Recent surveys have found women in the millennial generation are more likely to plan for pauses in their careers and professional lives, as opposed to entirely giving up working or choosing to work full-time, the main options for past generations.
"The youngest generation of women in the work force the millennials, age 18 to early 30s is defining career success differently and less linearly than previous generations of women," wrote The New York Times.
The surveys found that even women with the highest ambition and opportunity in their careers were more likely to plan how to scale back or find more flexible jobs than generations before them, the Times wrote.
In surveys, millennials reported growing up with parents who either struggled to work full-time with a family, or had to quit work altogether. The younger generation prefers to find an approach that is "less all or nothing climb the career ladder or stay home with children and more give and take," the Times wrote.
"They felt as if they were learning from generations before them, and saw all of the downsides in both choices. Millennials are looking for more of a balance," Laura Sherbin, director of research at the Center for Talent Innovation, who conducted one of the surveys, told the Times.
Thirty-seven percent of millennial women who are Harvard Business School alumni reported in a survey by the university that they had plans to interrupt their career for family at some point; 42 percent of the already-married women surveyed had the same response.
Just because many women plan for pauses or cut-backs in their professional lives doesn't mean they doubt that it is a possibility or that they can split time between home and work as evenly as possible.
According to a March 2015 CareerBuilder survey, 78 percent of mothers believe it is possible to succeed in both career and parenting, and 52 percent said they were equally successful at both, reported eMarketer, an online marketing consultation and survey company.
Another study by Ketchum, a public relations firm, and BlogHer, a blogging platform for women, found that many working mothers decide to reduce stress by accepting that things would never be entirely perfect with both work and home and that they simply had to do their best with both, wrote eMarketer.
"The research we did showed that as far as running their households, working moms across the board have resigned themselves to not being a domestic goddess and to having a less-than-perfect household," said Kelley Skoloda, director of global brand marketing at New York-based Ketchum.
"The youngest generation of women in the work force the millennials, age 18 to early 30s is defining career success differently and less linearly than previous generations of women," wrote The New York Times.
The surveys found that even women with the highest ambition and opportunity in their careers were more likely to plan how to scale back or find more flexible jobs than generations before them, the Times wrote.
In surveys, millennials reported growing up with parents who either struggled to work full-time with a family, or had to quit work altogether. The younger generation prefers to find an approach that is "less all or nothing climb the career ladder or stay home with children and more give and take," the Times wrote.
"They felt as if they were learning from generations before them, and saw all of the downsides in both choices. Millennials are looking for more of a balance," Laura Sherbin, director of research at the Center for Talent Innovation, who conducted one of the surveys, told the Times.
Thirty-seven percent of millennial women who are Harvard Business School alumni reported in a survey by the university that they had plans to interrupt their career for family at some point; 42 percent of the already-married women surveyed had the same response.
Just because many women plan for pauses or cut-backs in their professional lives doesn't mean they doubt that it is a possibility or that they can split time between home and work as evenly as possible.
According to a March 2015 CareerBuilder survey, 78 percent of mothers believe it is possible to succeed in both career and parenting, and 52 percent said they were equally successful at both, reported eMarketer, an online marketing consultation and survey company.
Another study by Ketchum, a public relations firm, and BlogHer, a blogging platform for women, found that many working mothers decide to reduce stress by accepting that things would never be entirely perfect with both work and home and that they simply had to do their best with both, wrote eMarketer.
"The research we did showed that as far as running their households, working moms across the board have resigned themselves to not being a domestic goddess and to having a less-than-perfect household," said Kelley Skoloda, director of global brand marketing at New York-based Ketchum.