How do we fix work/life balance for parents?

The pandemic exposed a lot of office workers to the horrible truth: the only reason they have to get up and drive anywhere to do their job is because of how much their company has invested in real estate. Technology has reached a point where a sizable portion of middle-class employees can do their job from anywhere. Many shouldn’t have to concern themselves with when they clock in and out either. 

Really, what companies should do with all that office space is convert it to data centers where a handful of IT guys manage virtual networks for several different companies, and let everyone else have a very flexible schedule. 

Work-from-home isn't enough

The downside of this: most full-time jobs, even with work-from-home policies, don’t actually conform to anyone’s schedule. Many companies are adopting four-ten scheduling (four days of ten hours) so their employees can have three-day weekends. Others maintain the traditional five eight-hour days. The problem is that neither of those conforms to the school schedule that most employees' kids have. This leads to unnecessary stress and child care costs.

I've been freelancing and publishing as an author, podcaster, and interviewer full-time for eight years. That’s good for me, because as a single dad with a child in public school, it’s hard to work any other way. My kid has a seven-hour school day most days, holidays and three-day weekends during the year, and summer break. To cover this time, most working people have to arrange after-school child care, pay for extracurricular programs, and/or lean on family and friends.

It’s impractical.

Assuming my kid takes the bus on an average school day, I can put in six and a half hours of work if I log in as soon as the bus pulls away, and usually fit in another hour or two in the evening. No traditional job offers a schedule like that.

Many conservative voices claim that they are “family-focused” and bemoan the death of the “traditional American family.” But in my brain and many other Gen X brains, that equates to The Simpsons, and I remember Bart getting home from school just as Homer was pulling in the driveway. So how is it that these selfsame conservatives don't oppose employers who demand an unmanageable schedule? It's impossible for parents to both work and be there for their children when their bosses dictate in-office hours and overtime. 

Well-worn internet tropes paint Gen X as both an ignored demographic by advertisers, and a generation of latchkey kids who fended for themselves because our parents were working or indifferent. Many of those same latchkey kids decided to overcompensate with their own kids, leading to the much-maligned helicopter-parent phenomenon of the post-9/11 aughts. 

Allowing more office workers to work from home with a flexible schedule would fix many of these problems. But employers hate it, for what seems like no reason but the desire to exercise control for its own sake. Countless studies have shown that work-from-home employees don’t suffer a loss in productivity. The Bureau of Labor Statistics noted that productivity went up when more people worked from home during the pandemic. 

That said, whether employees are in the office or work from home, it would be great if the business and education sectors could come to an agreement that balances the availability of employees for work with parenting obligations. 

Balancing work with school and child care

Perhaps if employers and workers are looking to move to a four-ten schedule, then schools could also transition to a four-day school week with longer days. Another option would be for states to implement new taxes on commercial property to fund high-quality afterschool programs, so employees have the ability to work knowing their children are supervised and cared for until their work day ends.

Or (perish the thought!), we could acknowledge how productivity has exploded while real wages have stagnated, by increasing wages and reducing hours worked. Countries including the U.K., Spain, Iceland and Belgium have experimented with a four-day workweek, with largely positive results. There's no reason the U.S. couldn't follow their lead, other than institutional inertia and the aforesaid desire for employers to retain the upper hand.

Whether or not the powers that be decide to address these inequities, American workers are approaching a breaking point as child care costs outpace wage growth. We know that many married couples decide to have one parent stay at home because their potential earnings are outstripped by the costs of child care. Single parents have an even more difficult time juggling work schedules with the school calendar, especially when it comes to summer and holiday breaks.

Plus, is this really the society we want? One where children are functionally raised by others while their parents toil away endlessly? One can imagine a situation where a single mother is forced to have her parents raise their grandchildren while she works fifty hours a week at a daycare for the children of more affluent couples. 

That scenario is a losing proposition all around. The affluent two-income couple spends all their days at work and doesn't get enough time with their kids, the single mom working at a daycare spends more time with other people's kids than her own, and the grandparents have to spend their golden years doing unpaid child care labor. It would help if there were more well-paid “part-time” opportunities that afforded working parents important benefits like healthcare, because that too is a part of the equation. The ACA did help alleviate those concerns by partially disentangling healthcare from employment for freelance and gig workers. Universal healthcare, like most advanced countries other than the U.S. have, would obviously be better still.

I don’t know the best answer to these questions, and there are many potential solutions. But as costs rise and high-paying jobs that can accommodate working parents' schedules continue to be elusive, many people are left with few options but freelancing and part-time consulting. Such solutions may be feasible for knowledge workers and those with skill sets that allow for such work. But in my opinion, for the work-a-day median income parent, the obsession with putting jobs first comes at the detriment to the next generation of workers. Companies would do well to remember that, instead of divorcing themselves from the personal needs of their employees in pursuit of better quarterly reports for shareholders.