"We are setting up a life-style which we consciously fought against for years," says Rebecca. "I'll be at home, and my husband faces a long commute. But I look around me now, and I see that no matter what life-style people choose, there's no way the pieces fit. You have to try to get the tightest fit you can, and that means sacrifices and compromises. I feel the way I assume a lot of men feel when they finally realize that they'll never put on the Yankee pinstripes, never play major-league baseball. It's devastating. But something had to give. You really can't have everything."

To most working parents, Rebecca Murray's discovery is hardly news. Fully two thirds of two-career couples in the United States work because they must to get by. But mention the Murrays' dilemma to any young professional parents in New York and you'll strike a sympathetic chord. Virtually all of them will tell you that they're preoccupied with the same problems, and that they have yet to find satisfactory solutions. Accustomed for years to having what they want—and addicted to what they have—the prospect of sacrifice is nothing short of terrifying.

Even couples with a great deal of money—enough to have household help, big apartments, and vacation homes—can buy only so much. Certainly their lives are easier, but money can't buy unlimited time. Working parents at a variety of economic levels are discovering that having it all—two careers, two children, and the income necessary to live comfortably in New York—creates other costs. More and more, they feel overwhelmed by the stress of keeping it all together. They visit chiropractors and physical therapists to relieve their tensions, wake up at night making lists in their heads for the following day. They have too little time for their spouses and their friends. They feel cut off from any larger sense of community. They forget what it's like to relax. When they slow down long enough to consider their lives, they find themselves wondering whether what they're getting is worth what they're giving up.

These couples are members of a babyboom generation that has been searching for answers for two decades now—skipping noisily from one new cause to another. The searching began in the sixties with a common cause: the counterculture taking on the Establishment. But the war finally ended, the enemy blurred, the economy constricted, and graduating college kids suddenly faced a new challenge: making a living. In the Me Decade that followed, the cause became personal growth, but the decade's legacy has proved less than enduring. The human-potential movement, for all its eclectic forms, produced precious little enlightenment. Is there a zealot still about who extols the long-term values of est, Esalen, Rolfing, primal-scream therapy, or (besides John Travolta) Scientology? As for the flurry of sexual experimentation, its most lasting impact may have been to hasten the spread of herpes and AIDS—and to drive a final stake into countless already troubled relationships.

A new breed of chastened couples emerged from the shambles of the Me Decade. These couples embraced a more businesslike religion: success. There was no room for children. The women, liberated from traditional housebound roles, began making money instead of babies, building careers instead of sand castles. They married or moved in with men on the same path. Free of large financial obligations, these two-career couples had plenty of money. They put in long hours at work and rewarded themselves with designer clothes, meals at restaurants four or five nights a week and dinner parties for eight on the weekends, furniture and expensive trinkets for their apartments, Caribbean vacations in the winter, Hamptons houses in the summer, and Nautilus machines and aerobics classes year-round. They spent what they earned, and they didn't worry. Save for what? The future was bright.

By the time these couples moved into their thirties, many had built successful careers and sampled most of what money could buy. But something was still missing. Their hunger was for children after all. And, biologically speaking, there wasn't much time left. Nearly overnight, a second baby boom began. Its progenitors took up their new cause with characteristic passion—and innocence. Sure, having children would require some modifications in their lives, might cut into vacations and nights out, but those were minor inconveniences. The high of having kids would more than compensate. The result, in fact, would be the best of two worlds: family and career.

The women, unlike their mothers, would take brief maternity leaves and return to their careers. To do otherwise would mean sacrificing all they'd worked so hard to achieve—for themselves, and for women in general. What's more, many of these women were appalled by the prospect of staying home all day with infants. The men would ease the burden by taking an active role in child rearing. These pioneer couples would be better parents in the process, they explained—the father simply for being there, the mother for providing a positive working role model.

Related:

• Archive: “Features”
• Articles by Tony Schwartz
• From the Jul 15, 1985 issue of New York