A reporter calls me to talk about a story concerning working women, and she says, "Do you really have five kids?" Well, yes, I have five kids. And she says, "Boy, you have this business and you travel, and you also have five kids! You really lead a double life." I take a deep breath, and murmur "Heh-heh. Well, it's all one life." I don't get angry - I've heard it too many times. But really, when will people let go of this "double life" stuff? A person leading a double life is a Cold-War-era spy. The "double life" bit refers to the the fact that the person leads two lives which don't intersect - they are kept separate from one another. Now think about this - when's the last time you heard anyone say about a man with a demanding career, and kids - "Boy, he leads a double life." Here's the likely answer: Never! No one ever says that a guy with kids and a job leads a double life. He leads a standard working dad's life, to be specific. He goes to work, and then he comes home, and there are the kids. But a woman who both works and has a family is said to have two lives. Here's why that bothers me so much: if we've learned anything, one tiny thing over the past couple of decades about working moms, it's that we're not divisible into little slices called The Business Me and The Family Me. Those selves are deeply entangled. The kids' looming science fair project takes up a piece of the mental energy which is otherwise devoted to the PowerPoint presentation I'm working on. And the clients' need for English-Spanish translation is on my mind even while I'm reading to the second grade book club. There's no Great Wall of China between these pieces of me, or, I'm betting, of you; there's a lot of sloshing of information, and brainpower, and anxiety when something or other isn't working right, from one side to the other. And it happens all day long, and at three in the morning when I wake up to move the three-year-old back into his own bed. The business gets the best of me, and so does the family; like most of the women I know, I can't take off one hat and don another at will. At the surface or deep in the background, the wheels are turning, and the priorities are shuffling and re-shuffling a hundred times a day. I don't pop into a phone booth (if I could even find one) and pull off my mom uniform to reveal the Super Business Woman costume underneath. I'm always wearing both outfits, and flipping from one mode to the other continuously. The Double Life label undersells us. It would be easier to manage, wouldn't it, if we could set the kid stuff aside when it's time to do business? No such luck. It's still there, still pressing, and we have to figure out how to make room for it while being the best businesspeople we can be. And it works the same way in reverse. It's all me. If you hire me, you get me: entangled, kid-encumbered, needs-to-stop-at-the-grocery-store-for-dinner-on-the-way-home me, and if you happen to be born into our family, you get the traveling, business-focused version of me for your mom. There's just one flavor. It's all one life. A real double life, a John le Carre double life, is full of secrets and intrigue. With us working moms, it's just the opposite: it's too hard to keep secrets, so what you see is what you get. No double life, just one very full, complicated, on-the-brink-of-disaster-at-any-given-moment life which seems to pull together at the very last second. Phew! |
