Acronym

First, my apologies in the delay of this posting.

Turns out balancing work and the rest of life is something I still must work on – daily, it seems. Let me just disclaim that it’s all the fault of my six-month-old, who is subjecting the adults in the house to sleep deprivation such that my husband, sleep walking through chores as we both are, sent our cell phone through the washing machine this week.

In my first post, I gave a little background about my life as a working/at home mother of two, and threw down the gauntlet to say that I think associations have a role to play in helping workers balance work and family.

In this post, I want to address as best I can the challenges faced by people who do not have children. The ‘debate’ between people with children and the childfree can be almost as volatile as the ‘mommy wars’, and I don’t mean to fan those flames. I do wish to acknowledge, respectfully, that the childfree also have lives to balance with their work. They are children of (possibly aging and infirm) parents who might need care – this is just one of the enormous impacts the aging baby boomers will have on our economy.

The childfree are owners of pets who can become ill and require care. They are people with hobbies and aspirations who might be glad to have the flexibility to work from home simply to eschew a commute – or to take unpaid leave to climb a mountain or train for a marathon. To sum up the debate, people with children might look at some of those needs as ‘less than’ the need to care for a sick child, to go to a school play. The childfree sometimes feel they are made to bear the burden of shifted productivity unfairly as they ‘cover’ for their co-workers with children.

I would counter that in some respects, why employees need time off or flexibility should be a secondary consideration, behind determining whether the employee can manage the workload even with the time off. I believe flexibility begets productivity, and begets happy workers. That’s the equation that should matter to employers.

A point worth considering: We simply need more people – as employers, and as membership organizations.

As baby boomers retire or scale back their work, there will be a gap in workers – we need to be sure the workplace can welcome as many qualified people as possible. To be Jim Collins-y for a moment, this is a ‘right people on the bus’ question. They can’t get on if the bus never stops, and what’s more, I feel increasing numbers of bright people simply won’t want to get on ANY bus if they know they can’t get off.

I’m reading a book called “Strapped” by Tamara Draut right now, which talk about some of the economic pressures on younger workers today. I hope that sharing some of those facts will help illustrate how high the stakes are, and how much pressure many of us feel to get the balance right despite, or perhaps because it is so hard.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, my toddler is screeching about wanting ‘breskwis’ (breakfast) and my infant is awake and fussing upstairs.