Balancing Work & Family (Blog #4)

When it comes to thinking about your family life, every single one of us are going to define what we think the good characteristics around going to be. Obviously there are going to be the generic ones that no matter what your thoughts, background, faith, or morals are going to agree with. Those characteristics I would say are having a roof over your head, food on the table, your family together, as well as happy and healthy. If you have those few components usually nothing can defeat the family bond. However, that is not always the case. As your values and morals change from one another we may give or take in one area to what we personally feel our definition of a good life is. For example, I am not a very spiritual person. With that said, I am not a huge fan of getting up on Sunday and going to church. So for example, if I had the opportunity to skip church with the family to make some money, you can bet that I am probably going to do that. But why so people will ask. Well I personally feel that I can call to the higher power when needed, but when I have the opportunity to make an extra buck you sometimes can’t pass it up.

As you can tell, making money is an important thing to me. I’m definitely not the only one. With that comes a career, however, you can’t have your career run your life, sometimes people do. To balance your career and family life will take a lot of work. If you’re someone that works until the job is done that can be bad for your health. Why? Well carrying the constant stress of your job is never good for anyone. Plus you need to make sure you leave the career at work when you come home. When you get home you have to make sure you focus on your family life. This personally is something that I have a hard time doing. I have a laptop for work, and there are many nights that I am back on it doing work once I’m done with school work. Yet, I think I balance it well, the only bad thing is that my home is no longer my safe haven completely away from work.

Trying to balance the two can become difficult, especially when you have undetermined factors that unexpectedly come up. What do I mean by that? Well when you have a family and your child becomes sick. Now you have to determine how you are going to take care of your child while still making a living doing your job. How about when you have more work then what can actually be done in a single work week? How do you make that decision on what is going to get done and what is not? Lastly, what about when you get sick? Unexpected things come up all the time. They are just something we have to handle as they are handed down to us.

With all the changes in current gender roles it has become more and more difficult to deal and cope with unexpected issues as the pop up. For example back in the 1960’s more than 70% of homes had a single breadwinner of the family while the wife stayed home. This made things a lot easier. Reason being was that men would be able to focus on work, while the women would deal with all of the family items. If your child became sick, the women would be able to tend and care to him. Now that both sides of the family are working making this compromise on who is going to tend to the unexpected items that come up in life has become more difficult over time.

Since more and more households are dealing with both parents working this has caused employers to adjust the way they work with their employees. Now days we are seeing more and more employers allowing their employees work flex schedules, more time being given for vacations, sick time, and personal. Lastly one of the fastest growing trends is we are seeing more and more employees working from home. This in a way really is a win for both the employer and employee. The employer is still getting the completed work from the compensated employee. However, the employee is being allowed to reconnect with the family life. When a child is sick it’s not so hard to go and pick them up, etc. Now when you have the support of other family members, friends and neighbors you can help with sharing the responsibility. For example if your neighbor works only two days a week they may be able to assist with picking up a sick child. Allowing for more than one set of parents share the work and having multiple families share the work between a few sets of parents it’s a win situation for everyone. You all know each other, trust each other, and usually are not very far so you do not feel as bad as you would when you leave them with someone you do not know very well.

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