Wow. I’ve seen PhD dissertations with more finely scoped topics*.

Do I think it’s possible to have a demanding career, be a mom (I assume you mean a mom you’re proud of being, as opposed to a child-producer) and have a great relationship? Of course it’s possible. People do it. You’re doing it right now, right?

What I think you’re really asking, though, with this question is whether it’s possible to GUARANTEE you’ll be able to handle a demanding career, being a good mom and having a great relationship. To which I say no, it’s not possible. Life doesn’t work that way.

Everybody faces pitfalls in every one of those areas. Couples reach fundamental impasses where compromise isn’t possible (he wants two kids, she wants three — find me a compromise there). Kids get diagnosed with life-changing conditions. Jobs get moved to [insert place you wouldn't be willing to live -- for me it's New York City or LA]. There’s no way to guarantee that some deal-breaker isn’t going to come along and mess up one or more of these areas of your life.

Does that mean it’s hopeless to try to have it “all”? Maybe, maybe not. Just like anything else, I think it depends on how badly you want it. I have chosen motherhood and couplehood over careerhood. I value the first two enough more than the last one that it has been easy to prioritize things that way. Do I sometimes wish I had a job that really engaged me intellectually and about which I had great passion? Of course. But when I weigh all the costs and benefits, I prefer a job that gives me the flexibility to take the morning off if my kid is going on a field trip.

I think it is unrealistic to expect that those things are never going to conflict with each other. Sometimes when the chips are down, you’re going to have to choose whether to put the finishing touches on that big report or show your support for your partner at his company awards ceremony. I think that the more equal your priorities, the more of these decisions are going to require lots of thought and the more wrenching it will be to make them. For some people maybe it’s easier to make one big gut-wrenching decision up front (”I’m not having children”) than to have to make a million little ones every week (”Shall I iron my blouse for work tomorrow or make something homemade for snack day?”). For some people, the cost of making the little decisions is well worth the rewards of having a demanding career, motherhood and a great relationship.

And just like most decisions, many people will change course many times over the course of their lives. A die-hard career woman might find, when she has children, that her job isn’t as compelling to her as it once was. Someone in your friend’s situation could choose her new business over her marriage (not that I’m suggesting that as a solution for her!). A woman who’s aching for kids could delay having them while her partner establishes a career. Things change.

So if you really want all three, I think there’s no reason to start off with the assumption that you can’t have all three. I just think it’s smart to go into it knowing that maybe sometime something will have to give.

*(There are probably also PhD dissertations that are SHORTER than my long-ass answer. Sorry.)

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Jan — thank you for such a thoughtful response — I think it’s great perspective and one that has given me, personally, some new ideas. And yes, this is a HUGE topic, and my thesis advisor in college would be very unhappy with me for tackling something so big in scope:), but I figured that we should just jump into it here.
–Nataly

My husband is an editor at a major newspaper. I work at a flexible, comfortable state government job. It’s been a wonderful job to have with two small children, but most days it is less than satisfying. My husband works long, odd hours and we agreed that I would stay at this job so that I would be accessible to the children. My husband earns the better salary and while I don’t have any illusions of “having it all”, I try to keep in mind through the hard days that I have a lot more than some people.

No, I worked 2 jobs while my husband was in school. Now he has a great job and I stay home with the kids. I did not finish my college education. I put my life on hold. From my point of view, you need to be an educated women and not put your life on hold. I made a big mistake! You need your education to make a good salary and to support your kids if something goes wrong along the way!

This is such an important issue. Here in Australia we recently had this dynamic played out on the nation’s stage for all to see prior to the country’s election,as the potential alternative Prime Minister and his wife and partner had to re-negotiate their professional lives. For you the many readers from outside Australia, I’m going to explain what happened here.
Therese Rein, wife and partner of the now Prime Minister, and mother of their children, had a life of her own, independent of his/theirs. There had never been a situation like this in Australian political history before. She was a highly successful, entrepreneurial women, running an award winning global recruitment business, Ingeus. She was earning more money than him many times over. Her business, however, tendered for, and won, Australian government contracts to find work for unemployed people in Australia. Should her husband, Kevin Rudd, become the leader of the government following the election, there was seen to be a conflict of interest. In the months leading up to the election, they considered various ways to manage this, seeking legal and professional advice, with each consideration pursued, examined and critiqued very publicly by the nation’s media. The final outcome was that, willingly but with much sadness, she sold her Australian interests in her company.
Many women all over the country could identify with this dilemma, albeit not at this high powered level. So many couples today have highly successful individual careers and businesses. The question of whose takes priority is challenging and difficult for couples, when an opportunity for one to advance significantly impacts on the other’s work. Most of us are able to negotiate that privately, but the then alternative Prime Minister and his wife had to do it under public scrutiny.
For me, this was just such an important process to witness, even though I was not privy to how Kevin Rudd and Therese Rein reached their decision. There were some women who used what happened to argue that this is just another case of women still having to be subservient to men and their careers, that we haven’t advanced far at all when it is the woman who has to give up her career or business for the man. For me, it was much more. To take this process, often so invisible and given so little import, to the nation’s stage was extremely powerful and significant. There was nothing to suggest that Therese Rein was being subservient to her husband. On the contrary, there was every evidence of a couple who respected each other’s needs and aspirations and who had, for all their married lives together, made decisions about whose needs and aspirations took priority on each occasion an issue arose. I doubt she has achieved the success she has – and stayed happily married – without Kevin Rudd putting his aspirations and needs second to hers on occasions.
Women and men can, and need to, negotiate important issues in their lives, taking into consideration each other’s needs and aspirations, if they learn how. I have written about this in a blog - Women and Their Partners Negotiating Work/Family Balance - outlining a way that this can be done.
We also have a Prime Minister’s wife who chooses to keep her own name and continue to work. I hope no one is going to draw the inference from this that I am advocating all women “must” keep their own name and should all work. I didn’t keep my own name and I did stay home with my children until they commenced school. What Therese Rein is doing, as Australia’s First Lady, however, is giving legitimacy and value to something about which many women are made to feel guilty. To those women who want to work, who want to be successful, who want to be a mother and who want to maintain their individuality while being happily married, she is an example of how to do it.

I think Jan makes an excellent point as do all of you. My example is one of what happens when you don’t compromise. My husband has long dreamed of entering the medical field. When the opp presented itself for him to reenter school in NYC, I was new mother to our third child and not on board to pick up and leave. I couldn’t wrap my mind around moving to a city that was so expensive. Fast forward three years, my husband now spends most of his time in NYC and the children and I live in GA. If I had it to do again, I would have gone with him, no questions asked.