More and more women are beginning to acknowledge that they can’t have it all. Writing a commentary for Glamour in May, Zosia Mamet explained “Why She Won’t Lean In,” as she questioned why more and more women are becoming obsessed with “making it.”
And at the Aspen Ideas Festival this month, Indra Nooyi, the CEO of PepsiCo was interviewed by David Bradley, who owns The Atlantic. Nooyi made some interesting comments, confirming a problem I’ve been writing about for some time now:
Just as you’re rising to middle management your kids need you because they're teenagers, they need you for the teenage years. And that's the time your husband becomes a teenager too, so he needs you (laughing). They need you too. What do you do? … So we're screwed. We have no … we cannot have it all.
You can find a shortened version of the interview here
The internet lit up with positive and negative commentary, including this lively discussion on Fox News where each of the four female contributors agreed with Nooyi’s assessment:
Interestingly, Nooyi’s comment about husbands acting like teenagers was glossed over as a joke. Instead, one of the contributors explained that men were now in a position to be nurturers and househusbands — instead of suggesting that men step up and actually provide their wives what they really want: Complete security and protection.
I believe women can choose to do whatever they want to do, but that doesn’t let men off the hook for their responsibilities — they still need to fill the three Sigma Roles: Protector, Provider, and Presider. Only then can their wives be free to make weighty life choices without feeling like they have to do it all on their own.
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Dr. John Alexander is an expert on marriage relationships and the author of The Sigma Male: What Women Really Want. To learn more about the Sigma Roles in marriage, visit his website, subscribe to his blog, “like” his page on Facebook, and follow him on Twitter.
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