But, my dear granddaughters, you cannot do everything well at the same time. You cannot be a 100 percent wife, a 100 percent mother, a 100 percent church worker, a 100 percent career person, and a 100 percent public-service person at the same time. How can all of these roles be coordinated? Says Sarah Davidson: “The only answer I come up with is that you can have it sequentially. At one stage you may emphasize career, and at another marriage and nurturing young children, and at any point you will be aware of what is missing. If you are lucky, you will be able to fit everything in.” Doing things sequentially—filling roles one at a time at different times—is not always possible, as we know, but it gives a woman the opportunity to do each thing well in its time and to fill a variety of roles in her life. A woman does not necessarily have to track a career like a man does. She may fit more than one career into the various seasons of life. She need not try to sing all of the verses of her song at the same time.

Women today are being encouraged by some to have it all—generally, all simultaneously: money, travel, marriage, motherhood, and separate careers in the world. Sarah Davidson, in an article entitled “Having It All,” comments about forging an identity, building a career, developing a craft, and having a family. “I do not yet understand how a woman can successfully split herself between home and the market place. Fifteen years of feminist theory and action have taught us that sacrificing one for the other does not satisfy, but having both together simultaneously is so difficult that no one I know has found anything but the most quirky and incomplete solution.” (Professional Esquire, June 1984, p. 54.) Her article does not deal with the heartaches and frustrations of single parents or others thrust into very difficult circumstances due to divorce, death of spouse, or hardship. Rather, the article focuses on the issue of the woman who is intent on having it all, trying to simultaneously coordinate the roles of professional life, marriage, and motherhood. Some will no doubt disagree with her conclusion, and there may be many exceptions, but she goes on to tell of three women who are partners in a New York law firm and observes that their personal lives are frustrated and unhappy. “The problem, of course, is that family happiness is less clearly definable and more often elusive than career success.”

If the day comes when we are the only women on earth who find nobility and divinity in motherhood, so be it. For mother is the word that will define a righteous woman made perfect in the highest degree of the celestial kingdom, a woman who has qualified for eternal increase in posterity, wisdom, joy, and influence.