Work and Family : Essays from the Work and Family Column of the Wall Street Journal

by WALL STREET JOURNAL

• ISBN13: 9780345422262
• ISBN10: 0345422260
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-04-01
• Publisher: Ballantine Books

Summary

Every Wednesday, 1.8 million Wall Street Journal readers eagerly turn to Sue Shellenbarger's "Work & Family" column for advice, guidance, encouragement, and insights into the most important social issue of our day: balancing career and personal life. Since creating the column in 1991, Shellenbarger has brought her unique wit and wisdom to the problems successful people encounter in managing child care, elder care, burn-out, job sharing, marital stress, coping with emergencies, and corporate and personal trade-offs. Now Shellenbarger has collected the very best of her "Work & Family" essays in a single volume for all readers. A hardworking parent herself, Shellenbarger knows what it's like to put in long hours at a high-pressure job while trying to raise kids, sustain a marriage, and carve out precious personal time. In her columns, she zeroes in on real people and the work-family balancing acts they perform every day. People like magazine editor Mary Hickey who figured out ways to look like a workaholic on the job while still having a life. Bill Galston who resigned a promising career as a White House policy adviser so he could spend more time with his ten-year-old son. And research manager Rose Arnone whose performance skyrocketed under a boss who valued productivity over "face time." Clearly organized by theme, Work & Family covers every aspect of the subject from starting a family in the midst of a flourishing career to figuring out suitable (and affordable) child care arrangements for children of different ages; from dealing with special workplace issues like job sharing, telecommuting, and family-unfriendly bosses to caring for aging family members. Each section gathers together dozens of her most incisive, practical, and eye-opening columns. Filled with on-target advice while offering solid, unwavering support, Work & Family speaks directly to the needs of smart, ambitious, hardworking people. Having a life while succeeding at a demanding job has never been tougher: here is one book that helps us all meet and master the challenges of our complicated lives.

Author Biography

Sue Shellenbarger's "Work & Family" columns have been appearing regularly in The Wall Street Journal since 1991. The former chief of the Journal's Chicago news bureau, Shellenbarger has been writing and editing for the Journal for seventeen years. She has also served as a contributing editor and columnist for Parenting magazine and as a financial markets columnist for the Associated Press.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Acknowledgments	xv
I Starting a Family
Employees, Managers Need to Plan Ahead for Maternity Leaves	3	(3)
How to Screen Out a Working Parent's Worst Nightmare	6	(3)
Child-Care Crunch Puts Parents Between the Kids and the Boss	9	(3)
Quality Day Care Through the Eyes of a Child	12	(3)
Good, Early Care Has a Huge Impact on Kids, Studies Say	15	(3)
Weighing the Risks of Watching a Nanny with a Video Camera	18	(3)
When Blizzards Hit, Day-Care Worries Snow Parents Under	21	(6)
II Creating a Home
Couple Orchestrates Complex Dance Needed in Two-Career Home	27	(3)
Chicago Couple Finds Rewards in Defining New Family Roles	30	(3)
For the Burseks, Best Parent Regimen Is Back-to-Back Shifts	33	(3)
Single-Parent Woes Times Four Didn't Dent Her Career or Family	36	(3)
Couple Unites Career and Family with Help from a Mobile Home	39	(3)
One Enterpreneur Who Shapes Success to Fit Family Needs	42	(3)
More Men Move Past Incompetence Defense to Share Housework	45	(3)
Good News at Last in the Battle of the Sexes: Men Are Helping More	48	(3)
Three Fathers Reflect on the Exhausting Joys of Bigger Role at Home	51	(3)
Latest Backlash Against Dual Earners Ignores Some Realities	54	(3)
Woman's Resignation from Top Pepsi Post Rekindles Debate	57	(6)
III Raising Kids
Saying Goodbye, and Many Thanks, to a Trusted Caregiver	63	(3)
Deciding How Soon to Prepare Your Child to Stay Home Alone	66	(3)
Costly Camps Put Many Parents in Bind for Summer Day Care	69	(3)
Finding Smart Ways to Help Your Kids with Their Homework	72	(3)
Busy Parents Let Kids Off the Hook When Assigning Chores	75	(3)
Family Togetherness Is an Issue That Goes Beyond Dinner Chats	78	(3)
Parents of Teens Find Some Peace of Mind in Working at Home	81	(3)
Moms and Dads Are the Scariest Monsters on Any Screen	84	(5)
IV The Highwire Walk
People Are Working Harder---and Taking More Heat for It	89	(3)
Marriages Go Begging for Care as Focus Turns to Kids and Jobs	92	(3)
No, You're Not Too Tough to Suffer a Bout of Burnout	95	(3)
Growing Web Use Alters the Dynamics of Life at Home	98	(3)
Too Many Gadgets Turn Working Parents into ``Virtual Parents''	101	(3)
For Many, Work Seems Like a Retreat Compared with Home	104	(3)
Good Time-Managers Try Not to Manage All of Their Time	107	(3)
Five Friends Get the Lift They Need from a Girls Night Out	110	(3)
Keeping Your Career a Manageable Part of Your Life	113	(3)
In Real Life, Hard Choices Upset Any Balancing Act	116	(3)
Forget Juggling and Forget Walls; Now, It's Integration	119	(3)
Do We Work More or Not? Either Way, We Feel Frazzled	122	(3)
Some Top Executives Are Finding a Balance Between Job and Home	125	(3)
Bill Galston Tells the President: My Son Needs Me More	128	(3)
Software Ace Turns His Life Upside Down, and Is Happier for It	131	(3)
High-Powered Fathers Savor Their Decisions to Scale Back Careers	134	(3)
These Top Bosses May Signal Move to More Family Time	137	(3)
More Executives Cite Need for Family Time as Reason for Quitting	140	(3)
Executives Reflect on Past Choices Made for Family and Jobs	143	(6)
V At Work
Some Workers Find Bosses Don't Share Their Family Values	149	(3)
All Work and No Play Can Make Jack a Dull Manager	152	(3)
Work-Family Issues Go Way Beyond Missed Ball Games	155	(3)
What You Should Say About Family Duties in a Job Interview	158	(3)
How to Look Like a Workaholic While Still Having a Life	161	(3)
Was That 24-Hour Flu That Kept You Home Really Just the Blahs?	164	(3)
Family-Friendly Firms Often Leave Fathers Out of the Picture	167	(3)
A CEO Opens Up About Loss and Finds He's a Stronger Boss	170	(3)
There Are Ways to Get Your Boss to Be More Flexible	173	(3)
Parents Go to Bat for a Little Time Off to Back Kids' Teams	176	(3)
Two People, One Job: It Can Really Work	179	(3)
Flight Attendants Underline Care Woes of Overnight Workers	182	(3)
Jo Browning Built a Child-Care Agenda into a Factory's Plan	185	(3)
Two-Income Couples Are Making Changes at Work and at Home	188	(3)
Work Gets Wilder as Employees Insist on Stable Family Life	191	(3)
Business Travelers Reshape Work Plans in Rush to Get Home	194	(3)
Families Are Facing New Strains as Work Expands Across Globe	197	(3)
Sought-After Workers Now Have the Clout to Demand Flexibility	200	(3)
Families, Communities Can Benefit from Rise in Home-Based Work	203	(3)
Work and Family Go Mobile and Wreck Your Sense of Balance	206	(3)
Telecommuter Profile: Productive, Efficient ... and a Little Weird	209	(3)
Madison Avenue May Need to Alter Image of '90s Telecommuter	212	(3)
These Telecommuters Just Barely Maintain Their Office Decorum	215	(6)
VI Employers Reach Out
Enter the ``New Hero'': A Boss Who Knows You Have a Life	221	(3)
Family-Friendly Jobs Are the First Step to Efficient Workplace	224	(3)
Employers Are Finding It Doesn't Cost Much to Make a Staff Happy	227	(3)
Some Employers Find Way to Ease Burden of Changing Shifts	230	(3)
Workplace Experts Offer Some Advice for Small Employers	233	(3)
Some Employees Get a Free Rein and Work Fast, Efficiently	236	(3)
Rooms with a View and Flexible Hours Draw Talent to WRQ	239	(3)
Insurance Firm Cracks Tight Labor Market with Flexible Hours	242	(3)
A Crucible in Balancing Job and Family	245	(3)
Accounting Firms Battle to be Known as Best Workplaces	248	(5)
VII Caring for the Aged
With Elder Care Comes a Professional and Personal Crisis	253	(3)
Planning Ahead for the Inevitable: An Elder's Illness	256	(3)
Identifying the Issues That Go into Deciding About Care for the Elderly	259	(3)
A Worker's Guide to Finding Help in Caring for an Elder	262	(3)
More Family Members Are Working Together to Care for Elders	265	(3)
Brother and Sister Bond As They Care for Aging Parents	268	(3)
Caring for an Elder from Miles Away Raises Stress Level	271	(3)
Take Steps to Ensure Your Care Manager Meets Elder's Needs	274	(3)
You May Want to Take the Parents with You to That New Posting	277	(6)
VIII Across the Generations
It's the Type of Job You Have That Affects the Kids, Studies Say	283	(3)
Playground Set Shows Signs of Stress over Parents' Jobs	286	(3)
What Does Your Job Tell a Crystal Burch About Fulfillment?	289	(3)
Work-Life Issues Are Starting to Plague Teenagers with Jobs	292	(3)
Would Your Teen Give You High Marks on Career-Handling?	295	(3)
Teens Have Hopes for Flexible Careers but See High Hurdles	298	(3)
Teens Are Inheriting Parents' Tendencies Toward Work Overload	301	(3)
New Job Hunters Ask Recruiters, ``Is There a Life After Work?''	304	(3)
Caregiver Duties Make Generation Xers Anything but Slackers	307	(3)
Families Are Feeling the Generation Gap in Work-Family Issues	310	(3)
Today's Young Women Are Redefining Debate About Working Moms	313	(3)
Executives Look Back on the Work Ethics Learned from Fathers	316	(3)
Our Families' Tales Can Speak Volumes About How We Work	319	(4)
Recommended Resources	323	(2)
Index	325

Excerpts

Few issues are more universal than tension between work and family.  From the hard-pressed manager with no time for children, spouse or aged parents, to the single assembly-line worker with no child care for a night-shift job, tens of millions of Americans endure work-family conflict daily.

Worries about family needs are flooding the workplace because no one is home during the day anymore in most American households to attend to family.  Three-quarters of mothers of children under 18 and two-thirds of caregivers to the elderly also hold paid jobs.

Even those who do stay home to care for loved ones are touched by our collective anxiety over work and family.  The American obsession with work as a centerpiece of personal identity compels all of us to develop a rationale for the roles we choose vis-à-vis the workplace.  Thus at-home parents define themselves in terms of the choices they have made about working, calling themselves "formerly employed mothers" or "sequencers" to make the point that they, too, could work if they chose to.

Evidence that families in our society, particularly children, are in trouble has deepened our psychological dilemma.  Growing concern about poor-quality child care, high juvenile crime and suicide rates and a troubling incidence of teen pregnancy, depression and drug use have helped give rise in the 1990s to what historian Neil Howe has called a "parenthood revival."

And societal values are changing.  Severed by corporate layoffs from a lifelong bond with one employer, many American workers, men in particular, are turning inward and homeward to find new meaning.

When The Wall Street Journal created the "Work & Family" column in 1991, no one was covering work-family conflict in a systematic way.  Women's progress in the workplace in the wake of the feminist movement had drawn consistent and deserved media attention.  And the public, riveted by sociologist Arlie Hochschild's book The Second Shift, was beginning to realize that juggling work and family in this new, no-boundaries context was a black hole for human energy, sucking the creativity and vitality out of primarily women.  But media coverage of work-family matters was confined mostly to scattered stories about a child-care center here, a job-sharing setup there.  Little attention was given workers' day-to-day emotional struggles, emerging family solutions, cross-generational tensions or the byzantine workplace stresses that were arising on this new work-and-family landscape.

The "Work & Family" column was born of the wreckage of my own career.  As a stepmother who, with my husband, shared joint custody of three wonderful children with his first wife, I had strong hints throughout the 1980s that combining work and family was tough.  But nothing compared with the conflicts I experienced after the birth of my first natural child in 1987.  As chief at the time of The Wall Street Journal's third largest domestic bureau in Chicago, I felt a compelling responsibility for the careers and professional growth of the 15 reporters and editors there.  I loved, and still love, journalism and had reaped more intellectual growth and stimulation from my career than from any other facet of my life up to that point.  However, I also was driven by the most powerful imperative I have ever felt: The instinctive drive to make sure that my baby was nurtured well.

My worries about the constant compromises I kept making to combine work and family had me tossing and turning through sleepless nights.  Try as I might--and notwithstanding my employer's unstinting support and commitment to helping me resolve my conflicts--I simply couldn't make newsroom rhythms and staffers' needs mesh with the responsibilities of motherhood as I interpreted them.  For the first time in my career, I had encountered a problem that I couldn't solve by working harder or smarter.

In successive steps, I left management to return to reporting, then scaled back to a part-time schedule.  After the birth of my second child in 1990, I left my position at the Journal to become a full-time freelancer and regain the sense of control over my life that I wanted.  Throughout my effort to reconcile work and family imperatives, I, like millions of others in similar situations, felt isolated and alone.

It was at that step, as I regretfully left The Wall Street Journal staff, that my colleague and mentor at the paper, Larry Rout, a senior editor, suggested I consider writing a new column on work and family for the Marketplace Page of the paper.  My managing editor quickly embraced the idea, and "Work & Family" was born in its early form, as a periodic collection of news briefs.  I continued to write "Work & Family" and cover workplace issues for The Wall Street Journal as a freelancer and, in 1994, returned to the staff as a full-time telecommuter.  The column was well received by readers, and in October of that year, with the support of then-Marketplace Page Editor Cynthia Crossen, we expanded it to its current one-topic form and increased its frequency to three times a month from once every three weeks.

Editors watched closely to see if the column was substantive enough to warrant a permanent slot.  One of my acquaintances remarked, "How can you sustain a column about work and family for more than three weeks?  What could you possibly write about?"  In fact, the inner conflicts and personal growth that millions of Americans were experiencing over work-family matters proved a rich lode of material that today, nearly five years later, still runs as deep as ever.

I built the column on a foundation of people's heartfelt personal stories and try each week to touch some universal human chord--some element in our strivings that would bring us all together.  I believe that's the main reason the column survives and thrives.  In the work-family stories of other people, readers find relief, at least temporarily, from the sense of aloneness we often experience while trying to support families, raise good children and do right by our elders.

Hundreds of letters have poured into my home office over the years, telling how the column has prompted readers to examine their life choices, change parenting techniques or look for a new employer.  "I cried when I read your column because I want desperately to be at home with my son but can't afford it," one woman wrote in response to a column about the backlash against working parents.  Executives write and call with questions about how to improve the quality of their workplaces.  "Congratulations on causing us to think about child care in a new way," wrote a Connecticut man in response to a profile of a child-care provider.  Another column, on how a CEO responded to the death of his wife, led a Colorado executive to write, "You've made leaders think."

Today, "Work & Family" is one of five regular Marketplace Page columns that are among the best-read features in The Wall Street Journal. Other columns cover personal technology, health, careers and front-line business strategies, and each has a strong voice and personal, subjective viewpoint.  The 100 "Work & Family" columns in this collection were all published between 1994 and 1998 and are organized into eight topic areas, including starting a family, creating a home, raising kids, balancing life day-to-day, negotiating workplace demands, understanding employer policies, caring for aged family members and fathoming the effect of different generations' work-and-family views on each other.

As the columns show, the context for our work-and-family struggles is changing fast.  The "conspiracy of silence" that once surrounded family concerns at work, as the late Felice Schwartz of Catalyst, a nonprofit New York research and advocacy concern, observed, is ending as more workers give voice to their conflicts.  Old gender-role taboos are crumbling and technology is shattering the boundaries of the workplace, giving workers more choices than ever in how to combine work and family.  Families are changing in form, children's developmental needs are better understood, workplace policies are evolving and flexible-work opportunities have never been greater.

Through all the changes, the mission of the "Work & Family" column remains the same: To help individual readers align the moment-to-moment reality of their daily lives with their most cherished personal values and responsibilities.  In that, I hope, they might attain that elusive Holy Grail of the modern age: The inner peace that comes with leading a balanced and well-examined life.

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Excerpted from Work and Family: Essays from the Work and Family Column of the Wall Street Journal by Sue Shellenbarger, Wall Street Journal Staff
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.