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Sequencing was supposed to address my generation’s problem of timing, by advocating part-time or delayed careers so that we could take the time to raise children in our 20s and 30s. Having a child when nature intended instead of delaying child rearing until age 40 after my career was established seemed like a cop-out until sequencing caught my attention. I feel very fortunate that it has turned out to be a solution for me.
As I understood sequencing, it was meant to humanize the first wave of feminism’s myth of the super-woman. Sequencing was a back-lash against the idea that all women needed to be satisfied in life was a happy marriage and family. The first wave of feminism occurred as I was graduating from high school in the 1970s. Ten years later, I was sure I was the New Super-Women who could truly ‘have-it-all” without burning-out.
I’d had my was first taste of making good money in advertising sales in the publishing industry, and was yearning for a committed relationship. I also had a case of ‘baby fever.’ I was very good at my job, but dissatisfied with its lack of intellectual challenge. I also found myself envying women who I imagined were happily walking to the park pushing babies in baby strollers. I was looking for a change.
I recall sitting in my therapist’s office trying to juggle my sense of guilt over what I was sure was an irrational urge to get married and procreate with my desire to return to graduate school and continue. I was struggling to reconcile my aspirations for achievement with what I felt were old-fashioned and out-dated values.
Sequencing was also supposed to alleviate the dark side of the Super-Woman’s second-shift. Second-shift meant we’d have a job outside of the home and then come home to at least partially out-sourced household help (usually to a less fortunate wife and/or mother which is another story altogether. The dark side of this reality was that even when accompanied by ‘help’ from household staff, children, and significant others burn-out has become wide-spread. Attending to everyone else’s needs, including those of our bosses, without control over the agenda is the fast-track to burn-out and all the risks associated with it like stress, frayed nerves, substance abuse, and obesity.
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About the author:
Tara Fass, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist,
has been a child custody mediator since 1993, and before joining Peace Talks Mediation Services in 2001, she was a Los Angeles Superior Court Child Custody Mediator and Evaluator in the Conciliation Court Office. She teaches a Co-Parent Education Program privately and in the past with the Los Angeles Superior Court. Tara maintains a private psychotherapy practice focusing on child custody issues.
In addition to her professional mediation and training experience, Tara also has lectured on the subjects of co-parenting and blended families on the graduate school level and has presented on the topic of "Product vs. Process: The Psycho-Legal Approach to Divorce" and “Preparing Clients for Custody Mediations” for therapist and attorney professional organizations. Family law mediation is Tara’s second career; she was previously in publishing.
TaraFass@aol.com (310) 301-2100, Peace Talks Mediation Services, Inc, which teams attorneys and therapists as co-mediators to help couples resolve divorce issues in a sane, sensible, and fair way at a reasonable cost. www.peace-talks.com.
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