Why stop at eggs?
September 24th, 2007 by Cali & Jody
We were recently at the 10th annual Forbes Executive Women’s Forum in Washington, DC. We heard some good insights into what is traditionally called “work/life balance”. We also heard some stuff we frankly couldn’t believe. Like how women should consider freezing their eggs so they could focus on their careers.
It reminded us of a story we saw a few years back in San Francisco magazine. The assumption is that if you want both a career and a family you should freeze your eggs, focus on your job, then unfreeze them when you’re established enough to have the time to raise a family.
So why stop at eggs? Why not just freeze our kids until it’s more convenient to watch them grow up? Or freeze your spouse until it’s easier to have a meaningful relationship?
We’re not judging people for having this conversation. We’re judging our culture for allowing this conversation to take place at all.
We only have to make these kinds of choices if we give ‘face time’ and putting in hours the same weight as actually getting your job done. In a Results-Only Work Environment, the choice between career and family isn’t as stark. You can be good at both. If you are delivering the goods at work, then you have the freedom to work from wherever you want and whenever you want. People in a ROWE can be there for their kids and their company.
We don’t have to freeze our lives. What we can do is change the conversation. Have you heard people say insane things about postponing their life in order to further (or even keep) their job? Let us know and we’ll discuss them in a future post.
