It’s 5:30, and Sheryl Sandberg’s Going Home
Sheryl Sandberg Image by getty images
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen April 12, 2012
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has come out of the closet. No, not that closet, but rather the one in which she’s been hiding the fact that she leaves the office each day at 5:30 p.m. so she can have dinner with her children.
In this new video, Sandberg says that she wasn’t confident enough, until the last year or two, to admit that she leaves at a reasonable hour in order to attend to her family life. It’s amazing that even a woman as powerful as Sandberg has felt a sense of shame about it, as if she wasn’t working hard enough, though as she says in this article, clearly she is working at all hours: “I feel guilty when my son says, ‘Mommy, put down the BlackBerry, talk to me’ and that happens far too often.”
Nothing is as powerful an influence on changing a culture than seeing people in power illustrate values like this.
I remember the first time I saw a rabbi who is also a father holding his baby on the bimah. It was Rabbi Brad Artson, who is the father of twins. He was at a conference and had one in each arm. It struck me as a more powerful influencer of change than a dozen statements issued by advocates for female rabbis urging updated expectations for work-life balance.
So kudos to Sandberg for modeling the closest thing to work-life balance that this economy will tolerate. Hopefully more powerful executives — male and female — will soon publicly do the same.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
