what's the relative importance of career
and motherhood in the typical woman's
life I'm 55 and so and I've been working
with men and women my entire life and
I've watched this and it's quite obvious
it's like at 19 it's all career by 30
that's just not the case it's not the
case I don't I don't know if I've seen a
single woman who I didn't think had a
psychological problem who hadn't
seriously flipped in their attitude
towards the balance of family and career
by the time they were 30 and then you
see lots of women who at 40 haven't had
kids and perhaps wanted to and that's a
not a pleasant situation it's talking to
a woman who is about 39 a professional
woman attractive well-put-together
competent well-educated successful in
her profession unmarried in a
relationship with an older guy but
unmarried and desperate to have a child
she said no one ever talked to her about
the fact that she'd actually want to
have a family or encouraged her to think
about doing that it was as if it wasn't
within the realm of possibility that one
of the things that she might have the
ambition to do would be to be a mother
and that's just not acceptable and it
was like she woke up in her late 30s and
thought well the first thing she thought
was this profession of mine is actually
know where Neil near as comprehensively
fulfilling as the advertisements claimed
which is something that virtually
everyone discovers as they move forward
in their professional career no I mean
the reason that you get paid generally
for your work is because you're doing
something that you wouldn't choose to do
if you weren't being paid for it and so
the idea that your career is going to be
the fundamental source of your
fulfillment is true for a very tiny
minority of people and even with them
it's it's complicated so she was tearful
and upset about the fact that it took
her so long to discover that there are
other important dimensions
life and that motherhood turns out to be
well how many things do you do in your
life that are fundamental right you you
have a career on your education so that
would be part of your career development
that's part of what makes you generally
useful in society perhaps a place that
you find some meaning and purpose you
have your friends you have your family
like your parents and your siblings and
so forth you have your kids you have
your relationship that's it there's four
things now you know you can expand that
to some degree you can have maybe you're
creative and you make good use of your
of your personal time there's other
factors that aren't trivial but those
four things are canonically important
you miss one of them and you're going to
pay for it and so our society needs to
rethink our value our relative valuation
of career versus motherhood so we don't
know how to solve this problem but we
could at least have an intelligent
discussion about it and we could start
by admitting that the idea that most
nineteen year old women are fed which is
that their career will be the primary
purpose of their life is actually a lie
you
