Career and Family, What an Adventure!: Advice and Tips to Juggle It All

By Dominique Barral

Juggling career and family is an amazing adventure, with lots of joy and successes but also its challenges.How can one be a fulfilled mom while having a demanding job? Is it possible to be actively involved at your children’s school when work keeps you busy from 9am to 7pm? What about managing two careers, yours and your spouse’s, while allowing time for yourself and for both of you as a couple? During her career as a top executive at the multinational corporation Procter and Gamble, Dominique Barral has faced every one of these questions. With her husband and their two daughters by her side, she invented her own path and discovered ways to keep balance between the different areas of her life. She shares her stories, thoughts and solutions in this light-hearted book, with insightfulness and pragmatism. Written to help the mothers who invest in their career, as well as their partners.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Mar 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781684740406

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Barral

Copyright © 2020 Dominique Barral.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Book cover designed by Gülşah Keleş.

ISBN: 978-1-6847-4041-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6847-4040-6 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 03/16/2020

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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A French national, Dominique Barral has lived in six countries on four continents (in Morocco, Brazil, Singapore, Spain, France and Switzerland) and likes to think of herself as a citizen of the world.

After finishing her Master’s in Management at ESSEC, a prestigious French business school, she joined the American corporation, Procter and Gamble, in 1987. She took on varied assignments in Europe and Asia, and, rose through the ranks to the position of Vice-President, a role she held until April 2018.

Today she is a board member and a freelance consultant. She is dedicated to women’s development and mentors several of them.

She is frequently asked about her experience as a working mother and gives lectures based on her own journey to balance work and family life. Realizing that all mothers face similar challenges and many fathers are taking an ever more active role in the family life, she wanted to share her thoughts with a wider audience. This gave rise to Career and Family, What an Adventure! which is her first book.

Dominique Barral has been married for more than thirty years and is the mother of two adult daughters.

To my dad,

who instilled in me a great sense of independence and the desire to write

INTRODUCTION

March 8, 2019.

International Women’s Day.

Many messages show up on social networks: tributes to women; commitment to equality from small and large companies.

What if gender equity at work hinged more on what happens beyond the workplace than what people say?

By helping mothers strike a balance between family and career. Without guilt. Through better sharing, between spouses, of the responsibilities related to children and the home. By changing the way society looks at women who invest in their professional life.

Because, while juggling career and family is an exciting adventure, with joys and successes, it also brings challenges.

I fell into the world of the full-time working mother at a young age as I was barely twenty-five when my first daughter was born.

Now that my children are adults and I have come to the end of a fulfilling international career, it strikes me that, while I had to learn a lot to chart my course within my company, the space where I had to forge my way the most was my private life. How can you be a fulfilled mom when you work and travel? How can you participate in the school life when you are busy from nine in the morning to seven in the evening? How do you manage two careers in parallel? What professional choices and what risks should you take when they affect the whole family? How to keep time for yourself, for your spouse, and above all, how do you resist the tyranny of emails and never-ending professional requests?

Many companies invest in training to help women navigate the professional arena, a world still shaped by male codes. Many books provide valuable advice on the subject. But nothing prepares us for the impact that our professional activity has on personal and family life, nor to face the way society looks at us.

Like many, I learned from my mistakes and successes throughout my journey. I didn’t find any magic solution, just a number of insights revealed through my experiences which helped me find and maintain a personal, professional and family balance. It is these few nuggets of life that I share with you today, hoping that they will be useful to you. I have organized them by challenges, as I noticed that I was not alone in my quest and that many others share the same struggles.

I write with a conviction: while we must speak about the specific situation of women, the future is not just a women’s affair. The opportunities are not just for moms. Dads are also looking for a new balance. It is everyone’s business: men, women, fathers, mothers, husbands and wives, all male and female members of the same society.

I write from my experience as a woman, married with two children, which was a fairly typical situation for many years. Today, there are many types of family. I hope that, whatever your reality, you will get something useful from this book. Whether you are starting your career or are already juggling it together with your responsibilities as a mother. Whether you are a dad who seeks to define (or redefine) his balance and his roles. Whether you are a coach, parent, spouse, friend or mentor of a parent who juggles professional and family life. I wish you a pleasant read!

CHALLENGE NO. 1

Freeing Oneself from Guilt

THE SPECTER OF THE IDEAL WOMAN

When I started my life as a working mom, I felt women were expected to be perfect in everything: have a job and succeed in it. Cultivate a fulfilled and fun relationship with their husband. Be his wife, his sweetheart, his best friend and thus defy the statistics predicting a fifty-fifty chance of divorce. And finally, become a loving, present, stimulating and attentive mom. In France, Françoise Dolto, a pediatrician and psychoanalyst advocating the importance of communication in the mother-child relationship, had greatly impacted our mentality.

It was a bit like if we were being told, "Ok, you wanted access to the