Women can’t have it all. We’ve been sold a lie that we can effectively juggle both family and career, and our mothers bought it, hook, line and sinker. However, today’s woman knows better.

In the wake of Betty Freidan’s death on February 4, unanswered questions remain — questions highlighted by Freidan’s activism in the 1970’s that started what many call the second wave of feminism, questions about women’s role in society and what it means to be a woman, questions that every woman has to face in today’s fast-paced, post-feminist world.

Society is still reeling from the effects of the modern feminist movement propelled by Freidan’s book The Feminine Mystique. While we can thank Freidan and other activists for many of the freedoms we enjoy today as women, we should also be aware that many of Freidan’s liberating ideologies are not so liberating after-all. Presupposing the assumption that women who are homemakers, wives, and mothers are somehow not all that they can be, the underlying message has hurt a generation of children and has resulted in a generation of stressed, burned-out mothers trying to juggle family and career.

Women should have the choice to pursue a career or to stay at home with their kids; but the feminism propagated by Freidan failed to acknowledge that some women want to be stay-at-home moms. To deny the value of a woman’s choice misses the whole point of the feminist movement – to give women the freedom to choose and be proud of their choices.

Thus, in the spirit of “choice,” women find themselves today on the opposite end of the pendulum from their mothers in the 1950’s; instead of being expected to be a homemaker and raise children, women are now expected to be super-moms while simultaneously pursuing careers.

Yes, many advancements have been achieved in the name of egalitarianism – the push for equal pay, gender-neutral want ads, the ability to pursue a career, etc. – but there is still very little “choice” for a woman who chooses to have a family; she is either looked down upon by society if she chooses to forgo working outside the home or she is obligated to try to be “super-mom” while juggling a career in a working world that is not “mom-friendly.”

Today’s women are realizing the reality of which they were never forewarned — that they must either pledge their allegiance to a career or a family but that they cannot successfully do both without sacrificing their quality of life and their well-being, not to mention their family’s.

Is it possible to work fulltime and raise well-balanced, healthy children who are rooted in love? Yes. But it is very difficult, and usually, by choosing to do so, a woman sacrifices her career, for her attention is necessarily divided. Today’s woman cannot pursue the corporate ladder full tilt while being fully involved in her children’s lives. To believe she can is to buy into the lie and will only leave her unsatisfied when she realizes she is not able to give either domain her full attention.

Thus in the wake of a generation of children who grew up with both parents working, the next generation of women are realizing that the system isn’t working. Exhausted, harried, overwhelmed — women are now bucking the status quo and are, in fact, demanding true choice — the choice to pursue a career or the choice to be a mother without having to give justification for not working “outside the home.”

Freidan, in an attempt to free women, effectively tightened their chains, replacing one set with another. How did we so easily swing from one end of the spectrum to the other and miss the point of choice?

By finally realizing the lies surrounding Freidan-feminism, we, as women, can confidentially assert our right to choose – to either pursue careers or to pursue being mothers and not have to stretch ourselves thin trying to do both because society dictates that we must.

- March 2006