Ultimately we need to rethink how we define career and personal success. The traditional national definition of success has been largely a male definition based upon the notion that success is best measured by salary, title, position, and number of levels from ones position to the top of the organizational hierarchy. Such a definition of success doesn't make sense anymore. Salaries have become highly variable. Titles have disappeared or become meaningless.
Every position is, at best, insecure, and now everyone is just a few levels from the top.
Today, success must have more to do with how one feels about one's career and one's future prospects than about salary, title, position, or the other traditional measures. A true definition of success today must be more holistic and, yes, more subjective. We need a more holistic view of life and the role of work in life. There is a price to pay for dealing with family and life outside the workplace only in the margins. It is a price we, as a nation, pay everyday in illegal drugs and violence and stress and family conflict and teenage pregnancies and school drop outs and ignorance.