A (Very) Non-Millennial Working Mom's Thoughts on Tattoos, Piercings, and Work-Life Balance

Work Wednesday

Most days I'm O.K. with my existence as a 40-plus-year-old married working mom. But there's a part of me - despite corporal evidence to the contrary - that thinks I'm forever 29.

 

Now I know I'm not.

The other day, I took the Pew Research Center's How Millennial Are You? quiz. It's an amusing companion to Pew's just-released report on all things Millennial, the 18-to-29-year cohort also known as Generation Next. My score landed me in Baby Boomer (ages 46-65) territory. Aack!

 

I'm not, technically, a Baby Boomer. I'm a GenXer. (But just barely.) I'm not sure if it was the absence of body piercings that marked me as older than my years. Or maybe I was doomed by the presence of a landline?

In any event, the Pew report has lots of fascinating stuff about Millennials. Like 38% have a tattoo. (And half of those with tattoos have two to five; 18% have six or more.) I don't. (I think they're cool but have a real needle-aversion that's keeps me design-free.)

What interests me most, though, are the Millennials' attitudes toward work-life issues.

 

For example, in the Pew survey, only (only?) 23% of Millennials say that the trend of women with young children working outside the home is "bad for society." This compares to 29% of GenXers, 39% of Baby Boomers, and 38% of older Americans who share this view. (To complete the picture, 33% of Millennials say this is "good" and 40% say its "neither.") I guess this is good news.  Especially because nearly 64% of women with young children are in the labor force.

Even more compelling is recent data from the consulting firm, Accenture, about Millennial (and Millennial-plus) professional women (here, women aged 22-35). Despite the recession, the vast majority of the 1000 women surveyed by Accenture - 94% - believe they can achieve a balance between a satisfying professional life and a gratifying personal life.

 

And nearly half of them - 46% - actually reported having an equal balance between their work and personal lives. (Hmm. I wonder how many of them have kids right now. Or whether they're simply balancing work with leisure-filled weekends.) Significantly, 59% of these Millennial women defined success as "doing meaningful work while maintaining a work/life balance" as opposed to achieving a certain job title or level (37%) or being seen as an expert in their field (38%).

 

I think back to my expectations in my Millennial-equivalent years. For the most part, I was in school. First college, then law school (with some time off) from ages 17 to 25. To the extent that I even thought about work-life balance during that time, I recall being very confident that I could do it all. Effortlessly. I remember being puzzled by a classmate who focused on trusts and estates law rather than litigation because she thought it would be more "family friendly."

Even at 29, when I'd been in the working for a few years and watched many of my colleagues struggle with the demands of parenthood and career, I didn't get it. (I'm sorry.)

 

I somehow thought that it would be easier for me. I wouldn't show up with spit up on my clothes. I wouldn't forgo foreign travel for the homefront. I wouldn't make career decisions based on family considerations. I was, of course, wrong. Spectacularly wrong.

Let me be clear. I do think its possible to balance work, children, and marriage. To have "a satisfying career and a gratifying personal life" in Accenture's terms. But now I realize that it takes a lot of work, a willingness to make compromises and live with imperfections, and some serious time management skills. (And an ability to live on suboptimal sleep.)

So I'm not sure what to make about the optimism of these Millennial women. What do they know that I didn't? Are they arrogant or confident? Keen or clueless? Will they redefine success or will they stick to the same old standards? No matter what, I'm fascinated. How about you? What do you think?

 

Photo by SharonaGott via Flickr.com.

Comments

[Melanie (ModernMami)]

I think that I'm considered a millenial by age bracket. (I haven't taken the quiz yet.) But, personally, I think I try to redefine what success and balance mean to me. Therefore, I may not have it all...at the same time...but I'm happy with what's there so I feel a balance between work and life. Does that make sense?

[Karen Paul-Stern]

First of all, I desperately want a tat. But besides the fact that my husband would be appalled, it feels like I'm too old.

But more to the point, while I am officially a baby boomer (born in 1963,) and sometimes I feel like a Gen Xer, I think that honestly I represent more of a "bridge" generation. Sometimes I tip to the luddite side of life, sometimes I feel energized by the speed-skating pace of technology and its advances. There's a really interesting conversation to be had about multi-generations in the workplace (and I know that it's being held in many places already.)

One of my first jobs was in an organization that conducted research and advocacy around women in the workplace. I thought I knew it all. But I didn't really understand the issues until I started having children, and I have a funny feeling, despite their lives being couched in a technological world from the get-go, that this will be true for the millenials as well, and that these studies will reflect similar and possibly new issues around work-life balance when the millenial generation becomes parents.

[Julie Glass]

I think that the idea of balance is a bigger issue now than it was when we were the age and experiential equivalents of the millenials. We came of age in a different time: we were kids during the Second Wave and applied to college when ERA was still on the table. As much as feminism taught us to honor traditional "women's work," we were also encouraged to walk away from it. Things were a bit more raw then, and the idea of choosing a career that would permit more balance between work and family obligations never occurred to so many of us - though many of us stuggle with it now.

All these years later, balance is so much more of a watch word. Anecdotally, I hear about so many young women who are choosing career paths that will permit more "balance" in their lives when they have families. They may achieve more balance in some respects - but they won't necessarily have more gender equality in their relationships with partners. The struggles will be different, but the same.

[Jamie]

I've read the Millenials are more demanding about what they expect work to give to them, and if it doesn't, they'll move on. So they are less likely to think that work is, well, like work alot of the time. I think it is a good thing if people define success in ways other than career status, but am not sure they have experienced the pain of trying to balance until they have families. One of my business partners used to tell me I was "lucky" that I could stay and work into the night. I wanted to hit him over the head because his "choice" to go home to his family instead of working increased my workload. Now I understand more what he was saying because I too leave because I need to get home to my family. That doesn't mean that I'm always fulfilling my professional obligations fully though. It's not possible to do it all well.
And I know I'm a boomer because I don't like tatoos!