Thank you for writing this. It's not often we hear a male voice on a topic like this.

I have always struggled between being ambitious and being able to foster my relationships. I feel like one will always come before the other one and that there will be a lingering resentment. I know that I need to find the balance and have wondered if men feel the same way. It seems, on the whole, that men are more willing to sacrifice their relationships (and assume they won't have consequences because of it) when it comes to the intersection of work and family.

I do see this changing. And I agree with you that the more discussion we have all together, the better we can approach this issue.

I appreciate your candidness. Thanks for writing!

This was a very well-written and thought provoking article. I am constantly having this same debate with my mom when it comes to having a productive relationship and work life. As a young mother I always find myself trying to be as productive in my home life as I am at work. It can be pretty difficult for women because men do have a lot of pressure taken off of them when it comes to family life but I also learned that it can be because the woman does not voice her wants and needs in this respect. How can anyone know what you want if you don't tell them and how can they learn if you don't teach them?

My fiance is a stay at home dad, and as you said, it does stir things up with everyone we know. So many question it with a flash and when I tell them I stayed home for a little while, they just say, "Well, yeah cause your the mother." The idealogies, common perceptions and overall thoughts on success, productivity and gender always frustrates me.

Its malarki, I tell ya.

You are awesome. I suspect if more women were participating in the chatter about productivity, the definition of productivity would change and the things a lot of women place value on would be included in that definition. Thanks for a great post.

@Robin: I'm glad the post resonated with you. Thanks for commenting!

@Jamie: Men are socialized into having the loss of relationships as an acceptable cost of ambition. As Steve states below, "what matters is the bottom line." And we've also socialized women into accepting that they should accept the slack left by men - we've learned that we can't have it both ways.

@Kate: At its core, it's not an either/or. Yet many people think it is. Some manage to balance, others don't.

@Tiffany: It IS malarki. Yet we humans have the incredible power to make the social realities around us - so if enough people believe in the malarki, that malarki becomes the theme we live our lives around. And please, teach us. It's the only way we'll learn.

@Steve: You state the common business perception very well - most of our businesses do the minimum they need to to get the maximum out of their employees in the short term. It's the only term that matters.

Unfortunately, companies really aren't paying their MVPs for their time: they're paying them for their expertise and their ability to get things done. It's only when they exceed their expectations and finish things sooner than they expected that the bosses started talking about what to do with their time. Obviously, if they can do x in half the time, they can do 2x in the full time allotted, right?

It's not about the amount of x's one can create. It's about the quality of x's one creates. So says someone with slacker babble - but so says the market.

The remarkable businesses have environments that focus on the quality of their products and the culture of their employees. They provide as much value to their employees as they can afford, not as little as they can. A result is that their employees are more productive and stay with the company in the long term.

That's employee life in the New Economy. Gone are the days where we can count on companies to take care of us "in the future." Too many renig on their promises as soon as they can. Business is a social contract, and businesses have changed their part of the bargain; why do we expect that the employees shouldn't, as well?

@Nisha: I don't suspect it; I know it. Look at how this conversation about productivity is different from a lot of the other conversations you may read. Different audience, different perspectives, different conversation. And a sorely needed one, too.

@Ellie: I could go down a completely different line about why we socialize women to do what they do, but I'll leave it as this: it's the status quo. It worked for our parent's parents, so they taught us what they knew. Unfortunately, the world changed around them and the old rules need reexamining.