Archive for the 'Mothers and Fathers' Category

Balancing Sick Children and Work Schedules

Featured Guest Blogger January 26th, 2009

This post was contributed by Holly McCarthy, who writes on the subject of job search. She invites your feedback at hollymccarthy12 at gmail dot com. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

During the winter months, working parents can face a variety of situations regarding their children’s health. The cold weather helps speed up the process from the sniffles to a full-blown, debilitating cold. What do you do when the school nurse calls and needs you to come pick up your children?

Many employers realize that children are an employee’s top priority. As a parent, taking care of your children will always be the first concern. However, what’s a parent to do in these tough economic times when taking time off for your children could adversely affect your standing with the company?  What happens if there are other emergencies outside of your immediate family that may require your attention? There are a few things that can be done:

  1. Speak with the Boss
    Let your boss know what is going on and what you are doing to remedy the situation.  Offer to work from home and stay in touch while your child gets better—there are many ways to rectify the situation. Being proactive in situations like this usually works out in your favor; if you are willing to tackle the difficult conversations head-on, your boss will often be willing to talk things through with you.

    2.  

  2. Take Turns with Your Spouse
    This is a good idea if you feel like you are the go-to parent for emergency pick ups. Employers might be understanding for a while, but eventually tire of you being the one who is always called to come to the rescue. Work things out with your spouse so that they take turns with you. Naturally, some days you may need to swap this duty if something particularly important is going on at work.

    3.  

  3. Have an Emergency Back-Up Plan
    While this isn’t going to always be an option, some of us know people who either don’t work or work from home, possibly with a flexible schedule. Perhaps on the days when it is most difficult for you to get away, you can rely on these people to pick up your sick child and take them home.  If you are able to do this, planning for the next couple of days will be far easier and your day will not be truncated.  Finish up your work for the day, inform your employer of your forthcoming absence, and prepare to work from home if necessary.

Many workers have to deal with these kinds of situations all of the time, so know that you’re not alone. Work with your employer and spouse to keep the lines of communication open.

The Four-Day Work Week and the Death of the Flexible Workplace Initiative

Featured Guest Blogger January 19th, 2009

Margaret M. DiBianca joined Young Conaway’s Employment Group after graduating magna cum laude from Villanova University School of Law. Molly is a monthly contributor to the Delaware Employment Law Letter and is the acting Editor of Young Conaway’s employment-law blog, DelawareEmploymentLawBlog.com. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

The four-day work week has been hyped as the solution to the search for a flexible workplace. This is nothing more than hype. Truth be told, the four-day workweek is the antithesis of flexibility.

The demands for scheduling with employees change from employee to employee and, even with one individual, are subject to change depending on what else is happening in his or her life. The only thing that is static and unchanging in this definition of flexibility is the employee’s request to define their schedule for themselves and to change it as needed.

The four-day work week falls far short of this test for flexibility. Instead of being able to come and go on a schedule that is adaptable to their needs and the needs of their friends and families, employees are required to be in the workplace for at least 11 hours every day for the same four consecutive days each week. If your doctor’s office is closed on Friday, you’re plain out of luck. If you need to pick up your daughter after school, there’s not much hope that you could come into work early to make up the time—unless you want to arrive at 4 a.m. to ensure that you can leave by 3 that afternoon.

If the strict hours don’t bother you, consider the lack of flexibility during non-working time in a four-day work week. Employees who leave work by 5 p.m. five days a week are able to run an errand or two on the way to pick the kids up from day care. Once home, there is time to put something on the table for dinner and oversee homework time. Parents can leave work in time for the weeknight soccer game or recital—without having to take a half day of leave.

For the employee working four 10-hour days each week, these options become much more difficult to effectuate. In order to get the family up and out the door, drop the children off at school, commute to the office, and still make it to work on time, most people need between 90 and 180 minutes after waking. We’ll estimate it on the short side and say that an employee who is due to work by 7 a.m. has to get up no later than 5:30 a.m. Eleven hours later, at 6 p.m., the employee leaves work, picks up the children, and stops to put gasoline in the car. Assuming they make no other stops, they return home at 7 p.m. At the later hour, it’s exhausting to think about cooking, so a delivery order is called into the local pizza parlor.

Read the mail, change clothes, check the answering machine, and set the table and it’s already 8 p.m. Only two and a half hours before bedtime if you hope to get close to 8 hours’ sleep. By the time the pizza arrives, is gobbled down, and is cleaned up, the so-called “quality time” with the family is over and everyone heads to bed. There isn’t even time for “American Idol,” never mind a few moments to talk about the day’s events.

With this schedule, the four-day work week seems far from flexible. Instead, it seems to be all-consuming and, frankly, exhausting.

The Weather Outside is Frightful: Winter Storms and Work-Family

Judi Casey January 14th, 2009

Recently, we’ve had several winter storms in New England. Most of them are the usual snow dumps that close schools for the day and make driving difficult, if not treacherous. These situations can be challenging for working parents, as they are unexpected and there are few options for childcare if one must get to work. Parents often look for care from relatives or family members, neighbors or friends, babysitters, or, if possible, stay at home for the day. Most of the time, this is a one day affair, and with a little bit of luck and ingenuity, a solution is found–although low-wage earners or service employees may find it more problematic to locate alternatives.

On December 12, an ice storm in New Hampshire left 400,000 residents without power, and a state of emergency was declared. Three days later, 164,000 customers were without power, and twelve days later, 9,000 people still didn’t have power. Many had to go to local shelters to stay warm, get a meal or drink of water, or to take a shower. Schools were closed, driving was impossible, and meeting even basic needs was a challenge.

I heard a woman interviewed on the radio who was understandably frazzled and overwhelmed.  She was supposed to be at work, but her kids didn’t have any school. She had already asked family and friends to help her for the first week, but the good will was wearing thin. She was sleeping at a friend’s house, as she did not have power.  As a result, even getting ready for work was a challenge, if she could figure out a childcare option.  Finally, driving conditions seemed somewhat daunting to her with tree limbs in the road and on power lines.

Living in New England, I guess we expect short-term interruptions to our normal work-family schedules due to winter weather, but we may be unprepared for longer term situations. Back-up care can be helpful, but may not be available, and usually requires pre-registration.  Although a significant storm, this was not a dire situation like Hurricanes Rita or Katrina, as there was the assumption that everything would go back to normal in a short time period –however, there were kids who did not go to school on December 12 and first returned after school vacation on January 5, 2009!

What’s a working parent to do? What if your child has no school for a week or longer, but your employer is open and expects you to be at work? What if you work for a public safety or service organization that requires you to work more hours than scheduled to meet coverage needs in an emergency? What if you can’t even stay in your home to wash your uniform or take care of basic personal hygiene?

How do you manage dependent care in an unexpected weather situation? Let us know by answering the poll on our blog or home page.

Dads More Worried Than Moms

Featured Guest Blogger December 1st, 2008

An Election Day poll indicated that dads may be more worried about work-family balance than moms.
For parents with children under 18, 72 percent of dads and 67 percent of moms worry, on a daily basis, about work and family responsibilities. Interestingly, these numbers were nearly the same for the number of parents who say they worry about the economy (73 percent of fathers and 74 percent of mothers).

At first, this finding seemed surprising. Don’t we hear that moms are the ones balancing the home, the kids, work, the food, the pets…? But upon second glance, it made more sense. Here are a few stories that this poll may be telling:

  1. Fathers may be in paid working positions that allow less job flexibility and higher amounts of stress, thereby creating more worry.
  2. Fathers’ pay is higher on a national level, so perhaps the burden of losing their own income is enough to worry them more than mothers.
  3. Fathers’ compassion for their spouse’s daily work/family/kids/food/pet juggle creates more anxiety for them as the bystander than it does for moms who must get the job done.

We aren’t exactly sure of the reasons for these fathers’ worries, but we can see potential story lines.

See other work-family news updates here.

‘Tis a Gift to be Free

Julie Schwartz Weber November 12th, 2008

The time crunch— something most Americans experience on a regular basis— affects many aspects of American family life. Most recently, it has even led my spouse and me to rethink our gift giving policies to each other. Instead of finding and acquiring (e.g., buying) the “perfect” gifts for each other in line with one of our hobbies, interests, or passions, this year we are giving each other the gift of LEISURE TIME for self.

This shift in gift focus has grown out of an increased sense that our daily juggle, in which we voluntarily choose to care for our kids, our domestic sphere, and our jobs, is plain exhausting and leaves little room for leisure time for our individual selves. This sense of loss of time for self is reflected in a 2002 national survey, in which 55% of all employees noted that they did not have enough time for themselves. Working fathers reported spending only 1.3 hours a day and working mothers reported spending a mere .9 hours a day on themselves.

This lack of time for self makes sense when one considers:

1. 70% of all families with children are headed by two employed parents or by a single working parent;

2. The combined weekly hours of dual-earner couples with children has increased significantly over the past 25 years, from 81 to 91 hours;

3. Technology such as email, Blackberries, and computers enables us to work anytime and anywhere, and thus, for many, it is hard to be “off duty;”

4. The amount of time spent caring for and doing things with children on workdays has also increased over the past 25 years, from 5.2 hours a day in 1977 to 6.2 hours day in 2002.

So, for this holiday season ahead, especially in light of increased financial constraints, perhaps you want to join my husband and me and give gifts of leisure time to your partners and friends. Not only is it easy to give, but it is also inexpensive and greatly appreciated. It has become that “perfect” gift for adults in our home!

Book Review: CEO of Me

Featured Guest Blogger October 27th, 2008

Ariane Ollier-Malaterre is an Associate Professor of Management at Rouen School of Management and a Research Associate at the Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

I am a work-life researcher and an expatriate here in the U.S., in a dual-career marriage, with a young family (local) and elder care responsibilities (at a distance). I approached the book with the greatest expectations and was delighted to find new and insightful food for thought.

Based on hundreds of interviews in the U.S. and Canada, Kossek and Lautsch coin the concept of “flexstyle.” They define flexstyle both as a strategy to handle one’s life and an understanding of what is driving the relationships between one’s work and one’s life.

They identify 3 different “flexstyles”, each introduced with real-life vignettes:

  • Integrators physically and psychologically blend work and life;
  • Separators maintain barriers;
  • Volleyers switch back and forth between integration and separation. For volleyers, the very task of managing work and life is a “third major life task” in itself– probably familiar to many a scholar.

Flexstyles are not personal preferences; they are behaviors that stem both from personal preferences and the resources and constraints of the context, notably the degree of power and control over one’s life.They are a dynamic concept– major life changes require a re-examination of one’s flexstyle to ensure it fits well with the new circumstances and people.

Let me share with you two of my main take-aways from the book.

1. The book steps away from the mainstream idea that flexibility is all good and that flexible jobs automatically benefit employees. Flexibility can also be a trap and it requires monitoring, notably boundary work. Therefore, an “in control” and an “out of control” configuration occur for each flexstyle:

  • Integrators in control are “fusion lovers,” while they are “reactors” when not in control;
  • Separators are “firsters” (work or family first) or “captives”;
  • Volleyers are “quality timers” or “job warriors”.

2. The book provides a comprehensive coaching on how to achieve a better fit with one’s current environment. I found a good number of them that I, as a “quality timer,” had been experiencing in a fuzzy way before reading this book. Since they may apply to you, let me quote one of them: “Have separate work and personal email accounts and resist the urge to check work-related emails after your workday has ended.” For instance, I closed my mailbox while drafting this blog, so that I don’t compulsively hit the mailbox tab, which I recognize as a “destructive work pattern.”

Whether you are looking for an optimistic and constructive self-help book, or you are curious of great insights on the relationships between work and life, read this book!

Work-Family Policy and Gender Equality: Global Perspectives

Judi Casey October 22nd, 2008

Recently, I read a fascinating report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research called Parental Leave Policies in 21 Countries: Assessing Generosity and Gender Equality. Written by Rebecca Ray, Janet C. Gornick and John Schmitt, the report examines the policies of “21 high-income economies.” It examines “two key aspects of parental leave policies: the level of support provided to parents; and the degree to which leave policies promote an egalitarian distribution between mothers and fathers of the time devoted to child care.”

The authors examined 21 countries and found that six countries have the strongest policies on both generosity and gender equality. These are three Nordic countries – Finland, Norway, and Sweden – plus France, Spain, and Greece. They also found that “across these six high-performing systems, five policy practices stand out as the most important: (1) generous paid leave; (2) non-transferable quotas of leave for each parent; (3) universal coverage combined with modest eligibility restrictions; (4) financing structures that pool risk among many employers; and (5) scheduling flexibility. ….The experience of the countries following international ‘best practices’ suggests that a generous, universal, gender-egalitarian, and flexible parental leave policy, financed through social insurance would go a long way toward spreading the costs of caring for children more equitably across mothers and fathers, parents and non-parents, and employers and employees.”

Any thoughts on how work-family policies might be synchronized to achieve both gender equality and career advancement, as well as responsive workplace policies and practices in countries around the world? Are you studying or researching this area? Please let us know as the Network is interested in gathering resources that examine this dynamic.

Gym No More

Featured Guest Blogger October 20th, 2008

Up until the point where my husband and I brought our puppy home in July, I was a member of a gym here in the city. I used to go to the gym as a mental break from my research, as a way to improve my health, as a way to feel better about the chocolate cake I had for lunch. However, once that puppy came home, the gym became merely something “I used to do.” Not only did I feel guilty for leaving her in her crate if I left, but I honestly didn’t have the extra time to go to the gym now that I had to fit a couple of hours of walking the dog into my daily routine. Sigh….so this is working parenthood.

I have seen this happen to many of my friends and colleagues, and have read about the cost benefit analysis of taking time to exercise. This is an issue that has come up in online magazines, in the Wall Street Journal online forums, and even on military sites. With health and stress being two forefront topics of our society today, how can we manage our desire to pursue better health while juggling our family and work schedules? Where does it fit into the ever-evolving list of priorities?

We have several scholarly articles on the interplay of work, family, and exercise in our literature database for those of you who might want to delve a bit deeper into the research. Additionally, our Effective Workplace Series on Overwork mentions the role of exercise, and we have leaders in our leaders’ database who have specified that they have expertise in this area.

As for me, I have temporarily convinced myself that my puppy walks me fast enough to justify skipping out on the gym. However, there are days when I still long for the rush of a spin class.

Happy Half-Birthday, Work and Family Blog

Judi Casey October 14th, 2008

Sloan Network Logo

Today marks the six-month anniversary of our Work and Family Blog and our 90th post! The Sloan Network bloggers have covered the gamut of topics from our first post on Paid Sick Leave to our most recent post on Take your Baby to Work. We have appreciated the opportunity to share our work-family thoughts with you, and we hope that the information has been useful to you in your work and lives. It’s great to hear your comments on our posts, so please, please give us as much feedback as possible.

In case you’ve missed these the first time, we have posted about our latest work-family Topic Pages, including Parents Caring for Children with Disabilities and Military Families. We have also covered a number of our existing focus areas in Family-Friendly Employers, Family Studies, Afterschool Care, Breastfeeding, Family Medical Leave Act, Gen Y, and those geared towards work, Overwork, Part-Time Work, Telework, Flexible Work Schedules in Small Businesses and Retirement.

A number of new issues have surfaced including an examination of the Pros and the Cons of a four-day work week. We reported on new trends for mothers, fathers, parents, grandparents and professors. We introduced an interactive entry with the Work-Life Quiz on Slide Share and linked to the highly useful Caregiver Database.

Politics is, of course, hot this year and we didn’t disappoint with a number of posts on the candidates, including work-family and work-life balance. We have blogged about our travels to many conferences including the National Conference of State Legislators and the WorldatWork Conference. We are privileged to have a number of guest bloggers, including A Better Balance: The Work & Family Legal Center, The Lattice Group, and The National Partnership for Women & Families. Thanks to all of the contributors!

And finally, we had 22 posts on What’s New in Work and Family, which covered over 100 articles and updates.

What’s coming up in the next six months from the Sloan Network? More exciting and relevant posts including a behind the scenes look at our social media efforts, including our new Facebook page. Thank you for reading our blog and do please continue to comment– we love your feedback. If you have suggestions for topics or are interested in guest blogging, please contact us.

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Take Your Baby to Work Day?

Judi Casey October 8th, 2008

Organizations that allow, and even encourage, working moms and dads to bring their babies to work are growing across the country. According to the Parenting in the Workplace Institute, “more than 100 organizations have successfully allowed babies in the workplace.” Typically, parents bring their babies to work until they are six to eight months old, or until they crawl.

Although many workers and managers in organizations are skeptical that this is a feasible arrangement, Carla Moquin reports that doubters often come around when they see the success of these programs. She provides numerous examples of this turnaround in her book, Babies@Work. She also notes that babies tend to be happier and more content, as they receive quick, responsive attention from their parent who does not want to disturb their co-workers or clients. A 2005 article based on the research of Mary Secret from Virginia Commonwealth University indicates that organizations were very positive about this arrangement.

This is a no or very low cost arrangement with benefits for employees, their babies, and employers. Employees may be able to return to work sooner, have lower child care costs, and may feel more loyal and committed to their employer due to this opportunity. Employers retain valued employees, and create a positive work culture with improved morale (babies are nice to have around).

For other articles about this topic, please go to the US News & World Report and the Christian Science Monitor. The blog “Working With Kids” has also written about this topic.

Does your workplace allow new parents to bring their babies to work? Would you be supportive of babies at the workplace?

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