This post is a more personal take on work and life from MCF Executive in Residence Susan Hammel
Now that my 2 babies are grown up, I can’t help but ponder the question we asked back in the 1990’s, can we balance family and career?
Now that both kids are launched into adulthood and I’m at the red hot center of the impact investing movement, driving private capital to work for good in the Twin Cities and beyond, I’d say yes, we can, just not all at the same time.
I’m perplexed that we’re still posing this question. Call it youthful optimism or naivety, but I certainly thought we would have been getting closer to parity by now, for all.
Maybe I felt optimistic because of the times. I grew up in the 70’s: the decade of Women’s Lib, the ERA, Kids are People Too, the Sunshine family dolls, and Free to Be You And Me. Of course it was also the decade of the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the Love Canal Disaster. Still, looking back it was a great time to grow up, especially as a woman. I had so many inspiring female role models: Gloria Steinem, Coretta Scott King, Geraldine Ferraro, and of course my own mother, who the Star Tribune calls the “Unsinkable Bette Hammel”.