Emma Gray in HuffPost discusses about the choices women ‘have to’ make in their careers around the time they’re planning kids.

She explains, “The fears I have about having kids go beyond how physically exhausting being pregnant sounds and the fact that it means you can’t have sushi for nine months.” Funny but true.

Emma speaks on behalf of thousands (actually, millions) of women who corner the desire of having a child because their careers are rocking. Over the period of time, many surveys have been done to find the reasons behind such a behavior. Emma has her own way to explain that, “I know I would be having a child in a world where the financial costs are high, in a country with poor maternity and paternity leave policies, in a society where women still take on the majority of housework and child care, and where finding a truly flexible job is pretty damn hard.”

She shares a survey study from Harvard Business School that found out – 37% of millennial women and 42% of those already married planned to interrupt their career for family.

This isn’t heartbreaking, after all every (married) woman, at some point of time, wants to experience motherhood. However, when Chanda Kochhar spoke of ‘having it all’, we could only think of the favorable circumstances working women desire to experience in order to ‘have it all’. Emma speaks the fact in the article – “…the truth remains that the professional deck is still stacked against us as women. Millennial women who want children (or at least might want children) are being realists. We are looking at the society we live in, assessing our options and trying to make pragmatic choices so that we don’t end up (let’s be honest) miserable.”

So is taking it easy the solution? She answers, “We shouldn’t feel obligated as women to be Super Mom, or feel as though we’ve failed if we opt for flexible hours over a CEO title. And “having it all” is definitely a bullsh*t concept which I am more than happy to never use again after I write this piece. Young women want to live saner lives and they’re taking steps to make that happen.”

In the end, Emma quotes Rebecca Traister to ask your opinion: Millennial women should feel empowered to lean in or out or right in between. But as it stands, is stepping back really such an active choice? Or are we simply more resigned to reality?

Do you have the answer?