Work, Family and Stress
Can overworked Americans cope with today's time crunch?
By Charles S. Clark

More and more Americans are shouting, “Stop the world, I want to get off!” Opinion polls reveal rising numbers who feel stressed, while some studies suggest a decline in leisure time and an increase in how much people work. Two-career families are especially buffeted by this trend. As the baby-boom generation negotiates parenthood and middle age, concerned groups are pushing workaholics. . . .

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Should the government act to alleviate the work-family time crunch?

Arlie Hochschild Professor University of California at Berkeley From her book, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution At Home, 1989. We really need a Marshall Plan for the family. It would look to other progressive industrial nations for a model of what could be done. In Sweden, for example, upon the birth of a child, every working couple is entitled to 12 months of paid parental leave, nine months at 90 percent of the person's salary plus an additional three months at about $300 a month. The mother and father are free to divide this year off between them as they wish. Any working parent of a child under eight has the opportunity to work no more than six hours a day, at six hours' pay. Parental insurance offers parents money for work time lost to visit a child's school or care for a sick child. That's “pro- family” policy.

Family Values, Jr. 1992. Parents in the United States today devote roughly 40 percent less time to child-rearing activities than did parents a generation ago.... From a patriarchal perspective, the shift stems from a significant increase in the number of employed married mothers. From an egalitarian perspective, the shift stems from the fact that the increase in labor force activity by married mothers has not been offset by a corresponding decrease in hours of paid employment by married fathers. In either case, there is a growing consensus that the increase in time devoted to wage-earning activities has been driven by both economic and cultural forces.

A Glossary of New Work Options

Efforts to juggle work and family over the past two decades have produced a multitude of alternatives to the classic 9-to-5 routine. The most common options include:

Regular part-time work: Voluntarily reduced work hours, with prorated employee benefits.

Flexitime: Employees choose their starting and quitting times as long as they put in the required minimum. (Attendance may be mandatory during prescribed “core hours.”)

Flexiplace: Employees work at home all or part of the week, usually with electronic communication to the office. (Also called telecommuting.)

Job sharing: Two similarly qualified individuals each work part- time to share the tasks and responsibilities of a single job. Benefits are pro-rated.

Compressed work week: Normal five-day 40-hour week is condensed to four 10-hour days or some variation, allowing employees a three-day weekend.

Phased retirement: Gradual reduction of work hours for employees nearing retirement age.

Split-shift parenting: Work hours for couples arranged so that hours never overlap (usually involving a night shift) so that one parent is always available for the children.

Sequencing: Women halt their careers when they become mothers and then resume them when their children are older (see p. 702). Sources: Association of Part-Time Professionals; New Ways to Work