December 2002

Bob Levoy’s success file
Having It All: Career and Children

A subject of growing concern to increasing numbers of women in the chiropractic profession, as well as their partners (both in marriage and in practice), is how to balance work, marriage and children.

A recent book, Creating A Life: Professional Women and the Quest For Children (Talk Miramax Books, 2002) by economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett addresses these issues. The basis for the book is a nationwide survey Hewlett conducted of highly-educated/high-earning women. Among the findings: At mid-life, between one-third and half of all high-achieving women in America are childless, many because they waited too late to try to conceive children or thought they could not balance them with a demanding career. “By and large,” Hewlett writes, “the vast majority of these women yearn for children.”

The survey also finds that overall, high-achieving women are much less likely than their male counterparts to be married. Only 8 percent of women ages 41-55 got married for the first time after age 30 and only 3 percent after age 35.

“At the end of the day,” Hewlett writes, “women simply want the choices of love and work that men take for granted.” Among her recommendations for “having it all” are:

• Look ahead. Decide what you want your life to look like at age 45 – personally and professionally. If it turns out you want children, she writes, then you need to become “highly intentional and seriously proactive”. If not, the pressure is off.

• Give urgent priority to finding a partner. This project Hewlett says, is extremely time-sensitive and deserves special attention in your twenties.

• Have your first child before 35. Don’t wait until your late 30s or early 40s before trying to have that first child. “As we now understand,” Hewlett writes, “late-in-life childbearing is fraught with risk and failure. And even if you manage to get one child ‘under the wire,’ you may fail to have a second. This too, can trigger enormous regret.”

Among the work-related options Hewlett describes to achieve a more balanced life, are: reduced-hour schedules, job-sharing, compressed work weeks and flextime.

“Creating A Life” is filled with individual stories and survey data in an attempt to help women think about how to get what they ultimately want.

Mr. Levoy, a management consultant based in Roslyn, N.Y., has conducted more than 2,500 seminars for health-care professionals. Those seminars have included programs for the American and Canadian chiropractic associations and numerous state and provincial chiropractic associations.