Yahoo’s New CEO Melissa Mayer and the Folly of Moms Relying on ‘Inner Voice’
The London Olympic mascots, or when PR designers follow their own inner voices.
The incoming CEO of Yahoo, Melissa Mayer, announced her pregnancy, which has provoked another round of the Having It All Olympics. Joanne Bamberger, a mother of teens who has already medaled in these events, has 6 tips for Mayer. You can read them here at HuffPost Parents. Tips 1-5 offer sound advice, but number 6:
Don’t listen to me. I know I’ve just given you all this advice, but don’t listen to me or other critics. Don’t listen to anything but your inner voice. If working through your maternity leave makes you feel energized and seems like the right path for you, go for it. But just promise me you’ll listen to that voice and take heed of what your inner self is telling you to do when it comes to being a professional and a working mother. Because we’re all tired of having the debate over how women should manage their lives and their parenting.
If Mayer’s inner voice were giving her sound advice then she wouldn’t need Bamberger’s and we wouldn’t be having another round of this tiring debate. Following our inner voices is the sort of thing that got us into our postmodern mess. When we tossed standards, when we stopped listening to voices of experience, we became naive enough to think, among other things, that having it all was just a matter of good time management.
But the voices of experience say — we know — otherwise. Bamberger’s advice should command respect and consideration simply because she’s already been there. Mayer doesn’t have to follow the advice, of course. She might have extenuating circumstances that outweigh the sage advice. Those are the things only Mayer can judge. But Bamberger tells her to discount her voice of experience. This is folly.
Ironically, it will probably be the bit of advice that Mayer does follow. Inner truths are essential to the modern world view. Respect for the past and lessons from elders are two of those things that give conservatives reputations as backward thinking dolts. So, following the last bit of advice, Mayer will make most or all of the mistakes Bamberger warned her about. She will learn the same lessons. And in about 15 years, she will write an advice column to some rising female star in which she laments her weariness in the Have It All Olympics. Perhaps she won’t undercut her own advice with some platitude about inner voices.
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Related at PJ Lifestyle:
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If any of you ever manages to “have it all”,you let me know and I’ll let the Guinness Book people know. You’d just be the first person in…oh…the entire history of human civilization that accomplished it.
Watching your debates is,for me at least, kind of like looking at what would happen if alchemy was never discredited and everybody was still searching for the Philosopher’s Stone that would transmute lead into gold.
It’s a laugh a minute.
It’s like you geniuses think you’re more intelligent than 3000 years worth of philosophers devoting their entire lives to the pursuit of trying to figure out how to “have it all” and coming up empty-handed because you have a degree in poetry,English,or social science.
Seems to me that a better #6 would be “Reserve the right to change your mind.” It matches the military saying that “Battle plans go out the window when the shooting starts.”
I don’t fault Mayer for her decision – it’s her decision to make. Mayer can think whatever she likes, but she should recognize that the folly exists if she chooses to forego re-evaluating when more facts are available to her.