Trish Dolasinski––Just lean in

Just lean in

By Trish Dolasinski for North Valley Magazine

“Don’t hold back, just lean in,” says Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, in her nonfiction book, Lean In. Sandberg refreshingly clears the path that offers an enlightening journey for all women, whether in the workplace or at home, while including benefits for the men who support them.

In fact, the single most important career decision a woman makes is not whether to continue pursuing a career after marriage and children, or to stay at home, but her choice of a life partner. Marry someone who truly wishes to be an equal partner, she admonishes, and it will not only enrich your relationship, but your children and family life as well.

Sandberg, a mother of two, elaborates the value of parental involvement as a key element in fulfilling family life, and especially highlights current studies that support the value of regular paternal nurturing.  Additionally, when the fathers provided regular routine childcare duties higher levels of educational and economic achievement were seen in the children as well as greater social competency.

However, the most powerful recommendation this COO wife / mom offers is her challenge to women to be active participants in the equality relationship building process. Women need to make changes in their own attitudes and habits and value the qualities of caring and sensitivity in their partners and seek the support they need. Just lean in.

Although Sheryl Sandberg delves more deeply into such growth-inhibiting factors as “maternal gatekeeping” and the ongoing struggle for “perfectionism,” her underlying message is to squelch the feminine myth that “women can do it all.”

Readers will gain solace when they realize that “trying to do it all is a recipe for disappointment.” Do aim high, develop goals, and exercise your freedom to make choices, but accept that we all have real-to-life limits. Having that partnering relationship with our mates could be a “recipe for happiness.”

About Trish Dolasinski

Dr. Trish Dolasinski is a freelance writer, educational consultant, and adjunct faculty for doctoral candidates at Grand Canyon University. She has published several articles for local and national magazines, and facilitates local writer’s groups and book clubs. Dolasinski has just finished her 80,000-word debut novel, Watershed, and has been both a regular and guest book review columnist.

As a 30-year career educator, she recently retired from being a teacher and elementary school principal in two large Phoenix area districts. She majored in English and journalism and earned her doctorate in educational leadership from Northern Arizona University. She is a 60-ish and youthful Scottsdale lady with eight little grandchildren, loves to read, write and run, and is married to her college sweetheart.