Balance is B.S.

CHAPTER 2The Myths That Keep Us Down

In the earlier stages of feminism, women were told they could not be whatever it was they wanted to be. After women became those things anyway, then society said, “All right, you're now a lawyer or a mechanic or an astronaut—but that's only okay if you continue to do the work you did before—if you take care of the children, cook three meals a day, and are multiorgasmic until dawn.”¹

—Gloria Steinem, journalist and activist

Before we can rise above, we've got to tear some things down. There are myths we believe without even realizing that we can opt out and live a different way. There are scripts that play in our heads and tell us that if we just tried a little bit harder, we'd get it all right.

• “Women can have it all!”
• “I can't have it all.”
• “If I'm successful at work, I must be failing at home.”
• “I'm missing out.”
• “My husband is missing out.”
• “I just need a work-life balance.”

The idea that you can find the perfect balance is the biggest myth of all. Even when you find a rhythm that works for you, you won't get it right all the time. I don't.

But you can shut down the voice in your head that says you have to do things a certain way, provide a certain amount of time to your family, and be a certain type of person at work in order to have a good “work-life balance.” I think the balance we're chasing is bullshit, actually. But we'll get to that after we've talked about some of the biggest myths that get in our way.

THE MYTH OF WHAT ...