Are women satisfied with having it all?
Not entirely, according a new Barna Group study. From
commitments to family, career, church and community, women often are pulled in
opposite directions. Not all are happy with their choices.
We’ve analyzed the data and present the top five findings:
- Mothers want a better balance between work and
family life. A majority of women in the study (59 percent) say they are
dissatisfied with this balance. Among mothers with children at home, this rate
increased to 62 percent. Eighty percent of moms say they feel overwhelmed by
stress (compared to 72 percent among all women). - Mothers rank family as their No. 1 priority. As job 1, family consumes the most of
their time for seven out of 10 women. Not surprisingly, no other commitment
comes close to it. Career comes in second, with two out of 10 mothers saying
they spend most of their time at work. Career, however, is last on their
priority list—after family, personal development, church and friendship. - Mothers feel greater dissatisfaction when they
compare their lives with those of other women. In fact, moms with children at home
(14 percent) are twice as likely as those without kids (7 percent) to view
other women’s quality of life as better than their own. Similarly, mothers are
twice as likely to say their female counterparts have a better career life (21
percent compared to 11 percent of all women) and better financial comfort (22
percent compared to 10 percent) than they do. - Family life is the greatest source of stress for
mothers. Although 61 percent of mothers say they’re satisfied with their family
life, many also say it’s their greatest source of stress. Mothers are nearly
twice as likely (20 percent) as women without kids (12 percent) to become
stressed to the point of illness. - Mothers feel spread too thin. More than three
out of 10 moms (31 percent) say they have too many commitments at work
(compared to 25 percent of all women), and 26 percent say they feel spread too
thin at home (compared to 18 percent among all women).
Kate Harris, a mother of three and leader of an organization
dedicated to vocation and calling, explores the word “vocation” in light of
these data.
While vocation is often understood in terms of a job or
career, Harris says it’s broader than that: It’s a person’s entire life lived
in response to God’s voice. Such a definition requires
practical trade-offs, but it never asks women to compartmentalize their lives
into artificial categories of work and life, or home and market, she says.
“Vocation offers the possibility that my life and my faith
can be richly and imaginatively stewarded as a whole that is greater than the
sum of its part,” she adds.
“God cares that I steward the life that is front of me,” she
continues. “To wrestle and wrangle or muddle my way through it—whatever it
takes—but to always insist that it makes sense, that it holds together. To
believe the details of our days really do connect to some bigger purpose God
has for our lives.”
