One of our prolific MTers just inspired this diary: she wrote over on Open Thread that she began serious journaling when she was just a kid, and, as we know, she's now a professional journalist (looking at you, Rachel ;).

So now I am wondering: how did you choose your career path?

You read my mind, MPG! I don't have a book manuscript, but I have been weepy lately about my career, which I attribute to caring for a young baby and being sleep-deprived and depressed. But you are right: We are all high-achieving moms here and I am certain that we -- and our spouses! -- have felt this way. Thank you for posting this, MPG. It feels good to know I am not alone. -Elisa

I like to write diary posts that I think will have, if not an appeal to everyone at MT, at least some interest to the reading population. So lately I haven’t posted because since the holidays I feel like I’ve been caught in a web of self-pity that, really, no one wants to hear about.  (And if you stop reading here, I won’t blame you! But there is more.)

Finally, someone talking about women's careers and families and not making it sound like an epic battle. In an article at Huffington Post, Emily Amick and Rosanna Hertz report on their survey of women from the Wellesley College classes of 2007, 2008 and 2009 "to find out their expectations for work and family." What they discovered was a refreshing sense of balance:

To "have it all" these women are willing to sacrifice a little bit of everything. They envision a life plan in which they combine work and family while letting go of hardcore notions of success. They no longer feel forced to choose between becoming the top honcho and PTA mom of the year. . . .

While others may see them as "mommy tracked" or treading water when they leave the fast-track lanes, they are immune to being pigeonholed and labeled as less than competitive. They have chosen an alternative definition of success which includes remaining a member of their professions on their own terms.

Raised to believe they could be and do anything they want, the idea of choice has become the singular word that legitimizes anything and everything these young women do. . . . Feminism empowers them to make the decision they think is best for themselves. Hoping to be a stay at home mom or a working woman, both groups are simmering that they have to "make a choice" at all. . . .

This attitude (and I can't believe it is exclusive to this group) portends greater social changes. These women want spouses or partners who will share household and childcare duties. They want parental leaves of six months to a year, so that a significant spell as a stay-at-home parent "might become a normal part of a work path rather than a terminating factor." They also want better childcare and after-school programs so they don't have to schedule and manage nannies: "These young women do not want to patch together care giving solutions. . . . Young women want their communities to play a significant role in meeting the demands of raising kids and continued employment. . . ."

Yes, they are worried about finding a happy balance. The outlook, however, seems less gloomy than when reported in the context of the media-hyped "mommy wars":

These women are not willing to give up any part of their identity in deference of a success defined by someone else.  . . . To do this, many are willing to let go of unrealistic notions of perfection and the intensive pace that has escalated in both corner offices and playgrounds. In the end though, they are confident that they truly will be able to find a balance, and "have it all."

Amen to that. Worth reading the full article.

(Full disclosure: I am a Wellesley alumna. I reviewed Hertz's book, Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice last fall. —Crossposted at Mombian.)

Last night my mind was occupied by Mothers on the Fast Track: How a New Generation Can Balance Family and Careers written by a mother-daughter team -- Mary Ann Mason, Graduate Dean of UC Berkeley, and her freelancing daughter Eve Mason Ekman.

In many ways, the Masons are the perfect duo to write the book as the elder Mason is a pioneering feminist who became the first Graduate Dean at the university. Eve is like so many women of my generation who put a premium on family often at the expense of a “fast track” career.

The mother-daughter writing team studied and profiled women who were on their way to become attorneys, doctors, company executives, scientists and tenured professors. But somewhere along the way the women were sidetracked to stay home with children and forever linger in a “second tier” job -- and never make it to the fast track again.

The elder Mason blamed this on an increasingly hostile workforce very different from even the fast track jobs she held during her child-rearing years, in which she was home by 6:30 p.m. for dinner. She admitted that with the advent of pagers, cell phones and e-mails, workers today are always “on call.” The 40-hour work week is more like 60 hours of work.

But the most controversial part of the book, which reminded me of Judith Warner’s Perfect Madness, is when she blames the new “Momism” of Eve’s generation, or what Warner describes as “attachment parenting:”

The demands of the workplace have increased, but the demands of motherhood have exploded. Children now require constant attention. In the 1970s, kids were still allowed to play outdoors by themselves; the national milk carton campaign alerting parents to the terrors of child abduction had not yet panicked the nation. Caitlin Flanagan, in her memoir of her mother returning to work, To Hell with All That, describes a 1970s childhood that did not require continuous adult supervision: “By the time I was five, I was allowed to wander away from the house so long as I didn’t cross any big streets; I had the run of the neighborhood at six. So the idea that I would be home alone in the afternoons at the age of twelve was not a radical or an overly worrisome one for my mother.”

This style of parenting did not elicit social censure as it sometimes does today: “Such an arrangement was not then seen as a shocking dereliction of duty: a nine-year-old could be trusted with a key; a nine-year-old knew how to work a telephone if anything went wrong.”

Children were not yet fully booked with after-school and weekend activities that require a full-time manager and chauffeur. Homework did not begin in preschool or require hours of parental involvement each night…

The requirements of the new momism have escalated in other ways as well. Ironically, as women have moved into the workplace, breast-feeding has become not just popular but a requirement of good motherhood. My mother’s generation of stay-at-home moms didn’t breast-feed; formula was considered the healthier, modern choice, and in its own way, a form of quiet liberation. My mother could leave me with her mother while she joined her soldier husband, my father, on furlough from war duty, for a romantic weekend. She was not physically bound to my feeding schedule.