Working Moms and Anxiety

There has been a staggering evolution in American females over the last half-century. It is hard to imagine the time when women were not graduating from universities and going to work in the same places as men.

Although there are a lot of parallels between men and women now, women have something men sometimes don’t understand: women want more. They are not satisfied with work and dating alone. They want it all: the career, the guy, and the babies. Work and family are often conflicting or competing interests and many women find themselves in impossible situations that lead to extreme levels of worry and fear.

There are many possible scenarios that create anxiety for women:

1. I have the guy, but he is not ready to settle down and have kids.

2. My career takes up all my time. I do not have time to date and I want kids, but I’m already 39 years old.

3. I have the guy and the babies, but I gave up my career to stay at home and talk "goo-goo" all day.

4. I have to keep up a house, run my kids to school and work full time. My husband is getting ignored.

5. I am the sole provider for my children.

By the time women reach their mid-20s, they get the itch to have a baby. Most women, if single and living in a cosmopolitan city, get a pet. Taking care of a puppy allows women to "play mommy". The girls that really have the baby itch are the ones that dress up their little pooch with tee shirts, tutus, shoes and paint their toenails. When the pup is not enough, they begin to get anxious that they will never find their dream guy and settle down and have a family.

Women in their late thirties to early forties are suffering from an alarming degree of anxiety if they want children. Biology is giving them a nudge.

Once a woman has kids, a husband, and a career, there is a new cause for worry and stress. How can one girl balance all this stuff? There is a saying that you get to choose two majors in your life; you can’t have three. If this is true, most women will let the marriage slip away or quit their jobs. Women have "mommy" printed on their DNA - they will never give up their babies!

The next situation is the most panic-attack-invoking of them all: the life of a working, single mother. These superwomen worry about being able to provide and have the anxiety of never finding another mate because there is no time to date. Men can find themselves in this situation as well, but on a percentage basis, there are more dead-beat dads then moms.

Women are no longer expected to stay home. They are out in the workforce just like men. Trying to juggle work with parenting is incredibly difficult, and in some situations, impossible. Whether women are actually in one of these positions or not, they are still likely to suffer feelings of anxiousness, emanating from our society’s belief that women can do it all.

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