Scarlett Johansson Says Work-Life Balance Is Impossible: Is She Right?

Viral videos of A-list actress, Scarlett Johansson, are circling the internet this week, not for her new skincare line that she’s promoting, but for her comments about how working moms can’t actually "have it all." The actress made headlines after devoting part of her interview to explaining why work-life balance is a myth.

“I think actually admitting that there is no work-life balance is the first step to kind of getting there in a way, because it’s not possible,” shared A-list actress Scarlett Johansson. Stone-faced, she added, “There’s always something that is … there’s a deficit in some area, and I think you have to be … I learned to be more kind to myself. You can’t do all of these things all the time, and so, you know … there’s just like … is it good enough? Somebody once told me, ‘If you’re successful as a parent like 75% of the time, that’s good’—if you’re doing 75% of it like right, then you’re winning, which is probably true.”

Have you ever heard a more ringing endorsement for working mothers? 

Are we, as working moms, doomed to live in a perpetual state of "good enough"?

But is she right? Are we, as working moms, doomed to live in a perpetual state of "good enough"? And should everyone in our lives just settle for the leftover parts of us?

Diagnosing the Problem

Johansson’s takedown of the "have it all" myth is a salient one because she’s right about one thing: it’s impossible to give our maximum effort to everything at once and expect a true balance. If everything matters equally, nothing truly matters. Even most fourth wave feminists concede the point. They’ll say, “You can’t have it all at the same time” or “You can’t have it all because our work environments are anti-women.” But their goal is still the same: climb the corporate ladder for ultimate meaning, even if it takes more time, more legislation and a constant drain at home. 

But look at Johansson herself. The woman made $45 million last year, has access to resources most mothers never will, and she still says it’s impossible. She’s not saying women can’t work and have families, but her example exposes that we, as humans, have finite time, emotional energy, and attention. And that is very clear when you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics on how many hours a day women spend actively engaging with their kids. According to the data, mothers spend an average of 2-3 hours per day actively engaging or caring for their kids. But it’s not for lack of wanting; 78% of parents say they wish they had more time to spend with their kids. 

So how can we have meaningful work that doesn’t consume us and still be active, loving wives, mothers, daughters, and friends?

Intentionally Ordering Our Lives

When you listen to Scarlett Johansson talk about living in a constant deficit, there’s a hint of despair that comes across her face and in her voice. It’s heartbreaking. I reject the premise that we’re destined to permanently live in deficit with the people we love most. In fact, we absolutely should not. 

If we’re being honest, chronic deficit in our lives can often be the result of misaligned priorities, unsustainable ambition, or a culture that rewards constant work escalation. And given that our culture treats limits as oppression, crafting a life that’s intentionally ordered rather than maximally planned can be looked at as "harmful." But when we intentionally order our priorities to match our limited time, we reveal what we truly love in life. I found this out the hard way when I recently took inventory of my time and realized the best of me was going to the least of my priorities.   

I love working. It has always been fulfilling and exciting to me whether I was waiting tables or managing a national PR team. I’ve worked as a single mom of one and worked as a married mom of two. But it wasn’t until my eldest daughter had a crisis that I realized I could no longer live like this. I realized there had to be a better way. What I valued most in life was not getting my best. 

My family and I had a good life. I was girlbossing to the max. I was a vice president with a great salary leading a high-performing team. But there were definite cracks in the edifice. With any of my high-performing jobs, they always followed me home. It was hard to be there with my kids physically while still separated by my laptop screen. Or make promises of outings just to shoot them down at the last minute for an emergency work call. But it wasn’t until my daughter had a major crisis that required all my mental and emotional capital that I realized my life needed significant reordering. 

For so long, I kept prizing my work and telling myself that I was irreplaceable. That my work needed me. And yes, I’m good at what I do, but I’m also replaceable. Newsflash: we all are…and that’s a good thing. There will always be talented people in the workforce. But the one role where I wasn’t replaceable was with my family. My daughter needed me and that was not a job I would outsource.

Intentionally reordering my life required me to fully acknowledge my top values. My jobs always had mission statements and core values. Why had I never made one for my own life? I’d previously made a budget for my finances but never one for my time; that had to change too. 

I’m not going to lie. This reordering came with significant sacrifices. I quit my vice president role at the company and took a major pay cut. We moved to a different state with cheaper living to offset the costs. We placed ourselves near family and downsized the way we live. And I can tell you, I may not be living the maximalist feminist dream, but I unequivocally can say that I now “have it all.” I have ample time for my family. I have meaningful work (at a lesser scale). I even have time now to work out, to read, to write—who would’ve thought? 

There’s something incredibly freeing about recognizing the misalignment between your values and your lifestyle and taking action to put them in the right order. As famous author C.S. Lewis put it, “Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before… either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself.” 

In the Here and Now

Chronic deficits in our lives shouldn’t be normalized, no matter what our work culture, feminist talking points, or friends say. Every meaningful life has limits, and wisdom is deciding what you are unwilling to sacrifice. Like Scarlett Johansson, I fully agree that a work-life balance isn’t achievable in the way the world presents it. But unlike her, I refuse to view the people and things in my life as constantly depleting me.

Every meaningful life has limits, and wisdom is deciding what you are unwilling to sacrifice.

None of this is to deny economic reality. Inflation is real, childcare is expensive and there’s much more we need to do policy-wise to improve these situations. As a former single mother, I completely understand how finances and lack of childcare play into this. But while policy debates rage on, we still have to live in the here and now. The question is, within our real constraints, how are we choosing to orient our time, energy and priorities today?

Scarlett Johansson is right that we can’t “have it all” in a conventional sense. But we’re not meant to permanently live in deficit, either. A meaningful life will always require tradeoffs; the real question is whether we’re willing to intentionally order our lives around what matters most or keep giving the people we love our leftovers.