50-something Moms Blog

What is the "Face" of Your Work/Family Conflict?

Work/life balance.  It's a phrase that gets bandied about by the media and by various experts.  We lament.  We juggle.  We all try to figure out how we can keep things running in our lives -- maybe not always smoothly, but at least without too many bumps.

There are those who like to remind us of the saying -- you can have it all, just not all at the same time.  And maybe that's true to a certain extent, but I hate when people use it to suggest that women shouldn't expect to be able to work full-time and have our employers understand that the realities of families today are a whole lot different than when our parents were raising families.

Except they should.  We all should.  Not because we want a favor, but because the face of working in America is radically different today than when the current workplace structure became the norm back in the 1950s.  I don't know anyone whose family resembles the Cleavers, yet the workplace, for the most part, is still designed to deal only with that model -- where there is only one working parent and the other stays home to deal with after-school activities, sick children, and aging parents.  That just ain't the way things are anymore, yet we're all expected to work that way and are often penalized when real life intrudes.

A Woman's Nation?

Maria Shriver, the Center for American Progress and NBC have been having a party, of sorts, with the launch and roll-out of The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything. The gist of the report is this -- now that women officially make up half of the American work force, that's bound to help things change for us in terms of work/life balance, equal pay and how we as families negotiate family and work obligations.

The report contends that things are getting easier for women because more men are willing to chip in with the housework and husbands are increasingly viewing their wives differently because of their bread-winning obligations.

We should have more power because our numbers in the workforce are rising and we're the ones who make 80% of the big ticket money decisions in our homes.  But does all that translate into real change in the workplace?