Just over a year ago, I wrote The Myth of Doing it All, a confessional post (turned minor internet meme–kinda cool) inspired by an earlier post in which I admitted that working mothers can’t do it all and explained that asking us how, in fact, we do do it all, is a very uncomfortable thing to can ask a working mother.

Not as uncomfortable as questions like “if you didn’t want to raise your children yourself, why have them?” but you know. Uncomfortable. Relatively speaking.

Since then, this idea of mothers and how much we do or don’t do, has inspired the most amazing discussions in my life–here, in social media, in person, and often by email. Sometimes a reader thanks me for saying what she’s always been afraid to say out loud. Sometimes a newly married colleague is still trying to figure out the juggle. Sometimes it’s just a group of mothers like me, hard-working, ambitious, with professional success to varying degrees, sitting around a coffee or a cocktail, or whispering confessions in a quiet corner of a party about the things that are really, truly lacking in their lives.

This past week, aspects of the discussion were reignited, with a hugely popular article by Anne-Marie Slaughter in the Atlantic: Why Women Still Can’t Have it All. It was sent to me by no less than 16 people. (Thank you, people! You know me so well!)

It’s well worth your read. The piece is a phenomenal and very comprehensive dissection of what’s wrong with the workplace and our current system and our culture at large, while offering practical thinking on how we can create environments in which women can have more “all.” One of my favorite lines was when she quotes her assistant simply stating, “You know what would help the vast majority of women with work/family balance? MAKE SCHOOL SCHEDULES MATCH WORK SCHEDULES.”

Amen.

Now I haven’t read a lot of the responses or criticisms of the article (I’m busy!) but I feel like I need to ask a question that I haven’t really seen:

Where are the men in all this? Continue reading →