Redefining Career Success

It’s a hot topic in my world. There is an equation that I believe all working outside of the home Mamas are trying to achieve, trying to solve the problem. We know the outcome we want, just not the mathematical equation to get there.

Mama + Career = Success.

Seems simple doesn’t it? “Well duh Tiff! It goes like this: you get up, you get the kid up, you drop them off at school/daycare, you go to work, you pick them up from school, you go home, you’re a great mom, SUCCESS!”

Oh friends, if it were only that simple. It’s been awhile since I’ve ranted about work, and this is certainly not one of those – but in a high profile, high pressure job like I have (which, I’m not saying it’s not the same in other situations – but hey, I can only go off of what I’m experiencing) that requires travel, being surrounded by men who’s wives are fabulous and can stay at home w/ their beautiful children while they can spread their wings, go kill something, drag it back to the cave and eat it mentality – or shoot, just plain being surrounded, almost engulfed in a world of men – it’s a different equation. I’m sure it’s the same in any situation. If anything I’m blessed by at least having a little bit of flexibility – to work from home on Fridays when possible. To go have lunch with Prayse when there is something special happening at school.

MSNBC brought this to life with this article on Working moms redefining success. A few stats from the article:

Women now make up 51 percent of the total U.S. workforce. Last year, the number of working moms as sole family breadwinners hit a record high.

New research suggests that the majority of women in the U.S. are satisfied with both their professional and personal accomplishments. A survey by Kenexa Research Institute looked at whether women thought their futures looked promising, and 62 percent said: “I can meet my career goals and still devote sufficient attention to my family/personal life.” That compares to 59 percent among men who feel that way.

For women in the U.S., “having a fulfilled or satisfied personal life is an aspect of achieving a promising future at an organization,” said Brenda Kowske, research manager and at Kenexa.

Working Mom? Check. Sole breadwinner of the family? Check. (A bit of history – my hubs works his arse off. He opened up his own business in January and while we can we are putting every penny he makes back into that company for long term success – just to clarify so nobody thinks R is just at home sitting down, sipping mojitos or something).

Satisfied with both professional and personal accomplishments? Uhh… proud of what I’ve been able to do, yes. Satisfied? No.

Meeting career goals AND still devoting sufficient time to family and personal life? Who are these 62% of women that said this? I trust Kenexa’s research – they are a solid company. But I guess for me personally I’m struggling with just more than a few aspects of this stat. First – what the heck are my career goals? I know what they are for this quarter, this year, next year – but to have a five year plan is so challenging for me – it all shifted on July 14, 2007 at 3:28 p.m. That moment rocked my world and I’m still not quite recovered.

Second, they asked a double barreled question. Listen here – you researchers, you should know about double barreled questions, in fact I KNOW that you know about them. This is one of them. You can ask Moms if you are devoting sufficient time to family life and then you can ask Moms if they are devoting sufficient time to personal life. You cannot however ask about both in the same question or the results will get skewed. A man wrote that survey question, no doubt about it. For men, I bet the could lump them into one and be confident w/ the answer. For me? No. First off there is the definition of “success” with each of those – then there’s the point that they are just two vastly different things. Something that we all struggle with.

So while I am glad to see that as a whole us “working Moms” are finding greater flexibility, we’re paving our way, we’re pushing the limits and creating new boundaries – fact remains that the boundaries are still there. They are there culturally, corporately, emotionally and to some extent probably always will be. But I’m proud of us for attempting to figure it out and to keep working at that darn equation. I’m no math expert, but it’s one that I’m determined to get right.