One of the issues Michelle Obama may take on as first lady is how to keep work and family in proper balance. She’s had plenty of experience, having spent years juggling a high-profile career and motherhood. Here are some glimpses of her life that show her sometimes frustrating journey from highly focused careerist to do-it-all woman:
When she first joined law firm Sidley Austin, she pushed for more interesting assignments and sought significant responsibility, even if it meant ruffling feathers, according to biographer Liza Mundy.
» When her first daughter, Malia, was born in 1999, Obama scaled back to part-time hours at the University of Chicago. Yet she told More magazine that like many working mothers, she wound up getting half-pay without any real reduction in workload. She said she was constantly spending her lunch break picking up and dropping off babysitters.
» When she considered a job with the University of Chicago Medical Center in 2001, she brought her newborn, Sasha, to her interview with the chief executive officer.
» Once in the job, she handled the politically sensitive task of persuading the largely poor black community on the South Side of Chicago to use doctors’ offices for preventive care, rather than the University of Chicago Medical Center’s expensive emergency room.
» “I don’t know about you,” she told the attendees at a 2007 fundraiser in Texas, according to the Los Angeles Times, “but as a mother, wife, professional, campaign wife, whatever it is that’s on my plate, I’m drowning. And nobody’s talking about these issues. In my adult lifetime, I felt duped.”
