Can I have it all? Emerging adult women’s positions on balancing career and family

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-06-2017-0138
• Pages: 566-581
• Published date: 20 August 2018
• Date: 20 August 2018
• Author: Souha R. Ezzedeen,Marie-Hélène Budworth,Susan D. Baker
• Subject Matter: HR & organizational behaviour,Employment law,Diversity, equality, inclusion

Can I have it all? Emerging adult

women’s positions on balancing

career and family

Souha R. Ezzedeen and Marie-Hélène Budworth

School of HRM, York University, Toronto, Canada, and

Susan D. Baker

Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management, Morgan State University,

Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Abstract

Purpose –Emerging adult women are actively engaged in career and family explorations, amidst changing

opportunities and constraints. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether such women felt they could

balance a high-achieving career and a family life, or what has become known in the popular discourse as

women “having it all.”

Design/methodology/approach –This qualitative study utilized focus groups to explore subjective

perceptions of balancing career and family held by emerging adult women. The sample (n¼69) comprised

female university students in a large Canadian metropolitan area.

Findings –Thematic analyses unearthed six distinct yet overlapping positions on the possibility of

balancing career and family: Optimism (“I can have it all.”), Pessimism (“I cannot have it all.”), Uncertainty

(“I am not sure I can have it all.”), Choice (“I don’t want to have it all.”), Pragmatism (“This is what I need to do

to have it all.”) and Support (“Will I access the support necessary to have it all?”).

Research limitations/implications –Limitations include the potential of focus groups to elicit group

polarization and to lead participants to censor opinions to conform to conversations. Still, the study reveals

more nuanced positions held by women than reported earlier.

Originality/value –The study extends prior research by revealing the range of positions held by women

toward career and family, highlighting women’s understanding of the complex issues involved and

showcasing their awareness of the crucial role of social support.

Keywords Qualitative research, Focus groups, Career-family balance, Emerging adults, Pre-career women

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

Can a woman combine career success with a fulfilling family life? This question has been

asked since women began accessing professional roles that were once thought the exclusive

domain of men, and more recently has become known as whether women can “have it all”

(Hewlett, 2002;Slaughter, 2012). Women in university, poised to enter managerial pipelines in

organizations,ponder this same question.The literature has referredto this critical population

as “emerging adults”(Basuil and Casper, 2012), “college women”(Hoffnung, 2004), “young

women”(Johnstone and Lee, 2009) and “aspiring professionals”(Orrange, 2002).They are also

considered“pre- career”(Schweitzer et al.,2011) because they are activelyengaged in exploring

various career-family options (Kaufman, 2005; Stone and McKee, 2000). However, the

contemporaryrange of possibilities and constraints that they face meansthat emerging adult

women’s career-family lives remain “unpredictable”(Arnett, 2000; Orra nge, 2002),

strengthening the need for in-depth examination (Hallett and Gilbert, 1997). Moreover, and

given risinginterdependencies between careerand family, it has become increasingly difficult

to disaggregate work from family expectations (Kaufman, 2005). Thus, we answer the

call for research addressing both career and family explorations (Basuil and Casper, 2012;

Hallett and Gilbert, 1997), by qualitatively investigating women’s subjective perceptions of

whether they felt that career success and a meaningful family life could be balanced in

contemporary society.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 37 No. 6, 2018

pp. 566-581

© Emerald PublishingLimited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-06-2017-0138

Received 22 June 2017

Revised 16 November 2017

Accepted 22 December 2017

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/2040-7149.htm

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EDI

37,6

Both quantitative and qualitative studies in this area illustrate the persistent influence of

traditional gender norms (Fulcher et al., 2015; Stone and McKee, 2000). And yet, women still

anticipate “having it all,”leading some researchers to note this as a lack of realism in

these expectations (Arthur and Lee, 2008; Coyle et al., 2015). We hoped that our qualitative

design would potentially resolve these contradictions by generating more “nuanced”data

(Ely et al., 2014). We were guided by the following research questions. Do emerging adult

women believe that careers can be combined with a family life?

Alternatively, do they feel that career and family are inherently at odds? What does it

take to balance career and family? We ground these questions within theories of emerging

adulthood (Arnett, 2000), and on the research of Wintrob (2001) and Fels (2004) on

ambition. Theoretically, emerging adulthood involves young adults freely exploring their

career-family aspirations (Arnett, 2000). We propose that women’s ambition remains

tempered, however, by fears that it may undermine their personal relationships and signal

“desertion”of their family (Wintrob, 2001), and that they may lack the support necessary for

such ambition to materialize (Fels, 2004).

In this study, we utilized focus groups to analyze conversations about career and

family, in seeking to find supplementary ways of understanding women’santicipated

work-family conflicts and concomitant strategies (Hallett and Gilbert, 1997). We did not

focus on individual women’s aspirations nor did we seek causal explanations for these

positions. Rather, we sought to explore, through interpretive analyses of conversations,

the subjective positions toward career and family held by women, which will ultimately

shape their career and family choices. Our diverse sample of female students was drawn

from a large university in Canada. Themes emerging from focus group discussions

showcase the social, cultural and educational contexts shaping these career-family

perspectives (see Keener, 2015; Mehta, 2015). Our aim was not to associate perspectives

with contexts but rather to identify nuanced themes surrounding combining work and

family, an aim that was facilitated by the qualitative design of this study.

Women and career-family balance

Much of the modern discourse, both popular and scholarly, emphasizes the career and

family conflicts experienced by women (Badinter, 2010; Hewlett, 2002; Slaughter, 2012).

In the mainstream debate on women and work, the idea of balancing career and family has

become known as the “having it all”debate. The limitations associated with the expression

have been acknowledged, particularly the idea that it sets a difficult standard of satisfaction

for women to achieve (Traister, 2012). When women fail to “have it all,”it is blamed on

unattainable feminist ideals (Szalai, 2015), rather than the antiquated notions of gender,

career and family that still characterize many contemporary workplaces (Gerson, 2009).

Research confirmsthat attempts to combine career andfamily continue to have a negative

impact on women’s career progress (Hoffnung, 2004; Metz and Tharenou, 2001). One recent

large-scale study revealed that women are less likely to be satisfied with career and

career-family bal ance (Ely et al., 2014), as most workplace cultures still hold ambivalent

notions toward career-oriented women, particularly when these women become mothers

(Fiske, 2012). Similar to earlier evidence (Stone and Lovejoy, 2004), the study failed to

substantiatethe notion that women quitwork to attend to family. It found insteadthat women

do so reluctantly as a result of dim career prospects, uninteresting work, or being “mommy

tracked.”Thus, family obligations are expected to intrude on women’s career commitment

while enhancing men’s career potential (Fiske, 2012). Career success is also associated with

sacrifices in the homedomain, whereby women who reach high positions are less likely to be

married and have children (Halpern and Cheung, 2008; Hewlett, 2002). Nevertheless, a few

studies have unearthed work-family strategies espoused by women who do manage to

balance career and family (Ezzedeen and Ritchey, 2009; Halpern and Cheung, 2008).

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Balancing

career and

family