Superwoman Squeeze
Millions of voices will ring out later this month with greetings of “Happy Mother’s Day.” Weeks before Sunday, May 12th, commercials will air on TV and radio, sponsored Facebook posts will clog up your feed, and #mothersday will rise to the top of trending Tweets, as businesses market their multitude of wonderful wares — all to encourage the buying of gifts to honor mom.
Mom may indeed be happy on this special day of the year, when she might be indulged with breakfast in bed, served by her smiling children and her adoring husband (or other loving partner, as families come in many forms these days). She might be barred from the kitchen for the rest of the day, taken out to dinner, or perhaps allowed to actually have some time all to herself to do exactly as she chooses, including nothing at all, for a change of pace.
I first became a mother in 1979 after six years of marriage and a teaching career. U.S. Labor Department statistics from around that time (1980) show that 56.6% of mothers with children under the age of 18 were in the labor force. Many mothers were still able, emotionally and financially, to make the choice to remain at home with their children. At the time, I was one of them, taking a leave of absence from teaching.
By 2013, stats showed that 57% of women whose youngest child was under one year old were in the labor force; 61% with youngest child under 3 years old; and 64% with youngest child under 6 years old. Jump ahead to today, and 70% of women with children under 18 participate in the labor force.
Motherhood has never been easy, but it’s my belief that the job has become much more complicated in today’s world.
If you are a mother in the workforce, you truly must be a superwoman, a term that just happens to have been coined in the 1970s-80s, coinciding with what’s described as “the shift of the woman’s traditional role of a housewife towards a more career-oriented way of life.” Says Wikipedia, “This life involved the pursuit of both traditional female roles in the home and with children, as well as the pursuit of traditionally masculine goals in the form of jobs and public social status.”
After doing research for this article, I realized I was right in the thick of this major change, with my second child, a son, being born in 1982.
Today, my 39-year-old daughter is the superwoman I worry about. To me, her life is a whirlwind and I don’t know how she manages to find the energy for it all. She and her family live in Webster, NY, and my two grandchildren are 10 and 6. A very successful technology/marketing executive, she now travels frequently for her job but still manages to write a family blog every Sunday night to keep us all updated on her busy life, complete with photos. After reading it each week, I’m the one who’s exhausted!
Getting kids off to a before-school morning program, picking them up at afterschool care, juggling work commitments with unexpectedly sick kids or inconveniently sick pets, scheduling a multitude of kids’ play dates and sleepovers, parent/teacher conferences, dealing with the barrage of emails that now come from school, overseeing homework, taking part in the wide spectrum of activity choices available to today’s young families — all this is just a small portion of a parent’s life. I haven’t yet mentioned groceries, meal prep, laundry, housecleaning, etc. Fortunately, my daughter has a very involved, wonderful husband who shares the work load, and in-laws who live nearby and are always ready to lend a hand.
Add to this already busy mix, a full work week outside the home with presentations to prepare for prospective clients, trade shows and conferences to attend out of town with colleagues, traveling to clients’ sites in other states, plus various work-related community functions after hours. Even when she is home, she is rarely far from her laptop. She works in airports while waiting for planes. While visiting me, I’ve seen her go out to her car to take a scheduled call from a client on what was supposed to be a day off. If she has a “sorta-sick” kid who can’t go to school — she’ll take him to the office for half a day; then switch off with her husband, who has some work flexibility, to take over for the afternoon shift.
She is a master of technology and uses it to its fullest extent to stay organized. Years ago, before stores started delivering groceries to homes, I was amazed when she told me she ordered bulk staple items like paper towels and toilet paper from Amazon. She uses meal kit services like Hello Fresh to supplement local grocery shopping. And, yes, she has someone clean her house once a month.
My daughter can afford to pay for these things. But what about the moms who work 40 hours a week or more and can’t? What about single moms who don’t have a partner on their team to help?
Certainly, I don’t have the answers to what has been referred to as the “superwoman squeeze” — the pressure that many women feel in fulfilling their multiple roles and performing at a high level across personal, family, and work responsibilities.
Experts say it’s an increasingly prevalent phenomenon, and can be associated with negative psychological feelings of guilt and a sense of inferiority and inadequacy. If so, how do we combat “the squeeze”?
To get some answers, I sent out a query to a forum that reaches professional women across the United States, and was overwhelmed with responses, some of which I share below in honor of Mother’s Day this year, and on behalf of superwomen everywhere!
Says Sara Borgstede of Tonawanda, NY, “I run a full-time business as a writer, speaker, and website owner (www.theholymess.com) and I also work part-time as a social worker for a local non-profit organization. My husband and I have 5 children, so I can definitely relate to the struggles of a busy woman who is trying to balance it all. One of the best things I’ve done to find balance is to get selfish. Ten years ago, I was 100 pounds heavier than I am today. I was so busy taking care of others but failed to take care of myself. When I started my weight loss journey for the final time, I began to understand the importance of regular exercise, time spent on healthy meal prep, and time to relax and unwind. I schedule these activities into my week first and the rest of life’s craziness has to fit around these priorities. It’s made all the difference in both maintaining my weight loss and living a happy life.”
Author of The Ultimate New Mom’s Cookbook, mother to Lila, 18 months, and Jack, 4, Aurora Satler lives in New York City. Says Satler, “Today’s moms are pressured to be and have it all and then to beautifully post about their wonderful lives all over social media. I don’t think any of us live up to the image in our heads. I’ve always had an image of myself in executive attire somehow wearing heels and pushing a stroller with a happy, clean and well-dressed child. I work in the culinary field so I don’t even need to wear a suit and heels. Children mix as well as oil and vinegar, and now I’m rocking the double-wide stroller in NYC which is like pushing a loveseat through traffic. I think the way to happiness is to admit that you just can’t have it all... at once. You can have home cooked meals from scratch, a spotless house, a gorgeous manicure and blown out hair, and enjoy wild adventures with your kids but not ALL IN ONE DAY. And, truthfully, no one can do that despite anything you see online or in a magazine. It’s not only exhausting but also unenjoyable.”
“The pressure to do it all sucks the fun out of a woman’s life as she rushes to excel at, rather than enjoy, one thing after another. In doing so, not only does she lose the ability to have fun, but she also loses the ability to be fun company for herself, her friends and especially, her spouse,” says Beth Liebling of Houston, Texas, a divorced, middle-aged, mother of five children and Bubbe to her beloved granddaughter. She’s also an Ivy-League educated, former board-certified divorce attorney.
After witnessing hundreds of divorces, including her own (after twenty-two years of marriage), Liebling started thinking about relationships differently. She found herself looking to heal herself and find what had been missing in her own life, as well as help the people who’d been her clients. So, she opened Darling Way, a uniquely romantic, elegantly sexy boutique in the historic Houston Heights and online at https://darlingway.com/
Liebling goes on to point out, “In her chase to keep up appearances for the outside world, it’s easy to lose sight of those whose love and support we take for granted. But, who can, or wants to, keep up with a superhero who spends all her time zipping around solving the world’s problems instead of snuggling together on the couch like they did when they were dating? Who wants to have hurried romantic intimacy with a superhero who is in a rush to tend to the next chore on her list?”
“The only way to combat this drain,” says Liebling, “is to stop pretending we can have our cake and eat it, too. We can’t. We are all superwomen, yet we are human. We need to accept our humanity and focus on the priorities that we choose in our individual lives. We need to love ourselves as much as we love our families and friends, and we need to allow those we love to express it while we graciously accept it. We need to excel at taking care of ourselves as much as we do them. We need to think long-term happiness and not short-term appearances. When we accept that nurturing, pleasing, and pleasuring our heart is more rewarding and motivating than impressing others, we will have rid ourselves of the squeeze.
I could go on and on; I lived this for way too many years with my five kids and law practice and workaholic husband. Thank you for helping others wise up and embrace joy in life.”
Julia Egan, Ph.D., is in her mid-thirties and the mother of two boys. The mission of her website www.balancingbravely.com is supporting working moms to achieve career success, while finding balance between work, family, and finances.
Egan comments, “As women are pressured into the ‘superwoman squeeze,’ we need to redefine what success and balance look like in our lives. Instead of believing that we can ‘do it all,’ we need to reevaluate what we value most, the activities that bring us joy, and then find ways to prioritize those tasks and activities at home, at work, and in our own time.”
She goes on to say, “Instead of focusing on being less busy, let’s find ways to fill our time more intentionally. For me, that means spending my time at work doing more intellectually challenging tasks, and less time doing admin work and attending meetings (activities that bore and drain me). With my two kids, that means spending our time in less structured ways, even though I’m a super structured person. We enjoy our time together most when we are just playing, rather than running around to different lessons, groups, and sports. Success is not defined by an end goal, but making sure that our days are full of the things that make us happy.”
Michele Miller is the founder, editor, and publisher of Western New York Family, now celebrating 35 years in publication. Widowed in 1993 when her children were 10 and 13, she has been known to be a superwoman while raising her kids as a single parent and working to grow the magazine to replace her late husband’s lost income. But, in recent years she has re-prioritized her life to avoid burnout and become “semi-retired,” doing the magazine tasks she enjoys most, and delegating others to her very capable staff.