Panel Advises How to Balance Work, Family

At a school where forums on life after college often focus solely on work, a Women's Initiative Project panel yesterday dealt with incorporating a healthy family life into the mix.

Around 25 people attended the panel discussion, "How to Do It All: A Look at Life after Harvard." The panelists, Julianne Bacsik , Jane E. Regan, Vincent J. Tompkins and Tamara E. Rogers '74 discussed how they balance a work life and a family life.

"We started this panel because no one's mentioning family at Harvard," said Karen E. Avery '87, assistant dean of the College and director of the project.

Avery said project leaders attempted to make the panel more diverse than in previous years. This year's panel included a single mother, a married man and two married women.

Bacsik, an anesthesiologist at the Boston Children's Hospital, recalled an incident when her daughter fell sick while she was working at the hospital on the night before her husband presented his graduate school thesis.

She said that after her family got through this incident, she knew they could do anything.

The sole male of the group, Assistant Dean of the Faculty Vincent J. Tompkins, described how he and his wife shared the responsibility of raising their two daughters.

"Men are coming to realize that just being work-oriented isn't healthy," he said.

Jane E. Regan, an associate professor of religion at Boston College and a single mother of two, said she wanted to show people how to find the balance between work and family, and most importantly, to help people define what "all" means for them.

Regan told audience members to ask themselves, "'What do I want my life to look like? Where do I want to invest my time and energy?'"

Rogers, the last member of the panel to speak, is Harvard's director of University Capital Projects. She described the path that led her from being a housewife to a traveling working mother.

"My idea of a career evolved while I was raising a family," she said.

The discussion became especially lively when Beth D. Welty '95 asked the panel members what a career woman should do if she has a baby and can't face leaving her child.

After all four panel members had discussed the intricacies of their balancing act, they all answered: a woman should do what makes her happy.

"No one was on their deathbed and said 'I really wished I'd spent more time in the office.' But more say 'I really wished I had spent more time with my family'," Rogers said.

Welty said she came to the panel discussion to find out the experiences of other woman who tried to do it all. Just recently, she said, she decided to go to medical school and is now trying to fulfill the pre-requisites.

'I don't think I thought through all of the consequences," she said. "What made me sad was the only life that didn't sound sustainable [of those presented at the panel] was the doctor's."

The audience also included a single mother who is a student of the College. Gina M. Ocon'98-'00--whose custody battle for her child has made national news in recent years--said she attended the panel to hear the conflicts and contradictions that the women had gone through.

"I'm facing all this right now," she said.