Bankers and Briefcases and Aprons, Oh My!During the past couple of weeks, The Lattice Group has been studying the habits of busy New Yorkers. And boy, are they busy. One young economic research analyst commented cheerily that he had great hours, typically between 8 am and 8 pm. Well, I would agree that that is practically a vacation (but, oh no he doesn’t take that) compared to the investment banker we dined with who informed us that a 80 hours is a “good” week and 120 hours is a “bad” week, and, he admitted, lately it had mostly been “bad.”
So you work in finance. I don’t feel that bad for you. Not after a brilliant young entrepreneur we interviewed pointed out that the Wall Street gang that complains about putting in the city’s longest hours also signed up for them quite knowingly. The “bad” week phenomenon wasn’t news to someone who had most likely already spent a summer interning for the same or a similar company. The impossible hours were a part of the impossible-to-resist deal that includes a bonus that frequently out-does most people’s fixed salaries. And, as a young woman whose friends are heavily dominated by bankers commented: “They love to complain about how much they work. It makes them feel good to know they are working the hardest.” To quote an article in the November issue of The Lattice Group’s online journal LATTICE, “I’ll be the first to admit it. We work hard, have money to blow, and many of us go out every night with a chip on our shoulder that says I work harder than you so don’t get in the way of my fucking Jaeger and Red Bull.” (read the full story “I’m too Tired to Question my Life: Tale of an Investment Banker” here)
But let’s get real. New York City isn’t all bankers. Since the beginning of December, we’ve interviewed free-lance writers, dancers, lawyers, non-profit directors, marketing analysts and account managers, just to name a few. And practically every single one of them thinks they work too much, or describe a work schedule that leaves much to be desired. Because, though that analyst may think his 12-hour work-day is a steal in the city that never sleeps, it is a whole 4 hours more a day than the supposed “normal” 40 hour work week. And, add the recommended eight hours of sleep and that only leaves four hours left in the day to do your personal chores, errands and, hey, have fun.
This is, of course, assuming that you have no children or other “real” personal commitments. Because if you did, I just don’t know what you would do to accommodate your to-do-list in those four hours. I guess that’s when you completely stop sleeping. Or procure a house-wife. If you are a man that is. If you are a woman, you’re chances of snagging a willing house-husband are drastically lower. And so, what do you do? Add yourself to the ranks of successful career women who remain single and childless, or make that age-old “sacrifice of love” and put on an apron.
I think I may just have offended some of you.
But before you start writing that hate letter, hear me out.
 Yours truly loves wearing an apron. It’s my favorite accessory, in fact. I bake, cook and generally pamper the people I love in often gratuitous ways. But I also have every intention of having a career. Why is it that women like me are so frequently forced to make a choice between the apron and the briefcase (mine is vintage gator and I love it as much as my flower-print apron) while my future hypothetical husband is able to devote all his time to the advancement of a career in the public sphere only to get behind the stove on weekends to pursue a hobby of cooking (and be oo:ed and aw:ed for doing it)? That seems unfair to this ambitious future careerista. That same brilliant young woman who told us not to feel bad for our finance colleagues who chose their own 120 hour week misery also said something else that has stuck with me. She talked about stay-at-home mothers. She said that she finds it sad to meet so many intelligent middle-aged women who are unable to really speak about themselves. Why? Because their “I” has been replaced by a “we.” They have lived their whole lives for their children and have lost, or as our muse said, “shared,” their identity to the point where they are no longer able to really say who and what they are. This is unsettling.
But why is it so unsettling, the thought of losing, or severely sharing, your identity? Is this a feeling also unique to our self-entitled generation of pampered millennials? I have a mother (who, by the way, has a prominent career and five children) who frequently complains about young people’s obsession with self-fulfillment to the detriment of the children who get stuck in-between. I agree that children need to be prioritized, but why is it that in the American system as I’ve seen it thus far, only one parent (which tends to be the mother, though this is not always the case) appears to have to make that priority?
Let’s flip this whole issue on its head and look at the other side of things: what about the men with the careers? If a household only has one breadwinner, the pressure to provide a certain standard of living is all on that one person. Therefore, it is equally important to consider that men often don’t have the chance to be self-fulfilled in a personal way. Or, to put it in different terms: to have a career in the domestic sphere. To be fair, women losing their identities among jars of baby food can be compared to men who become inseparable from their jobs.
So, is the current reality such that if you want to have a very successful career (at least in a highly competitive place like NYC) and want to have a family, one parent has to choose a career in the domestic sphere to enable the other to have a public one, and vice versa? Is it naïve to dream of a future when we, both men and women, can really, truly, have it all?
- Astri Illustration by Gustaf von Arbin
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