For Newsweek/The Daily Beast, Barnard President Debora Spar writes about the challenges of "having it all" and why women should stop trying to be perfect. An excerpt:
"Like most working mothers, I have snuck out of meetings to attend piano recitals and missed track meets when a deadline was looming. I have sprinted through airports in the futile hope of catching an earlier flight home and tried to comfort a sobbing child when, inevitably, the plane was late. I delivered my first lecture in a suit that reeked of infant throw-up from earlier that morning and crashed the minivan into a tree as I raced to retrieve the correct ballet costume.
Through all this chaos I have become increasingly convinced of two interconnected points. First, that there is undeniably still a “women’s problem” in the United States, a problem that relates deeply and intimately to the bleak roster of numbers that tell this story. And second, that part of this intractable problem is tied to the fact that women in this country are struggling far more than is necessary not only to have that ephemeral 'all,' but to do it all alone."
