According to the survey:

• 63% have an adult child living with them now, and most expect them to stay for more than a year
• Only 41% of these women report having returned to live at home as adults themselves
• 27% have grandchildren living under the same roof
• 13% have parents or in-laws living with them as well
• 70% blame the economy as the reason for this outcome.

How do these midlife mothers feel? Well, many are feeling stressed. 39% report that the experience has either strained or worsened their relationship with the adult child living with them. They also continue to make personal sacrifices: 71% report that living in a multi-generational household makes it harder for them to achieve their personal goals.

Listen to this conversation between Wittenberg-Cox and Maitland, there’s so much of interest here. Their work is aimed at business leaders. They discuss the triple challenge of managing the ‘three discontinuities” in the 21st century: the technological revolution of the internet, the massive arrival of women into the workforce, and the issues of climate change and sustainability. They talk about training leadership to speak ‘gender-bilingually’ – and making the case that changing the way people work – especially increasing flexibility in the workplace – is an opportunity to attract a huge range of the workforce, not only women, but people approaching retirement, young people who want more choice, and men who want their roles as fathers to be better recognized.

This is the future for women.

The study showed that single women are as diverse as any other group: about half the women in the study said they are happier than they’ve ever been. Some lose sleep over the economic challenges of being single, but that doesn’t stop the majority of them from believing that midlife offers an opportunity for growth, for learning, and the chance to do the things they’ve always wanted to do. On study author says that “many single women are living lives of secret contentment.”

Here’s the gist of the myths, some supported, others debunked. Go the site for a fuller description.
Myth #1 All single women are desperate to find a mate.
Reality: Open to a nice relationship? You betcha. But obsessed with finding a partner? Hardly. 31% of single women 40 – 69 are in an exclusive relationship, and another 32% date non-exclusively, wile a surprising number couldn’t care less.

Myth #2 Single women are lonely.
Reality: Everyone is lonely sometimes—even married people. But most single women actually enjoy their solitude. Slightly more single women than their married sisters said they felt their independence was important to their quality of life. They love the freedom.

Myth #3 Older women are clueless about finances and don’t know how to invest.
Reality: Women are more timid investors than men are, but they’re the opposite of clueless and actually make fewer investing mistakes than men do. Women are also more likely than men to rely on advice from finance professionals… they seek information. “But just because single women know something intellectually, it doesn’t mean it’s easy for them emotionally.”

Myth #4 Unlike their female counterparts who were born before the women’s movement, baby-boomer career women have it made financially.
Reality: Many single women—particularly those under age 60—carry dangerously high levels of debt.
It’s not ignorance, manage big corporate budgets. “They work hard and like to spend, trading immediate gratification for long-term planning.”

Myth #5 Retirement is a time for single women to slow down and get a few more cats.
Reality: Often it’s an exciting chance for reinvention.
In terms of happy-right-now measurements, single women, overall, don’t fare as well as those with a partner. But attitudes are changing as mature unmarried women are starting to build a culture all their own as they realize how much time they have to create a meaningful life.

Myth #6 When it comes to their appearance, older single women say “the heck with it.”
Reality: To the contrary, women without partners are keenly aware that appearances matter in our society, but most don’t go to extremes to look younger, though single women do pay more attention to appearance, as in the dating world physical appearance is always important.

Myth #7: A single woman’s worst fear is that she’ll wind up old, sick, and alone.
Reality: While winding up alone later in life is increasingly likely for all women, it’s not something single women lose sleep over. 81% aren’t overly concerned about growing old alone. Some see being single as protecting them from the heartbreaking ordeal of caring for a sick husband.

Myth #8 The older they get, the more single women regret the lack of family ties.
Reality: Unmarried women have strong family relationships, and many have stronger social support systems than married women do of friends, colleagues, neighbors, and other people..”Community really means a lot and gives them geographical stability.

Myth #9 Single women are sex-starved.
Reality: It’s variable, while most women have a greater appetite for other forms of sustenance in their lives. Whether sexually active or not, they aren’t hung up about it, yet those who are, are more sexually adventurous and easygoing, and more willing to take pleasure when it comes.

Myth #10 Single women aren’t as healthy as married women.
Reality: This is hard to say as there is little data, yet 46% say their health is excellent or very good, while 90% feel very or somewhat confident that they’re doing all they can to stay healthy.

While they are not suggesting this proves happiness protects the heart, they do suggest the belief that people are hardwired to be naturally happy or not has been replaced in recent years by studies in the science of happiness, or the field of positive psychology. There are numerous strategies that can help naturally negative people become happier, including

* A daily schedule of at least 15 – 20 minutes doing something enjoyable
* Express gratitude on a regular basis.
* Practice being optimistic.
* Engage in frequent acts of kindness.
* Visualize one’s best self.
* Savor joyful events.
* Practicing forgiveness.
* Regular exercise, sex and sleep

Why Women Mean Business was named a business book of the year by Conference Board Review, the quarterly magazine of The Conference Board, the world’s preeminent business membership and research organization. Their predictions come from analyzing the 15 million jobs the U.S. Bureau of Labor expects will be created by 2018. Among reasons cited for the surge in growth in “women-bossed” new jobs include greater flexibility from higher rates of self-funding among women’s businesses than men’s, the faster growth rate for women-owned businesses, and the fact that the fields and occupations dominated by women are expected to grow in coming years.

The course takes you through a: chakra-by-chakra self-diagnosis, and healing with imagery, to the scientific evidence from medicine and physics, how our past lives affect our present health, and decoding archetypal information. You also learn to:

* Develop an intuitive rapport not just with your body but with your entire life
* Work with archetypes, imagery, and symbols—the language of the psyche
* Use “spiritual alchemy” to engage your struggles as a source of transformation and wisdom
* See how your personal history gets encoded in your chakras
* Focus on the higher powers of your own “jewel of potential”—the seventh chakra
* Cleanse and “rewire” your own energy system
* Control—or even reverse – the single cause of 75% of all illness in two 20-minute sessions a day