Balancing act

Today is Labor Day, a federal holiday that commemorates the contributions of the American labor movement and sacrifices of workers. While I'd thoroughly enjoy discussing the legal and political history of industrial labor relations, this post concerns an issue more salient to many adults in this country: maintaining a balance between work and family responsibilities. 

Because of my own experience striving for "work-life balance", I'm quite curious (perhaps even nosy) about other families' work and child-care arrangements. I've known brave and capable women who return to work soon after giving birth, often sacrificing personal time to manage a household and earn a paycheck. Some of my friends - men and women alike - are selfless stay-at-home parents who meet their children's needs from sunrise until sundown while their partner works long hours. Others have managed a mixed schedule consisting of part-time work and part-time caregiving.  Still others have arranged to work from home certain days, allowing them to maintain a full-time workload while fulfilling familial obligations such as carpools and bus stop drop-offs and pickups. In addition to day care and/or school, most parents I know also rely on help from extended family members and/or babysitters to enable them to work (or do errands and chores kid-free). 

Social media is ripe with accounts of the struggle to balance work and family - specifically care of young children. In one such article, Why I Opted In To ‘The Motherhood Penalty’ At My Job, Jordan Jayson describes her decision to reduce her work-week to four days, and accept a proportional (20 percent) salary reduction in exchange. She discusses the satisfaction achieved by having one day per week to spend with her son when she'd otherwise be working, as well as the concerns about how her flexible work arrangement will affect her long-term earning prospects and professional reputation. The "mix of doubt, guilt, and self-criticism isn’t unfamiliar to working mothers. It comes with the territory," she writes. Furthermore, she talks about policy challenges involving parental leave policies, the perception of working moms as somehow "gaming the system," and the reality that in fact they work longer overall hours, toggling between childcare tasks and after-hours work once kids are asleep. Most significantly, Jayson criticizes the treatment of women as a "one-size-fits-all" constituency when it comes to desired career trajectory and the policies offered to help mothers in the workplace. 

Perhaps because the author's child is still young, one pertinent factor that the article doesn't address is the likelihood that over the course of her career one woman may need several different variations of a flexible-work schedule before returning to a "regular" full-time arrangement. As time passes, most children grow more self-sufficient with respect to both day-to-day self-care and entertaining themselves. They eventually spend most of their waking hours in school and other structured activities. Thus, if someone such as Jayson opts for a reduced workload after the birth of a child, she will eventually be able to return to full-time, therefore allaying her fears that she has forever harmed her wage-earning prospects. Still, the zeitgeist around working moms in particular seems to cast aspersions on any departure from a full-time work schedule in which the aim is to score every possible professional achievement. A working mom who returns to a regular full-time schedule will likely feel pressure to throw herself into work and handle emergencies or other last-minute developments with the same aplomb as her previous childless self. 

Of course, as Jayson also conveys, arranging atypical work schedules depends on the willingness of employers to accommodate workers' needs. In some industries this may simply not be possible; in others, flexibility may be easier to achieve. Another factor, of course, involves the practicalities of sharing childrearing responsibilities between partnered parents. Whether or not one has children, the way in which families handle the balance between wage-earning and childcare effects us all, insofar as it impacts how the next generation of humans is raised.  In my further posts, I plan to explore policies concerning parental leave and childcare, as well as the practices and attitudes surrounding which partner handles which household tasks. As always, I'd love to hear any reader reactions (including tales of flexible work arrangements) in the comments.