NYT: Can women have it all? And who should give it to them?

[MadrasT]

11. I have been thinking since this was posted.

I was born in 1965 and grew up hearing a lot of women's lib "you can have it all now" messaging.

But "you can have it all" never meant to me that I, as one person, should actually try to have it all myself.

It meant to me that if I wanted to be a rocket scientist, I could. If I wanted to be a doctor, I could. If I wanted to be a wife and mother, I could. But not all at once.

Each woman has to decide how much of her own time-and-energy pie chart to give to each of the possibilities in her life.

I could have been a musician, I could have been a computer programmer. I chose programming because I wanted to have a good, reliable income.

Sometimes I am sad that I am not as great a piano player as I would have been if I could still spend 6 hours a day practicing piano, but I understand that making certain choices limits what else you can do.

You can't have all of everything and it is a shame that some people think they need to.

The messaging was off, maybe.

So maybe it should not have been "you can have it all". But more like, "you can *choose* from it all".