Can Women Have A Career And A Family? - Kristina Durante

As women start earning more, marital sa- satisfaction goes down for men and for women. As women move up the corporate ladder, they're more likely to become divorced, but that's not true for men. If women win political office, they're more likely to get d- divorce than their women counterparts who lost their political (laughs) office. The more women gain status, the more discord happens in their marriage.

Did you see the Serena Williams article in Vogue?

I did not.

Oh, well, let me tell you about it. So-

Please do.

... her issue, uh, th- the article is about the fact she's now 41, she's still a top flight tennis player, and she's got one child, I think Olympia, and, uh, is now, was aware that she would have a limited window perhaps to have more children, uh, so is having to leave the sport. She had some complications medically after the last child, um, perhaps slightly brought on by being an elite athlete. I don't know the sort of stresses that that puts your body under, the kind of internal changes or external changes. Um, and then there's a couple of sections here. "So believe me, I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family," she wrote. "I don't think it's fair if I were a guy, I wouldn't be writing this because I'd be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labor of expanding our family." I have to presume that she means the literal physical labor of expanding the family. "'Maybe I'd be more of a Tom Brady if I had that opportunity,' Williams wrote, pointing that the football legend Brady, 45, who has three children and played in the NFL for 22 seasons before announcing his retirement in February, before changing his mind and announcing that he would return for a 23rd season just one month later."

Yeah.

"Ahead of her 41st birthday, Williams realized she had a narrow window to get pregnant again. 'I definitely don't want to be pregnant again as an athlete,' she said. 'These days, if I have to choose between building my tennis resume and building a family, I'd choose the latter.'" I thought that was very interesting.

Yeah, that is interesting, uh, especially since I think Tom Brady's, um, unretirement is causing discord in his own marriage from, you know, at least the, what the gossip is, right? Uh, but, you know, there is something to that. Women do often have to make a trade-off that men, you know, typically don't have to. This is kind of a new thing with, you know, women being able to, you know, ha- be the Serena Williams of the world, or, you know, um, the, uh, um, blanking on the name of, you know, CEO of a company, um, and we kind of have to figure out, like, what are we gonna excel at? Are we gonna excel at our careers? Are we gonna excel as a parent? 'Cause it's really hard to do both very well at the same time. Um, and so, you know, historically, that has sort of been the, the contract that we used to enter into through marriage, is, you know, the, the, the male works and the female stays at home and runs the household, which is a lot of work. And what f- I find really interesting is now that women have made tremendous strides into the workplace, they're finding themselves no better off in terms of household, uh, you know, th- running of the household and things that they have to do to make, you know, the household run. All of that unpaid labor isn't going away. It's, uh, it's still there. And what we find through the research is that women who, working women actually do more housework than women who are stay-at-home moms.