I think while all mothers deal with feelings of guilt, working mothers are plagued by guilt on steroids!
We need to accept that we won't always make the right decisions, that we'll screw up royally sometimes - understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it's part of success.
Women process stress differently. If we can change the workplace culture to make it more welcoming for women, we're also going to improve behavior, and we're going to improve outcomes.
It feels like we have two threads running through our lives: one pulling us into the world to achieve, the other pulling us back to replenish us. These threads can seem at odds, but really, they enforce each other. It's not a trade-off between success and sleep.
If you want to have the clarity and steadiness to deal with that '3:00 A.M. phone call,' you should better have made sure that you're not running on empty when that phone rings.
It would be futile to attempt to fit women into a masculine pattern of attitudes, skills and abilities and disastrous to force them to suppress their specifically female characteristics and abilities by keeping up the pretense that there are no differences between the sexes.
