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What does it really take for working moms to “have it all”? Listen as Dr. Corinne Low dives into invisible labor, the co-CEO household strategy, and data-backed ways women can reclaim their time, energy, and well-being at work and at home. Perfect for anyone seeking honest, practical solutions for balancing career and family.
Achieving “Having It All” as a Working Mom: Evidence-Based Insights from Corinne Low
What does it really mean to “have it all” as a working mom today? Dr. Corinne Low, a leading economist at the Wharton School, expert in gender economics, and author of Having It All: What Data Tells Us About Women’s Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours, has dedicated her career and research to answering this question with honesty and clarity. Her journey, and the findings that emerged from it, offer hope and practical pathways for women feeling squeezed by modern expectations.
Early in her career, Corinne confronted a familiar struggle: juggling professional ambitions with the demands and ideals of motherhood. The pressure wasn’t just personal; when she dived into women’s time use data, she discovered her sense of “being squeezed” was part of a much larger, systemic problem. Today, mothers spend twice as much time with their children as their own mothers did, while expectations at work have soared. It’s not that working moms aren’t capable, it’s that the goalposts have fundamentally shifted.
Corinne emphasizes that we’re not failing; we’re facing new and impossible standards. The concept of “having it all” is laced with irony: to strive both for top career achievements and a picture-perfect home is to commit to two full-time jobs. This is structurally impossible for anyone to maintain.
Having it all, then, doesn’t mean doing it all. It means making small, brave changes, advocating for your needs as a central piece of family well-being, and aligning your everyday actions with your deepest values. By prioritizing utility and wholeness over perfection, working moms can create a new, more achievable vision of success.
Co-CEO Household Strategy: Promoting Equality in Domestic Duties
If you feel like you’re the CEO of your household, and your partner is just an intern, you’re not alone. Corinne Low’s “co-CEO” approach is all about genuinely sharing the mental load, responsibilities, and ownership at home, instead of one person continually carrying the invisible weight. This strategy recognizes that true partnership means looking beyond visible tasks and also accounting for the behind-the-scenes organization, planning, and decision-making that keeps everything running. Corinne suggests a concrete first step: track your time for a week, both with work and household tasks.
How to Track Your Time for a Week: The Co-CEO Household Tutorial
Follow this practical, visual step-by-step process to see exactly where your hours go, and address invisible labor together.
Step 1: Make a Simple Time Log
- Grab a notebook or open a spreadsheet.
- Make columns for “Work,” “Household Tasks,” and “Leisure.”
- Include slots for activities, start/end times, and short notes.
Step 2: Record Everything, for Both Partners
- Write down every task as you do it, no matter how small.
- Include phone calls, kid pickups, meal prep, emails, cleaning, shopping, work projects, and relaxation.
- Be honest, don’t edit or skip tasks!
Step 3: Review and Summarize
- At the end of the week, total up hours for each column.
- Highlight surprise areas, who’s doing what, when, and how often.
- Notice patterns like “Swiss cheese” days: scattered, interrupted blocks versus long, uninterrupted stretches.
Step 4: Start an Open Conversation
- Share your logs over coffee, focusing on facts, not blame.
- Ask: Does someone handle most of the mental load? Who gets more leisure?
- Use the data to target unfair imbalances and plan your next steps.
Step 5: Create Actionable Roles
- Divide ownership by task (not tiny chores): “lunches,” “laundry,” “bills” etc.
- Assign each partner full responsibility for some areas, including planning and follow-through.
- Schedule regular check-ins to readjust if needed.
A true co-CEO model focuses on full ownership, not just delegation. For example, whoever owns “school lunches” does everything from planning, shopping, and prepping, to cleaning lunch boxes. That person learns the process, becomes efficient, and truly shares responsibility. It’s about empowering both partners, not assigning random chores, so everyone learns, grows, and feels invested. Only then does the household run smoothly, freeing up time and emotional space for both adults.
Most importantly, Corinne encourages couples to start these conversations by looking at leisure time. Is one person getting more? Is personal time valued equally? Each person’s contribution, whether in paid work or domestic production, deserves equal respect and recharging. Promoting your partner to co-CEO isn’t just practical. It’s a win-win, helping everyone thrive and reclaim a sense of wholeness at home.
Boundaries, Leisure, and the Journey to Career-Life Alignment for Women
If you feel like career-life alignment is a pipe dream, you’re not alone, and you’re not failing. Corinne Low explains that today’s working women face a “squeeze” more intense than any previous generation. The key to relief? Reclaiming your time with intention, setting boundaries that hold, and putting your own joy back on the agenda.
Most of us wait until the end of the day to take care of ourselves, squeezing “me time” into whatever scraps remain. Corinne instead urges women to “pay yourself first” with leisure. Block out regular, non-negotiable time on your calendar, just 20 minutes a few times a week, for whatever truly energizes you. Treat it like a meeting with your boss: unmissable and entirely your own. This simple shift is powerful. When we put our own needs at the center, we recharge and can show up more fully for others.
Boundaries in flexible work matter even more. One of Corinne’s key research findings: structure at work is as valuable as flexibility in protecting well-being. That means it’s not endless remote days or work-from-anywhere policies that support women most. It’s clarity around when work starts and stops. Structure lets women plan childcare and anticipate when they can finally relax, critical for mental health and satisfaction. Advocate for work cultures that respect boundaries, like ending meetings by 5 p.m., and honor those rules yourself as much as possible.
Career-life alignment is a team effort. Women can’t build sustainable careers alone. Organizations and families both need to support realignment. At home, that means regularly checking whether each partner has time for true leisure and reflecting on whether domestic contributions are equally valued. In the workplace, firms should look to evidence: clear boundaries and structured schedules help retain top female talent, while continuous pressure and ambiguous demands drive burnout and attrition.
Finally, Corinne’s advice is clear. Reclaiming joy and wholeness isn’t just self-care, it’s an imperative for longevity and fulfillment. By getting clear about what you value, setting boundaries unapologetically, and asking for the right support, you claim back your life, one well-spent hour at a time.
Organizational and Societal Solutions: Moving Beyond “Lean In”
For years, women were told to “lean in”, work harder, speak up, and push through institutional barriers. But as Corinne Low argues, real change requires much more than personal effort. The onus can’t be placed solely on individual women; organizations, partners, and society at large need to step up in tangible, evidence-based ways.
One of the biggest revelations from Corinne’s research is that what working women need most isn’t endless flexibility or remote work, it’s boundaries. Industries with structured hours, such as healthcare, actually retain more women, not less. Why? Structure enables women to plan childcare, protect leisure, and know when work truly ends. So, instead of simply offering more options, firms should implement predictable schedules. End meetings by 5 p.m., experiment with “log-off” windows, and respect the time people spend outside of work.
Businesses benefit from this shift, too. Retaining female talent saves recruitment and training costs and keeps innovation high. When organizations use data to drive policy, like rethinking rigid face-time expectations and supporting evidence-based flexible arrangements, everyone wins.
Corinne also challenges the idea that career ambition is the single measure of success. Instead, she encourages both women and organizations to embrace unique values and utility: don’t compare yourself to someone optimizing for something entirely different. This diversity strengthens workplaces by bringing in a range of perspectives, priorities, and experiences.
Societal progress needs a multi-layered approach:
- Partner support must move beyond delegation to true co-ownership of domestic and emotional labor.
- Institutions, from workplaces to governments, should look at real-world data, not just ideals, when designing policies.
- Open conversations about what success looks like for each person help avoid “weaponized indifference” and foster genuine teamwork.
Moving beyond “lean in” means building sustainable systems where women can thrive without burning out. When firms, families, and society work together and respect unique needs, we create workplaces and homes where wholeness, equality, and happiness are possible.
Ready to Have it All?
- To get practical tools and actionable tips that will jumpstart your journey, download the Have it All Booklet here.
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- And if you’re looking to elevate your entire C-Suite leadership team, learn how Craig Dowden can help your leaders perform at their highest-level visit https://www.craigdowden.com/executive-mastermind
- For a deeper dive, listen to the full-length episode of the Do Good to Lead Well podcast featuring Wes Adams & Tamara Myles:
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