Wall Street titan Thasunda Brown Duckett spends 30% of her time with her children because ‘work-life balance is a lie’

The Wall Street titan recalled that the light bulb moment came after she burst into tears when another long day at work meant she wouldn’t be able to see her children that evening.

“I called my husband and thought, when I get up in the morning, I’m not going to see my kids,” Duckett told LinkedIn News. “When I come home, I don’t see my children.”

Her husband, an engineer, Marine and stay-at-home dad, advised her to simply quit her job. Instead, she said she stopped striving to do and be everything all the time.

“Here’s what I learned: Work-life balance is a lie because I tried to reconcile it and the math wasn’t math,” Duckett explained.

“The truth is that I only have 100% of myself, not 110%. Understanding that I am not 100% assigned to motherhood, they only get 30%, allows me to be more purposeful…. So my children don’t get 100% from me. But within that allocation they get 100%.”

Fortune has reached out to Duckett for comment.

Work-life balance as a diversified portfolio

Instead of simultaneously trying to dedicate 100% of herself to motherhood and 100% to being the boss of a $45 billion-a-year financial company, Duckett said she tries to view the time she has as a diversified portfolio.

“If you live your life as a diversified portfolio, just like your money, you will perform better over time,” she explained.

“On any given day, I might not feel like I’m the best mom when I’m traveling. There are days when I don’t feel like I’m a great CEO. There are times when I don’t feel like I’m being a great daughter,” she added. “But over time I am a very good mother. And over time, I believe I am achieving my purpose as a leader and doing a great job.”

She is not the first to admit that it is impossible to give equal attention to motherhood and a busy career – and to thrive in both roles.

Whoopi Goldberg even candidly admitted that this ultimately meant choosing her career over her child. Meanwhile, pop star Lily Allen revealed on a podcast that having children ‘completely ruined’ her career.

Holly Wilbanks, the founder of Wilbanks Consulting Group, echoed that idea to CBS News earlier this year: “The concept that we can do anything, I think a lot of us have realized, is not a realistic concept.

“What women are trying to do today is figure out what’s important to them, what they value, and how to structure their focus and time around those things — and honestly, for a lot of women, that means making choices. .”

Wall Street veteran Sallie Krawcheck similarly outlined that she has had to think carefully about how she invests her time as a mother and CEO.

“There were times in my life when I was just going ‘go, go, go, go’ with my career and doing a perfectly adequate job as a mother,” said Ellevest’s founder and CEO. “But (I) wasn’t that perfect mom with the homemade cookies.”

Similarly, Krawcheck said, “There were times in my life when my children needed me when the career took a backseat.”

The myth of ‘having it all’

It was Cosmopolitan magazine that came up with the ‘you can have it all’ mantra: the corner office, kids in tow and not a hair out of place.

But even the former editor-in-chief admitted that not only is this unrealistic, but it is also a “very dangerous” standard to maintain.

“You can’t do it all right at once,” Farrah Storr said when she was still at the helm of the women’s title.

“I decided not to have children – I just didn’t think I could do my job with children in tow – and that has been a huge personal sacrifice.”

If even those with huge incomes who have to forgo childcare admit that it is difficult to excel at motherhood and at work at the same time, what hope does the regular working mother have?

According to the Fawcett Society, around a quarter of a million mothers in Britain have left their jobs in recent years due to the difficulty of balancing a career and childcare.

Meanwhile, women who remain in the labor market after having children are financially punished: according to PwC, mothers experience a 60% drop in income compared to fathers in the ten years after the birth of their first child.

More than 40% of mothers surveyed by the Fawcett Society had turned down a promotion or career development opportunity because they were concerned it would not fit in with childcare arrangements.

Men, on the other hand, see their wages increase after becoming fathers.