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Featured Guest Blogger May 27th, 2008

Am I the only one who waits with baited breath to hear about work-family strategies and goals from our presidential candidates? I might be. We will call it “the nature of the job.”

While the Sloan Network mainly researches policy on the state level, we know that devolution to the state level exists; therefore, what happens at the Federal level is likely to follow suit in the states. Now that I say that, though we have seen that the reverse is true as well – states will initiate a policy, test it out, and, if the feds like what they see, they will join in.

I recently went in search of any explicit work-family agendas laid out by the presidential candidates, and I wanted to share some of this information with our readers. Both Hillary and Barack have web pages which help to explain their plans for working families.

John McCain touches upon work-family issues by mentioning older workers and unemployment insurance in this speech, but we didn’t find a page dedicated to the topic.

As this topic doesn’t tend to get quite as much press as some of the others, it is nice to read about what each camp is saying about OUR work as we head into the upcoming election.

• Policy
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Karen Corday May 23rd, 2008

New from the Network:

New in Work and Family:

• Gen X/Gen Y , New on the Network , Older Workers , Publications , Workplace
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Julie Schwartz Weber May 21st, 2008

I just completed The Feminine Mistake by Leslie Bennetts. I found it an interesting though narrowly focused read. While Bennetts argues compellingly that women should opt to work, instead of staying home childrearing or housekeeping, she is only truly addressing women with means. That is, women whose spouses can support them, or, if they choose to work, have no trouble affording or accessing necessary resources, like quality childcare or vacation time. As research continually documents, most American women are not able to choose whether they would like to work, but must work to survive financially. And many women do not have the means to access or afford the resources necessary to juggle work and home responsibilities.

Bennetts’ main theme is that too many women still believe in the age old fairy tale – marriage to and full financial support from Prince Charming, children, stay at home motherhood– much to their and their children’s future detriments. Instead, Bennett argues that all women should work continually outside the home to protect themselves financially, emotionally, and intellectually. She writes,

“ . . . .protect yourself against economic hardship by maintaining the capacity to support yourself. Protect your children by making sure you can take care of them financially should anything happen to their father. Protect your future happiness against nagging doubts harbored by frustrated stay-at-home mothers who . . . fail[ed] to explore their full potential…”

Bennetts draws from numerous examples of women who were surprised and shocked by how their family life unfolded – due to spouses’ early deaths, divorces, illnesses, and the like. Many women who had opted not to work or to be involved in the family’s finances, were suddenly forced into poverty or tight financial situations when the unexpected occurred – and had much difficulty in finding employment or themselves, after having not worked for many years. She also lays out myriad examples of women (like herself) who were able to work and have kids, and how it benefited the marriages, the kids, and the women.

Yet, Bennetts fails to addresses the “how-tos” for most women in making the work-family balance work. How do most women gain access to quality child care? How do most women tend to the needs of their elderly relatives while working and child rearing? How do most women have access to flexible schedules or sick and family leave?

Thoughts?

• Mothers and Fathers , Publications
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Featured Guest Blogger May 19th, 2008

Lawyers may be the butt of many a joke, but one thing that might not be as funny is how they are faring in terms of their work-family balance. The work-family pressures for lawyers can be too much to handle, particularly for attorneys who work in larger firms.

Keith Cunningham-Parmeter wrote about “the law firm’s failure of the family” in the Stanford Law Review (2001, vol.53, p.967). He focuses on the gap between law firms’ policies for working families (flexible work schedules, etc.) and the use of such policies. Other authors have noted similar findings – lawyers tend to feel too much work pressure from “on high” to be able to take advantage of family-friendly policies and programs.

Additionally, attorneys may learn how not to act while watching what happens to their colleagues who have opted to use family-friendly policies. Associates in law firms have commented on witnessing the penalization of their fellow associates who work a flexible schedule or take leave; they are often given a lower quality of work and are not considered for advancement as readily. Lauren Still Rikleen writes a lot about this in her book, Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women’s Success in the Law . The message is simply this: if they want to make partner, which many of them do, they cannot be seen as a family-dedicated softy. Do you feel that the work-family policies at your organization are for the taking?

• Flexible Schedules , Organizations , Workplace
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Karen Corday May 16th, 2008

New from the Network:

• There are two new Bills by Theme pages: Breastfeeding and Military Families.

• Number 14 in the Policy Briefing Series, Breastfeeding, is now available. For more information, see our press release.

• The following Topic Pages have been updated: Flexible Work Schedules, Generation X/Y, Health and Workplace Flexibility, and Older Workers Overview.

New in Work and Family:

• A Better Balance: The Work & Family Legal Center is collecting stories from people who are working, or have worked, a reduced hours schedule, including those who have experienced penalties at work because of their reduced hours. Please register for and complete the questionnaire at ABetterBalance.org.

• This week, I came across popular press articles from the United Kingdom, Australia, Dubai, and Canada as well as the United States. Please visit our What’s New in Work and Family page to check them out, and always feel free to share any interesting articles with us here!

• Breastfeeding , Flexible Schedules , Gen X/Gen Y , Military , Older Workers , Policy , Publications
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Judi Casey May 14th, 2008

Last week, the Sloan Network hosted its annual panel meeting on the topic of “Work-Family Issues for Employed Parents of Children with Disabilities.” Every year we convene a small invitation-only event to promote active discussion about important work-family issues from diverse disciplinary perspectives. Although considerable attention has been paid to the work-family issues of working parents, the unique needs of parents of children with disabilities has not received significant attention. Did you know that 13.9% of children under age 18, approximately 10.2 million children in the US, have special health care needs (Dept. of Health and Human Services, 2008)?

Twenty attendees from the US and Canada participated in the panel meeting. Conversations focused on the following areas:

• What research exists about the unique work-family needs for working parents of children with disabilities? What additional research is needed to inform us and move our understanding forward?
• What legislation has been created to address the needs of working parents with disabled children?
• What have workplaces done to respond to employees with disabled children? What best practices exist?
• What are the next steps for research, organizations and policy? Have could we move forward to ultimately provide more supports for these families?

We had many interesting discussions about these issues, and are currently working on an executive summary of the meeting. I’ll be sure to share some of our thoughts in the upcoming months. We will also add resources to the Sloan Network that focus on this issue, including a Work and Family Encyclopedia entry and a Topic Page. If you have any input to share about the unique work and family needs for employed parents with children with disabilities or specific resources to share, please let us know.

• Mothers and Fathers , Policy , Workplace
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Featured Guest Blogger May 12th, 2008

As a 4th-year doctoral student, my colleagues in the program and I are faced with one looming question: “Are you going to pursue a tenure-track position?”  Once one begins considering that question, others quickly follow: “How will you balance your family and career?,” “Will the demands for publishing and teaching push back your family calendar?,” and “How can you turn down a faculty position after all of this hard work!?” 

The work-family balance can be particularly cumbersome for certain professions.  Hospital workers, for example, often work an amazing number of hours in one shift without any flexibility during that time.  Academics, on the other hand, tend to have a more flexible schedule, but one that has its own stressors – publishing, teaching, funding, and publishing some more – before the tenure clock runs out. 

Research findings have suggested that:

-          academics are generally less happy with their work-family balance than other staffers from the same university, 

-          female academics may put off having children longer than male academics, and

-          university policies meant to assist young faculty members in their work-life juggle may not be making the difference that administrators would hope. 

The National Clearinghouse on Academic Work Life has a wealth of information of this topic, as does a project funded by our very own Alfred P. Sloan Foundation through the University of Virginia, the Family, Gender, and Tenure Project. 

We have multiple resources on this topic in our literature database – try searching ‘tenure’ for a nice list that includes both books and journal articles on the subject. 

There must be new academics (or seasoned!) on this blog who can relate…feel free to share your experiences or thoughts. 

• Organizations , Overwork , Uncategorized
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Karen Corday May 9th, 2008

A few recent work and family articles of interest:

• Republican Senators Block Pay Discrimination Measure
  Carl Hulse of the New York Times reports on the block of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have overturned a Supreme Court decision limiting pay discrimination suits.
• Senators OK Extra Leave for Military Dads
  Tom Philpott of StarsandStripes.com reports that the Senate Armed Forces Committee has voted to give new fathers twenty-one days of paternity leave after their child is born or within sixty days of returning from deployment. This leave is in addition to the thirty days of annual leave earned by all active-duty service members.

For more recent articles, please see What’s New in Work and Family.

• Publications
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Featured Guest Blogger May 8th, 2008

We agree with Judi Casey in her recent blog “Getting Gen Y to talk about work and family issues.” Young people are surprisingly poorly prepared for dealing with “real” life - with balancing work and family issues, that is. We created The Lattice Group in the summer of 2007, after we graduated from college and realized that we hadn’t thought about these issues either.

Our work with The Lattice Group has taken us to New York, Madrid and Paris and now to Stockholm. Next week we leave for Moscow. In each country we are interviewing college students and young professionals to learn what their hopes, expectations and fears are for the future. Though we have found that attitudes differ greatly between nations—the USA being the most traditional to date by far— there is one generalization that we can make: young people love to talk about these issues! In Madrid, our interviews sometimes ran over into whole evenings of conversation (though this may just be because Spaniards are so darned social). Even in New York, the city where no one seems to have time for sleep, let alone talking to perfect strangers about work-life balance, the conversations were extremely well received. Young people, our fellow Gen Y’ers, are desperate to talk partly because they appear never, or rarely, to have done so before.

Our close to 90 interviews thus far have shown us that young people are craving more resources and guidance before they are mid-stride in their careers. We recommend that action be taken at college. For example, Career Services could be aimed at more than job-placement; they could give increased attention to discussions about the early career challenges. Why not emulate Williams College that teaches “Composing a Life: Finding Success and Balance in Life after Williams?” Encourage young people to articulate what kind of life, both professionally and personally, they want in the long run, not just tomorrow, or next year.

Tools are needed so that they can plan accordingly, and the most important tool is information. After all, you must know what your options are in order to make good decisions. Organizations like the Sloan Network are making incredibly important information available. Perhaps it is time to disseminate the information to college students. If you are an academic or researcher working on these topics and would like to get your voice heard among Gen Y, we invite guest bloggers on The Lattice Group website.

• Gen X/Gen Y
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Julie Schwartz Weber May 7th, 2008

It is not remarkable that today some families attempt to juggle work and family responsibilities by having one parent work part-time, while the other works full-time. While for many families the loss of income associated with part-time work is too great, a 2007 PEW study indicates that most working women believe part-time work to be ideal (6 out of 10). Which is why a recent study by the Beaton Group of over 11,920 women and men in Australia is newsworthy:

This report concludes that, at least for professional workers, part-time work does not allow them to achieve their balance goals.Specifically, the report finds that professionals working part-time are suffering both career burnout and family stress. Ultimately, part-time professionals lose out on income and long-term career opportunities while still struggling to find enough time for their families.

Any part-time workers out there want to chime in?

• Part-Time Work , Scheduling
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