batch of gluten-free cupcakes for the kids' school fundraiser, right? To hear that we can't do it all is, at first blush, an ugly message, but it's also freeing in its simplicity: You can't be in two places at once. So perhaps in addition to doing what we can to change the structural roadblocks, we should be doing what we can to address those expectations, revamp that slogan, and cut ourselves some slack.
A tough message, but according to this study, it seems that your happiness might be riding on accepting it.
And in case you forgot that Enjoli commercial,
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