Why ‘Having It All’ Might Be The Wrong Goal Entirely

At some point, many women have been handed the same unspoken promise: if you work hard enough, stay organized enough, and sacrifice the right things at the right moments, you can have the career, the family, the health, the relationships, and the personal fulfillment. All of it. At once.

It is a compelling idea. It is also one worth questioning, because the framework itself was never designed to fit every woman’s life equally, and it was never meant to define every woman’s version of success. For decades, it functioned as aspiration and proof of progress. What it left out was just as significant: the assumption that all women want the same things, in the same order, on the same timeline.

Not every woman wants a career in the traditional sense, wants to be a mother, or defines fulfillment through productivity or advancement. The problem with “having it all” is that it presumes to know what “all” means for everyone. 

According to McKinsey and LeanIn.org’s Women in the Workplace 2025 report, among senior-level women who have been with their companies five years or less, 70% reported frequent burnout, and 81% expressed concern about job security. Among Black women in senior roles, nearly eight in ten reported frequent burnout in the past year alone.

These are numbers produced by a standard that grows harder to sustain with each passing year, inside systems that were not built with most women in mind.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Anne Welsh, author of Ambitious Mother, told HuffPost in 2025 that mothers are expected to be emotionally attuned, professionally productive, physically healthy, socially present, and politically engaged all at once, and that we have created a gold-standard, idealized version of good motherhood that is both exhaustive and exclusive, rarely pausing to ask: at what cost? That question extends well beyond motherhood. It applies to any woman navigating expectations she did not choose.

The phrase “having it all” smuggles in a set of assumptions: that all the things being aimed for are equally available, equally supported, and achievable simultaneously without structural change. None of that is true for most women, and it is especially untrue for women of color, immigrant women, and anyone navigating caregiving without adequate support systems.

Letting go of “having it all” is about replacing an imposed goal with something more honest and specific to your real life:

• Trade Perfection For Priority: Life happens in seasons. Some periods will call for intense professional focus, while others will ask you to direct energy toward health, relationships, rest, or community. Neither choice requires an apology.
• Audit Your “Shoulds”: Take an honest look at your goals and identify which ones are genuinely yours and which ones you absorbed from outside expectations. The latter are worth reconsidering.
• Define Your Non-Negotiables: Decide on the two or three areas where you refuse to compromise, whether that is pitch quality at work, dedicated time for creative hobbies, or uninterrupted evenings with loved ones, and let the rest sit at “good enough.”

As Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter writes in Unfinished Business, as highlighted by the London School of Economics and Political Science book review, “advancing women means breaking free of a new set of stereotypes and assumptions, not only for women but also for men. It means challenging conventional wisdom about what we value and why, about measures of success, and about what equality really means.”