One has to admire Sheryl Sandberg according to Belinda Luscombe in the Time magazine article, “Confidence Woman,” of March 18, 2013. The little girl who whipped her siblings into shape, conditioning them to say ‘right’ every time she gave a directive, grew up to be COO of Facebook. Sandberg reveals this story in her memoir “Lean In.” But Sandberg insists women have deep-seated issues which stem from the fact that success for women comes at the price of not being liked. To avoid this conundrum, women “lean back” instead of “leaning in.” Discover what you’re most afraid of career-wise: then do it. The subtext seems to be, just don’t do it alone.

What Sandberg does seem to have going for her that plenty of women don’t is enough help. She has a doting husband who shares household responsibilities with her, a sister one mile away whom, according to Sandberg, will drop everything every time to be at the dinner table with her children when Sandberg and her husband can’t. Who wouldn’t appreciate that kind of arrangement?

Sandberg’s aspirations seem lofty but not unattainable. She argues that if women can have equal careers to men, then the “next wave [of feminism] can be the last wave.” While this is a great hypothetical idea, the statement that “an employed mom today spends about the same amount of time reading to, feeding and playing with her children as a non-employed mother did in 1975” (Sandberg, Time, 45) leaves many women scratching their collectively likable heads. What’s missing here? It is the acknowledgement from Sandberg that those mothers in the 70’s must have had their mothers helping them like Sandberg’s sister helps her now.

According to Maureen Dowd, writing about Sandberg in her March 27, 2013 article in the New York Times, “[She] seems to think she can remedy a social paradigm with a new kind of club – a combo gabfest, Oprah session and corporate pep talk,” making her ideas when viewed by baby boomers seem more like a consciousness-raising session – served light.

Jody Greenstone Miller, in her Wall Street Journal article, “The Real Women’s Issue: Time” (March 9 – 10, 2012) describes the conundrum for women simultaneously working and raising families as one solvable with the use of project managers and the repealing of the notion that to be a successful senior manager, one has to put a quantity of time at a higher value than the quality of a product.

Arranging all of the components of job success: sufficient education, a forward-thinking company, a helpful extended family as well as people to take care of the house, can lead to fulfillment. Having all the components is nothing short of a blessing.