Valerie Jarrett, chief executive of the Obama Foundation, doesn’t really believe in work-life balance. “This notion of work-life balance, I think, sets us up for disappointment,” she said at the Fortune Most Powerful Women summit in Laguna Niguel, Calif., on Tuesday.
Life is chock-full of chapters, she said, and in every one there will be trade-offs and challenges. Raising children is one that typically impacts women and their work in a dramatically different way than it does for men. Men, for instance, don’t have to explain work-life balance and how they handle it all, while women are often asked to weigh in on the matter for the benefit of other women. In Jarrett's experience, when she was younger, “I felt…like I was holding on by my fingertips.” Years ago, while she was working at a law firm, she even hid her pregnancy for pretty much as long as she could.
