One characteristic of a good family life is the family spending time together. For a husband and wife to experience a flourishing relationship, they need to spend time together. Also very important is each parent being able to spend time with their children. While it is better for both parents to be with the children, this is sometimes impossible. It still remains, though, that each parent must find time to spend with their children.
Balancing a career and family life means that one must learn what they must do to have their career and keep their employer happy while spending quality time with their spouse and children.
Something that enters into this picture is whether or not the employer will or will not allow flexibility in an employee’s work schedule. In the case of couples, it is perhaps harder because both people’s employers must agree to flexibility in their work schedules. This is, perhaps, the biggest obstacle to overcome. Of course, an obstacle that must be overcome is the initial decision as to what schedules the couple will try to execute.
While I don’t really feel it has made work and family issues more complex, changes in traditional gender roles have changed who may do what in the home. As we saw near the beginning of the Juggling Work and Family video, there are numerous cases where the man starts doing duties at home such as cooking. While not shown, men probably also do things around the house such as laundry and cleaning.
Employers can be sensitive to their employees’ needs by allowing time off as needed. This is not always possible for an employer. Sometimes, it takes digging really deep in the thought process to come up with ways to meet job schedules and employees’ needs. A good example of this is Marriott. As we learn in the video, Marriott has struggled with this for over ten years now. One thing they did to try and help out their employees was to build a day care center in Atlanta. Unfortunately, not many Marriott workers took advantage of the center. It was finally determined that they needed to build another day care center closer to several of their hotels. When they did this, they saw an excellent increase in the number of employees using the day care.
One excellent example of how companies can assist their employees is that of Baxter Industries and Joanne. Joanne’s mother was terminally ill with cancer. Baxter allowed Joanne to work four hours per night, usually from 10:00 p.m. to about 2:00 a.m. Her other four hours per day were taken as Family Medical Leave Act time. That helped protect Joanne’s job. In fact, Joanne was doing so well that she received a promotion at work while she was only working.
An excellent example of what employers can do is how the hospitality industry in San Francisco banded together and supplied day care for the workers. Workers use the facility and are able to work their schedules and not lose their jobs. Along these same lines, if an employer or group of employers is unable to have their own day care center, they can provide vouchers to employees to help pay for the needed day care.
Family members can make balancing priorities easier by volunteering to help with the family, whether it is by taking care of the children, cooking, or cleaning. Co-workers can help out in the same way. They can also support the employees by working shared schedules, if permitted by the employer. Neighbors may find it easier to help workers out the same way family members can because they are right there by the employee’s home. Another good way neighbors can help out is by allowing the worker’s children to be home “alone” if they want and the neighbors can still keep an eye on them.
Compared with how things were for employees thirty to forty years ago, many employers are now much more cooperative and much more concerned with how an employee balances their life between home and work. They are now realizing that an employee will be much more productive if a balance is achieved. I believe this idea has more to do with employers striving for a balance than many other things. Employers are realizing that productivity will increase if they work with their employees in this manner.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Caregiving
For many years, my wife and I were caregivers to my elderly parents. While I have a sibling, that sibling was not involved in my parents’ care. Being a caregiver, while it did not always seem like it at the time, was a very time consuming job.
This involved a great deal of time away from work. My mother and father were neither one allowed to drive anymore, so I was their chauffeur. Since many doctors didn’t take appointments before 8:00 or 9:00 a.m., or after 4:00 p.m., any doctor’s appointment one of my parents had meant at least two hours away from work for me.
It finally got to the point where we had to place my parents in a nursing home because the other choice was for my wife or me to quite our jobs and stay home with them since the doctor said they needed someone with them 24/7. There was no way we could quit our jobs. While we had dedicated our lives the last several years to caring for my parents, we were the bad guys for putting them in a nursing home. We both felt we did it for their own good. Did we have other alternatives? Our only other alternative was ALTCCS, which is Arizona’s version of Medicaid. It is run through the AHCCCS program. Had we not had sick time and vacation time, I feel confident we would not have been allowed to take as much time off work as we did to care for them.
For these reasons, I could relate extremely well to the issues brought forward in “Juggling Work and Care.” I feel the efforts being made in the UK are absolutely fantastic! This shows that employers in the UK realize that life is not all about work and no family. They realize that people have responsibilities outside of work. I could so very well relate to the gentleman in the UK that was allowed to work from home while caring for his mother. This showed such compassion on the part of his employer.
The lady in the Juggling part one video put it so very well when she said that they have to be able to accommodate the part of the workforce that does care work, whether it mothers or fathers taking care of their children, or someone like me when I was being a caregiver to my parents. Society, in general, needs to learn and take the necessary steps to allow people to work from home more if needed. An excellent example of this was the gentleman in the UK that got his children off to school, then came into work, left early to pick up his children from school, and then worked two to three hours from home in the evening so as to put in his eight hour shift each day. Society also needs to accept the fact that more and more men are staying home fulfilling the role of “Mr. Mom.”
This involved a great deal of time away from work. My mother and father were neither one allowed to drive anymore, so I was their chauffeur. Since many doctors didn’t take appointments before 8:00 or 9:00 a.m., or after 4:00 p.m., any doctor’s appointment one of my parents had meant at least two hours away from work for me.
It finally got to the point where we had to place my parents in a nursing home because the other choice was for my wife or me to quite our jobs and stay home with them since the doctor said they needed someone with them 24/7. There was no way we could quit our jobs. While we had dedicated our lives the last several years to caring for my parents, we were the bad guys for putting them in a nursing home. We both felt we did it for their own good. Did we have other alternatives? Our only other alternative was ALTCCS, which is Arizona’s version of Medicaid. It is run through the AHCCCS program. Had we not had sick time and vacation time, I feel confident we would not have been allowed to take as much time off work as we did to care for them.
For these reasons, I could relate extremely well to the issues brought forward in “Juggling Work and Care.” I feel the efforts being made in the UK are absolutely fantastic! This shows that employers in the UK realize that life is not all about work and no family. They realize that people have responsibilities outside of work. I could so very well relate to the gentleman in the UK that was allowed to work from home while caring for his mother. This showed such compassion on the part of his employer.
The lady in the Juggling part one video put it so very well when she said that they have to be able to accommodate the part of the workforce that does care work, whether it mothers or fathers taking care of their children, or someone like me when I was being a caregiver to my parents. Society, in general, needs to learn and take the necessary steps to allow people to work from home more if needed. An excellent example of this was the gentleman in the UK that got his children off to school, then came into work, left early to pick up his children from school, and then worked two to three hours from home in the evening so as to put in his eight hour shift each day. Society also needs to accept the fact that more and more men are staying home fulfilling the role of “Mr. Mom.”
Sex Segregation
Sex segregation simply means the separation of the genders. It shows men being segregated into one type of existence and women into another type of existence. It can mean what jobs men do as opposed to what jobs women do. It can be in the workplace or the home, either one.
I worked at ASU for twenty-three years before leaving nearly four years ago. When I started working at ASU in 1983, I feel in looking back that sex segregation was very strong, at least in the management and clerical sides of things. I started out not working in the academic affairs side of the campus, but more in student support. At that time, it seemed very much like you saw males strongly dominating management positions, while females dominated the clerical positions.
The only way one seemed to see sex desegregation was if student workers were being employed. I worked in the film inspection room of the now defunct film library of ASU. There, we would hire males and females alike to sit and repair films.
While not working at ASU anymore, I am still on campus a lot because of going to school and also because my wife works on campus. I am really pleased to see far more women in higher level management positions on campus than they used to be. By the same token, I feel I see a lot more males filling positions that were once totally dominated by females. I can definitely attest to how hard breaking the sex segregation walls down can be as I am a male administrative assistant. One would never have thought twenty or thirty years ago of seeing a male doing what I do now.
My own socialization at home was the typical stereotypical upbringing that men did the manual labor and management type positions while women either stayed home and raised the children and took care of the house while men went out and “brought home the bacon.” This is very strongly related to patriarchy in that the father was supposed to be the “head of the household” while the mother submitted to whatever the father said. Though I was brought up to believe this, that is not how it was in my own home. My mother “wore the pants” and earned a lot more money that my father did. The really sad part about this is that, while my mother earned more money throughout her life than my father did, the United States government paid her about fifty percent less per month on social security that it did my father just because he was a male and she was a female.
Sex segregation, as it relates to our current economy and men losing their jobs, does not seem to have had a positive effect on the wages women earn. I really don’t believe it will have any positive effect because I don’t see employers raising women’s wages just because their spouses are out of work. While great strides have been made in sex desegregation, there is still a long, long way to go.
I worked at ASU for twenty-three years before leaving nearly four years ago. When I started working at ASU in 1983, I feel in looking back that sex segregation was very strong, at least in the management and clerical sides of things. I started out not working in the academic affairs side of the campus, but more in student support. At that time, it seemed very much like you saw males strongly dominating management positions, while females dominated the clerical positions.
The only way one seemed to see sex desegregation was if student workers were being employed. I worked in the film inspection room of the now defunct film library of ASU. There, we would hire males and females alike to sit and repair films.
While not working at ASU anymore, I am still on campus a lot because of going to school and also because my wife works on campus. I am really pleased to see far more women in higher level management positions on campus than they used to be. By the same token, I feel I see a lot more males filling positions that were once totally dominated by females. I can definitely attest to how hard breaking the sex segregation walls down can be as I am a male administrative assistant. One would never have thought twenty or thirty years ago of seeing a male doing what I do now.
My own socialization at home was the typical stereotypical upbringing that men did the manual labor and management type positions while women either stayed home and raised the children and took care of the house while men went out and “brought home the bacon.” This is very strongly related to patriarchy in that the father was supposed to be the “head of the household” while the mother submitted to whatever the father said. Though I was brought up to believe this, that is not how it was in my own home. My mother “wore the pants” and earned a lot more money that my father did. The really sad part about this is that, while my mother earned more money throughout her life than my father did, the United States government paid her about fifty percent less per month on social security that it did my father just because he was a male and she was a female.
Sex segregation, as it relates to our current economy and men losing their jobs, does not seem to have had a positive effect on the wages women earn. I really don’t believe it will have any positive effect because I don’t see employers raising women’s wages just because their spouses are out of work. While great strides have been made in sex desegregation, there is still a long, long way to go.
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