Sheryl Sandberg and Women in Therapy

The March 18th cover story in Time is on Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg.  Time describes her as one of the most powerful women in America and explains what appears to be a personal campaign to elevate women’s ability to succeed in society.

The article suggests women collectively have made more progress in being successful in the business/corporate world but are still not equal to the success of men.  Sandberg suggests that this inequality is in part due to women themselves…what they do or DON’T do, especially in their relationships with men and more specifically their husbands.  She , at the end of the article, “…urges women to negotiate shared household duties with their spouses early and often. ‘We (her husband and she) share the child care 50-50. “.

I echo these thoughts.  Often I sit with women (young and older) who are exhausted and frustrated because they are trying to build and maintain a fulltime career and yet do the majority of the housework/childcare (while he is attending primarily to his career and “not so much” to the needs of the home and typically, the children).  Granted, this does not apply to all men but it a common complaint in my office.

My point….women… INSIST… that he sit with you and discuss the fair division of labor at home.  Such behavior does not make you a bitch or a nag or a bad mom.  On the contrary, it suggests you are a modern mother/wife, it is good role modeling for your children (male and female) and it addresses one of the major causes for marital resentment.

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