Max
12-29-2002, 12:34 PM
Unsteady Ground for Family Life
By Sue Shellenbarger
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 29, 2002
It's going to be a rough year in 2003 for people trying to balance work, family and personal life.
In a pattern that promises to endure for a while, basic needs, such as keeping a steady income and health insurance, took priority over life balance this past year for most workers.
Here are my annual predictions of work-life trends, plus a look back at how some past forecasts have turned out.
It's the economy, stupid. This maxim of the 1992 presidential campaign will apply to family life in 2003, as the economy's twists and turns shape what was once seen as a matter of preference - family roles. Driven by accelerating change in business, moms and dads will move in and out of the work force and swap breadwinning and nurturing duties more often.
The need for health insurance, in particular, will emerge as a driver of work-life decisions. The number of people covered by employer health insurance fell by more than 700,000 in 2001, the Census Bureau says. Which parent will work in the future? The one who can get benefits.
Also, homedads will rise again but only temporarily. New government data to be released in a few months are likely to show a rise in stay-at-home fathers. But don't consider it permanent. In the recession of the early 1990s, a similar rise in at-home dads was seen as a sign of a new male attachment to home and hearth. But the uptick soon vaporized, proving a temporary adaptation by families to an economic slump that had left many men jobless.
Family caregivers will draw the spotlight as pillars of the nation's long-term care system. As the number of frail elderly rises 35 percent in the coming decade, caregiver issues such as depression, rising out-of-pocket expenses and a need for training will take center stage.
Advocacy groups are wielding new muscle, bolstered by a rise in public and private funding. The Family Caregiver Alliance, an innovative San Francisco-based nonprofit with a $3-million-plus annual budget, has set up a National Center on Caregiving to provide support. Funding to the National Family Caregivers Association, Kensington, Md., has doubled in the past year to more than $1 million. The National Alliance for Caregiving, Bethesda, Md., has 39 corporate and nonprofit partners, up from five just six years ago.
Supporting family caregivers looks cheap next to the alternative - ultimately, Medicaid-paid nursing homes. For 18 years, Carolyn Erwin-Johnson has cared in her Baltimore home for her mother, who has multiple sclerosis, spending out-of-pocket up to $25,000 a year for aides so she could get out and earn a paycheck. Defying medical prognoses, she helped her mother recover her abilities after seizures, challenged her to keep trying to speak, and staved off bedsores. Her mother would have died long ago, a doctor recently told Erwin-Johnson, had she been placed in a nursing home.
"You listen to the medical advice, but you have to rely on the triumph of the human spirit" to care well for the aged, says Erwin- Johnson, who is organizing a nonprofit to train caregivers.
American ingenuity will find expression in more wacky ways to combine work and family. Bereft of control over career and work hours, breadwinners will apply their creativity to domestic life.
When Bob Light's wife had to return to her work as a physician after childbirth, the couple couldn't find satisfactory child care. So Light, a software engineer in a Boston suburb, transformed the family RV into a mobile office and drove it daily to the hospital where his wife worked. There in the parking lot, with the baby mostly sleeping and Light toiling away via wireless hookups, he set up "Bob's Mobile Office and Daycare Center," he says. His wife breastfed the baby on her breaks. Light even installed a Web camera for the baby's grandfather to tune in. "I really got to know the baby, and I got to see my wife several times a day, too," says Light, who after a few months returned to a more conventional work setup.
Past hits and misses: In 1999, I predicted workplace taboos against talking about death and grief at the office would crumble. Sadly, that forecast proved all-too-true, in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks. The American Hospice Foundation in Washington has seen a 16 percent rise this year in employer requests for materials to help grieving employees.
My crystal ball grew cloudy, though, with my forecast two years ago of more activism among employees demanding better alternative work arrangements. Workers were weary of companies giving lip service to corporate flexibility without offering realistic choices; I predicted a growing number would protest or quit over the issue.
What really happened: A surge in unemployment quashed any budding militancy. Instead of a Golden Age of Flexibility, the dark side of flexibility rules in many workplaces, as bosses use it to mold workers' hours to their advantage.
Many believe the retrenchment is temporary. "The labor market will be even tighter three years from now than it was" in the late 1990s, says Paul Rupert of Rupert & Co., a Washington, D.C., consultant. "All the things driving flexibility will shift back into place, and we'll be off and running."
Patricia Kitchen's Change@Work column will resume next Sunday.
Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.
http://www.newsday.com/business/printedition/ny-bzfast3064645dec29,0,2504372.story?coll=ny-business-print
By Sue Shellenbarger
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 29, 2002
It's going to be a rough year in 2003 for people trying to balance work, family and personal life.
In a pattern that promises to endure for a while, basic needs, such as keeping a steady income and health insurance, took priority over life balance this past year for most workers.
Here are my annual predictions of work-life trends, plus a look back at how some past forecasts have turned out.
It's the economy, stupid. This maxim of the 1992 presidential campaign will apply to family life in 2003, as the economy's twists and turns shape what was once seen as a matter of preference - family roles. Driven by accelerating change in business, moms and dads will move in and out of the work force and swap breadwinning and nurturing duties more often.
The need for health insurance, in particular, will emerge as a driver of work-life decisions. The number of people covered by employer health insurance fell by more than 700,000 in 2001, the Census Bureau says. Which parent will work in the future? The one who can get benefits.
Also, homedads will rise again but only temporarily. New government data to be released in a few months are likely to show a rise in stay-at-home fathers. But don't consider it permanent. In the recession of the early 1990s, a similar rise in at-home dads was seen as a sign of a new male attachment to home and hearth. But the uptick soon vaporized, proving a temporary adaptation by families to an economic slump that had left many men jobless.
Family caregivers will draw the spotlight as pillars of the nation's long-term care system. As the number of frail elderly rises 35 percent in the coming decade, caregiver issues such as depression, rising out-of-pocket expenses and a need for training will take center stage.
Advocacy groups are wielding new muscle, bolstered by a rise in public and private funding. The Family Caregiver Alliance, an innovative San Francisco-based nonprofit with a $3-million-plus annual budget, has set up a National Center on Caregiving to provide support. Funding to the National Family Caregivers Association, Kensington, Md., has doubled in the past year to more than $1 million. The National Alliance for Caregiving, Bethesda, Md., has 39 corporate and nonprofit partners, up from five just six years ago.
Supporting family caregivers looks cheap next to the alternative - ultimately, Medicaid-paid nursing homes. For 18 years, Carolyn Erwin-Johnson has cared in her Baltimore home for her mother, who has multiple sclerosis, spending out-of-pocket up to $25,000 a year for aides so she could get out and earn a paycheck. Defying medical prognoses, she helped her mother recover her abilities after seizures, challenged her to keep trying to speak, and staved off bedsores. Her mother would have died long ago, a doctor recently told Erwin-Johnson, had she been placed in a nursing home.
"You listen to the medical advice, but you have to rely on the triumph of the human spirit" to care well for the aged, says Erwin- Johnson, who is organizing a nonprofit to train caregivers.
American ingenuity will find expression in more wacky ways to combine work and family. Bereft of control over career and work hours, breadwinners will apply their creativity to domestic life.
When Bob Light's wife had to return to her work as a physician after childbirth, the couple couldn't find satisfactory child care. So Light, a software engineer in a Boston suburb, transformed the family RV into a mobile office and drove it daily to the hospital where his wife worked. There in the parking lot, with the baby mostly sleeping and Light toiling away via wireless hookups, he set up "Bob's Mobile Office and Daycare Center," he says. His wife breastfed the baby on her breaks. Light even installed a Web camera for the baby's grandfather to tune in. "I really got to know the baby, and I got to see my wife several times a day, too," says Light, who after a few months returned to a more conventional work setup.
Past hits and misses: In 1999, I predicted workplace taboos against talking about death and grief at the office would crumble. Sadly, that forecast proved all-too-true, in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks. The American Hospice Foundation in Washington has seen a 16 percent rise this year in employer requests for materials to help grieving employees.
My crystal ball grew cloudy, though, with my forecast two years ago of more activism among employees demanding better alternative work arrangements. Workers were weary of companies giving lip service to corporate flexibility without offering realistic choices; I predicted a growing number would protest or quit over the issue.
What really happened: A surge in unemployment quashed any budding militancy. Instead of a Golden Age of Flexibility, the dark side of flexibility rules in many workplaces, as bosses use it to mold workers' hours to their advantage.
Many believe the retrenchment is temporary. "The labor market will be even tighter three years from now than it was" in the late 1990s, says Paul Rupert of Rupert & Co., a Washington, D.C., consultant. "All the things driving flexibility will shift back into place, and we'll be off and running."
Patricia Kitchen's Change@Work column will resume next Sunday.
Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.
http://www.newsday.com/business/printedition/ny-bzfast3064645dec29,0,2504372.story?coll=ny-business-print