‘Work-life balance is a lie’: women in business urged to stop trying to have it all

Women should stop striving for work-life balance to avoid living in a constant state of guilt, the ITV presenter and TV show host Charlene White has said.

“A lot of parents, especially women, are told that we need to think about work-life balance when actually, if we focus too much on that, we consistently live in a state of guilt,” said the Loose Women presenter and mother of two. “I don’t think about work-life balance. I just do the best I can, every day.”

Her comments came after Thasunda Brown Duckett, the president and chief executive of the Fortune 500 financial services company TIAA, said “work-life balance is a lie” and that she gives her children 30% of her time.

“If you live your life like a diversified portfolio, just like with your money, over time you will outperform,” said Duckett, who runs the $45bn a year financial firm. “On any given day, I may not feel like I’m the best mommy. There’s days I don’t feel like I’m a great CEO. But over time, I’m a really good mom. And over time, I believe that I’m doing a great job.”

Kate Grussing, the founder and managing director of the recruitment firm Sapphire Partners, agreed. “Feeding younger women the lie that they can have it all is dangerous. It’s essential women take off those rose-tinted glasses because that myth makes women believe they’re deficient,” she said.

“You need to make trade-offs when the different parts of your life require more attention at different times,” added Grussing, who has worked in corporate finance at Morgan Stanley and as a strategy consultant at McKinsey and JP Morgan.

Ruth Handcock, the chief executive of the financial advice firm Octopus Money, was also critical of the idea that women should strive for a work-life balance. “It should be seen as a continuum with give and take both ways, rather than a rigid division,” she said.

“Being a good mother and a good professional involves redefining ‘good’ in the context of your life and your family. You need to focus on personal satisfaction rather than meeting external standards,” she said. “You’ve got to let go of external expectations. Ask yourself whether your children are happy and your business is going well. Yes? OK, end of debate.”

Kate Daly, a co-founder of the divorce legal service Amicable and host of The Divorce Podcast, agreed: “Superwoman, in the comic-book definition, is dead,” she said. “The modern-day superwoman juggles millions of balls, with every expectation that she’ll drop some.”

Rebekah Capon, the managing director of Hatch Enterprise, an entrepreneurship charity, forgot to top up her son’s lunch card last week because of work pressures. “But I’m not going to hold on to the guilt that he couldn’t have lunch,” she said. “The pressure is embedded in all of us as women, but we have to be more forgiving of ourselves and understanding that we’re not going to be on top of everything all the time.”

Louise Oliver, the UK president of the British Association of Women Entrepreneurs, said she had never met a parent who felt their work-life balance was in order – until they reached a position of sufficient seniority to build a team around them, both at home and at work.

“I sent my children to nursery when they were three months old. I’m 60 and I still feel the guilt, because I’ll never get that time back with them,” she said.

But, Oliver, asked, what is “having it all”? “In the long term, you want to be self-fulfilled at work, you want your children to be healthy and happy, and you want to be in a happy marriage,” she said. “But you can’t do that all at the same time.”

Emma Sinclair, who at 29 was the youngest person in the UK to take a company public, agreed. “The whole concept of work-life balance is counterintuitive. The best we can hope for is to do as well as we can with most of the key elements in our lives, most of the time.”

Rachel Barton, a managing director at Accenture, said striving to achieve work-life balance was more pressured now because, she said, “the world is so short-termist and there is a culture of ‘I want things now’.

“People should give themselves less pressure over these short moments of time and, instead, play the long game – knowing what they’re trying to build and where they’re trying to go,” she said.

Elliott Rae, author of the bestselling book DAD and founder of online dads’ group Music Football Fatherhood, said: “Many men now are moving away from outdated ideas of what it is to be a successful man and dad,” he said. “There are relationships where you can have enough of everything: if you’re able to communicate and share responsibilities.”