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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (10949)	10/25/1998 7:44:00 AM
From: Who, me?	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

"Now the word is balance" A groundbreaking survey finds American women today are more focused on family, less driven about career - and much less concerned about what the neighbors think. In this article: Is career important to women of today? Quality vs. quantity By Patricia Edmonds As American women approach the new millennium, they are focused more on their families and homes, and less on meeting career goals or society's expectations, than at any other time in the past two decades. That's just one of the compelling new findings, published exclusively here in USA WEEKEND magazine, of Update:Women, a comprehensive research project tracking American women's attitudes about life, work and the struggle to balance both. Through surveys and in-depth interviews with thousands of women since 1979, Update:Women researchers Liz Nickles and Laurie Ashcraft documented a profound social shift. In the late '70s, only about half of women ages 20-50 worked outside the home, and they saw life very differently from women who didn't. In the late '90s, three-fourths of women ages 20-50 work - but they and non-working women now profess more similar priorities. Today, both groups: Consider home and family as important as a career. Want quantity more than "quality" time with their kids. Care less about what others think of them. Feel less ambitious, career-driven and competitive. Today, women 35 and over - many of whom had careers first, kids later - describe themselves as much less ambitious than women their ages did two decades ago. Meanwhile, today's under-35 women still say they're ambitious, but they aim to have families first, careers later - and, even more than baby boomers, they consider motherhood "the most important job in the world." The survey's findings are important because they put to rest the simplistic depiction of working and non-working women as "two camps on two sides of a battle front," says Ellen Galinsky of the New York-based Families and Work Institute. "In most women's lives, it's not a case of work or family - it's both." They're women like Chicago psychologist Patti Fazio, 53, who felt like "a pioneer" when she broke ranks with stay-at-home moms 20 years ago. And they're women like Fazio's daughter, Milwaukee pediatrician Patti Young, 31, who cut back to part-time work so she could stay home with her kids. Young typifies what the survey says women want now: "I try to do the best I can and be satisfied with that, but keep this balanced life." Why the dramatic shifts in attitude that Update:Women found? In the late-'70s findings, Nickles says, "Women were gung-ho. They got out there and went to work, but they weren't getting the support - and the stress level just increased phenomenally, which we saw in the late-'80s survey. It's as if they went onstage and nobody clapped. So by this latest survey in the late '90s, they stopped depending on the applause" and reprioritized, integrating their demanding jobs and their devotion to family. The key findings: he share of working women who said career is as important as being a wife and mother plunged 23 percent. Among the reasons: Women who felt undervalued as homemakers but found work a heady, rewarding experience in the 1970s now find they "can feel as appreciated at home," says Nickles. She and Ashcraft call this homebody groundswell "the Martha Stewartization of American women." Women who have dodged corporate downsizing or bumped into the glass ceiling more than once may conclude a career isn't as important: "Your job at XYZ Corp. may last a few years, but your personal life is what you have forever," says Marcia Kropf of Catalyst, a think tank that promotes women in the workplace. In late-1990s America, women feel less guilt and more emotional latitude about choosing to work for pay, stay at home, or both. Still, labor statistics show no mass movement out of the workforce, or even into part-time employment. Nickles and Ashcraft's interpretation: Women dream of "de-escalating" with more time at home, but most still need to work, for the paycheck or personal fulfillment - "so their lives are more complex and demanding than ever. There is still a gap between the reality and the dream." In response, the analysts say, women are trying to move from the frantic "juggling" of work and home to a painstaking "grafting" of the two: doing some paid work from home, handling some family needs in the workplace (for example, on-site child care). During her medical residency, says pediatrician Young, "I was not a mom," leaving her child with a sitter to work 100-hour weeks. Now, Young works 20 hours a week on her hospital's night and Sunday shifts so she's home more with daughter K.C., 3, and son Jack, 9 months. She had misgivings about scaling back but reminds herself that "the potential to be the best doctor is not taken away from me. I have all the tools. I'm just choosing to use those skills part time, for now." he Update:Women study found that the notion of "quality time" has fallen into disfavor, most sharply among working women. While late-'70s women minted the concept as a justification for spending less time at home, Ashcraft says, by now many women have decided "it didn't work for them or their kids." Teresa Dowling, 42, says she loved her job managing software testers at Microsoft in Redmond, Wash. But during crunch times, she'd find herself working seven days a week and rarely making it home for dinner with husband Tom, daughter Breann, 18, and son Gregg, 15: "You don't feel you're missing anything because you schedule life so precisely. And then you wake up one day and say, 'Oh, my gosh - my daughter just graduated.' " So 3 1/2 months ago, Dowling left Microsoft: "I say it's a one-year leave because it's a really scary feeling to just stop this career." With her family of four's income cut almost in half, she's paring her grocery budget to $100 a week. But she already feels the payoff: "I'll be in the kitchen and my son or daughter will just sit down at the counter and start talking. And I'm thinking, 'Here's all this precious time, all this stuff they have to say.' " hile women in the late 1970s were likelier to "set their goals in relationship to what others said," Ashcraft says, women today are just "doing what they feel is right." In the early '80s, Katherine Caroland was assistant to Vanity Fair's art director in New York City, "where you're embarrassed if you don't work." She got pregnant and moved with her husband to Nashville, where she launched a cosmetics business but felt "uncomfortable that I was working" while neighbors weren't. Today, Caroland, 40, works 30-hour weeks during the school year, takes summers off with her 10- and 12-year-old sons - and feels "so lucky to have my husband and sons that I don't care what other people think." Women today also are less likely to worry about how they look, says Nickles: "We're less concerned about appearance than about being healthier, living longer for our kids." hile working and non-working women answered questions about ambition very differently two decades ago, the analysts say, today both groups say they're less ambitious or driven. As a new law school graduate in the mid-1970s, "I had aspirations," says Janelle Phifer, 49. Five years after joining the Toledo (Ohio) Legal Aid Society, she was its director, on call non-stop. By 1989, with a husband and baby, "it was like, 'I can't do it all.' " She stepped down to a 36-hour-a-week staff job to have time for family (daughters, now 9 and 5). When people ask Phifer why she isn't on a more ambitious career track, she says she sometimes feels "like a deadbeat, like I'm abandoning The Cause. But I've done as much as I want to do career-wise. And you know what's out there if you choose that track again: It's pressure-packed, and you don't say no to the bosses - you say no to your family. I'm not willing to do that." While today's 35- to 50-year-old women told Update:Women they're setting less lofty goals, younger women say they're both ambitious and home-focused. This group "saw that the Corporate Woman who never had kids was frustrated, and the Supermom had a nervous breakdown," says Jane Rinzler Buckingham of Youth Intelligence, a research firm that tracks attitudes of under-30 Americans. "They want to be successful, but on their own terms." n the late '70s, when Nickles and Ashcraft were looking for a girl to epitomize what women would face in the next generation, they found a 13-year-old named Patti Marie. "I will probably get married," the girl said then, "but I would definitely want a job, too," maybe in the sciences. She dreamed of lofty achievements such as finding a cure for cancer. Nearly two decades later, Patti Marie Young is a wife, mom, doctor - and the achievement lies in keeping that all in harmony. "In college, I really felt driven and ambitious, but now I wouldn't consider those words big compliments," she says. "For me now, the word is balance." usaweekend.com