How to get WoLFi? – it’s not a straight line
posted Sunday, September 28th, 2008 at 11:18 am
balancing act
I found this article You first, job last in work-life balance both bouying and confronting and it’s all because of the language around the work family balance debate. While I was delighted to find an article promoting Best Practice Organisations that offer employees flexible options including part-time work, job sharing, study leave etc…… I was however, dismayed at the language around prioritising work and family.
According to Professor Graham Burrows (chairman of the Mental Health Foundation of Australia) work life balance is vital to mental health. On that point I completely agree. The following comment by Professor Burrows, I had more difficultly with:
“Work shouldn’t be at the top of our priorities. It should be in this order: you, your partner, your children, the rest of your family, and then your job.”
I have a problem with the language of numerically listing priorities in an ordinal fashion because I don’t think life works that way. I guess that’s why I like the term interconnectivity, because it focuses more on strenghtening the multiple supports and interconnections in your life, rather than prioritising who or what should come first on your list.
An academic article I read recently conferred that it may the language of work life/family balance that is the obstacle to actually achieving it. As Paula Caproni * (academic with 2 children) notes, the language or discourse that got us into a problem with WLB can not get us out. Why? Because this discourse assumes power, choice, predictability, and linear pathways to a goal. If the language and logic of the WFLB debate is dominated by masculine, bureocratic-speak based on values that are easily traded off or prioritised than it is of no use to ‘real’ families. What is needed according to Ms Caproni, is a critical shakedown of the dominiant discourse, so that we can look at other versions of reality and alternate discourses – that may serve the needs of mothers and fathers in paid and unpaid work, families and workplaces better.
It seems like we need to change the way we talk about WoLFi to be more inclusive of alternative ways of doing parenting and paid work. It is wonderful to see a rich diversity of experience being shared among the parenting blogs on my blog roll, as well as many others. But how to shakeup the mainstream views – that is the question???
* ‘Work/Life Balance: You Can’t Get There From Here’, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 2004, 40, 208-218.
I completely agree with Burrows. The priorities he lists are essentially the things you have power over. Yourself first, your relationship with your partner next (ideally), then you kids, then other people, then your job. From a completely pragmatic point of view, you will do best concentrating on things in that order.
From a political point of view, I take your point. Women have been trained not ever to think in that linear way. Of course, implementing his priorities need not be linear. When deciding when to put my needs first, I try to keep in mind the impact (positive and negative) of those decisions on my family and others. Having those priorities doesn’t mean that what you want always comes first, it just means your own sanity is paramount, because it is the one thing you might actually have some hope of controlling.
For mine, the horrors of recognising those priorities is what needs to be addressed, and the mistaken assumption of simplicity, not finding some more complex language. But then I am an idealist, and I accept that such a plan may not meet with widespread acceptance…
Ariane said this on October 1st, 2008 at 12:28 am
[...] at The Hand Mirror wishes a Happy Father’s Day to those that deserve it. The issues and ideas surrounding work/ life balance are discussed at WoLFi TaLEs. Undomestic Goddes at Real Mummy is unhappy with pinkness as a [...]
5th Down Under Feminists Carnival « HellOnHairyLegs said this on October 1st, 2008 at 11:58 am
When you put it that way, I can see there is a point to a list as a practical guide in the right direction…otherwise randomness could lead to being persuaded by the party who makes the most noise.
aztec-rose said this on October 3rd, 2008 at 8:05 am
I somewhat agree with you. I think the binary dualism between work and family or work and life is artificial at both an individual and a societal level and has contributed to the problems we have reconciling them. Maybe if rather than prioritising one over the other we worked at demonstrating how interconnected and dependent on each other they are we’d have more of basis for proceeding rather than just reinforcing the same old dualisms
make tea not war said this on October 4th, 2008 at 5:17 am