Do you think it's possible to have a demanding career and spend enough time with your family?

I would have to agree with Florinda and many others,

Like Florinda, I think we have to realize that trying to be 100% effective at 100% of what we do in our career and as a parent 100% of the time sets us up for trying to achieve something very difficult.

I think it really begins to make a little more sense when we decide to define success in terms that actually promote a healthier outlook. Perhaps by giving ourselves do-able goals and creating a success statment that guides our daily and weekly selves.

For example: my definition of success is if I make one positive step towards making my business healthy and I spend at least 1 session of quality time with my daughter after school playing a game or reading a book with her.

I also set these types of goals with housecleaning, cooking, and many other dimensions of my life. This helps me to be satisfied by understanding I can't really give 100% of me to 100% of everything 100% of the time.

Best of luck to all in making the career-family balance work for you!

Absolutely not!. I have tried for years to do both and it is next to impossible. When I worked for someone else there was never enough time for the kids, traffic, sick days for me and the kids, vacations, dinner and a clean house. It's physically not possible. Since I've been working for myself and now have 3 kids it's even worse. I work only from 9:00 to 2:30 and that is only on the days that my kids all have school. They go to 3 different schools and the days off are not coordinated. As an architect with my own firm it is next to impossible for me to take on big corporate projects. I have to focus on small residential and commercial projects where the clients understand that my kids come first. It is awfully hard to find clients like that and I'm hardly making any money. So for me I don't think I can do both well. Most of the time I feel I"m doing both half as well as I could. So for now while the kids are young I give up on the good projects so that I can be home with them on holidays and when they are sick. Maybe when everyone is over age 8 I'll be able to focus more on being an architect, but it is impossible now.

I don't have anything new to add - I'm in the "it depends on how YOU define it" camp. But I do think it's both mathematically and physically impossible to give 100% to your family AND 100% to your career (not to mention any community/extracurricular activities or - gasp! - yourself) 100% of the time. If you can accept that, and find a way that makes it all work for you, then I think it's definitely possible.

Ack! Wrote a well-thought out answer & it disappeared. Short version was, yes, we can have demanding careers. Why? Because my grandmother raised 5 kids, line-dried her laundry, cooked from scratch for 7, and worked part-time as a lunch lady. I certainly can cook frozen pizza for 2 kids and have a demanding career. From how my mother tells it, I'm still giving my kids more quality attention than my grandmother did.

I think Kate stole my comment! I think it is very much possible but everyones definition of "demanding career" and "enough time" can be different. As long as the people that matter are on the same page with those definitions I think anything is possible!!