More American fathers are assuming an increasingly active role in raising their children, but many employers haven't adequately responded to their changing needs.
This article was originally published by Fortune.com on Friday, June 17, 2011.
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis, contributor, Fortune
Who's going to pick the kids up from soccer practice? Or how about when junior is feeling sick and needs to be collected from the nurse's office? While the answer to these questions would have been obvious years ago, it certainly isn't today. But have employers actually kept up with this shift?
Take the flexible work policies that many employers have developed over the last few decades, as the flood of women entering the workforce demanded a departure from the standard 9-to-5 schedule, in order to handle children's emergencies. It turns out that men are five times as likely to work flexibly on an informal basis, rather than adopting a manager-approved flexible work plan, according to a new study of fathers and work by Boston College's Center for Work and Family.
The changing face of the American working dad
When your spouse is also your coworker
Sometimes you're married to work; other times you are married at work. The ups and downs of working at the same office as -- or alongside -- your spouse.
This article was originally published by Fortune.com on Thursday, June 9, 2011.
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis, contributor, Fortune
When Tom Corwin is done with his workday, he knocks on the wall. That signals his wife Carol -- who works in the neighboring office at the U.S. Education Department's budget office -- that he's ready to go home.
"We've been married 27 years now, and we've been working together longer than that. I can't imagine not working with her," says Corwin, 59, who met his wife on the job. "We always know what one another is going through professionally."
The couple enjoys talking out work challenges during their commute home, and often will brainstorm a solution to an assignment that seemed pointless at first blush. They contribute to each other's careers, and probably end up giving more time and energy to their employer than they would otherwise, he says.
With June kicking off the start of wedding season, newlyweds who work in the same office will embark on a delicate balancing act between their relationship at work and at home. Long-time married couples sharing an employer say it helps to have separate roles, respect your spouse's contributions at home and work, shift into professional mode when needed and zealously guard your personal time.
Rough Unemployment Road for Men Could Be Ending
This article was originally published by the Fiscal Times on Thursday, Dec. 23, 2010.
While women fared much better than men throughout the recession, the gap in the unemployment rates between men and women is beginning to narrow as more and more men are going back to work.
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
Nearly two years after being laid off from his information technology sales job, Alan Yellowitz of Fairfax, Va. finally landed a job. He's making less than half of the $200,000 to $300,000 a year he once earned, but it's enough to keep the lights on, pay the mortgage and feed his family of four. "After 22 months of unemployment, we feel like we can breathe again," said the 47-year-old Yellowitz. "It's still somewhat rough. We’re still digging out of a hole. But getting a regular paycheck every two weeks feels amazing."
Yellowitz was a casualty of what some call the “mancession", more than two years of rampant unemployment that disproportionately hurt men more than women. Men did so poorly because far more of them worked in industries hit hard by the economic downturn – particularly manufacturing, construction and financial services. Women, by contrast, are disproportionately represented in sectors that are more resistant to economic cycles, such as health care and education.
With the recession officially over and the job market slowly improving, long-time unemployed workers like Yellowitz are beginning to find work. While the unemployment rate for men dropped by nearly a full percentage point to 10.6 percent in November from its 11.4 percent high last October, the female unemployment rate is holding steady near its 8.8 percent high of October 2009. Even though the uptick in employment for men is still relatively small the data suggest that the jobs now opening up are going to men more than to women.
"Men's unemployment rose faster and further than women's, but it has since recovered somewhat. In contrast, women's unemployment, while having peaked lower, hasn't actually come down," Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Department of Labor, said in an interview with The Fiscal Times. "It does seem like the recovery has been more beneficial to men at this point. Some of this has to do with where the cuts [were] the deepest and where we [have] been able to add some jobs back."
One important question yet to be answered is whether males are merely bouncing back from the extreme job losses suffered during the Great Recession, or whether we are seeing the long-predicted turning point in the labor market in favor of women. Women hold an edge in the job market in part because they hold the majority of advanced degrees, and some experts believe that employers will hire and promote women to higher levels as a result. Thus far, the average woman still earns less than a comparable man, even when adjusted for hours worked and time out of the labor force.
Why Your Co-Workers May Hate You
This article was originally published by the Fiscal Times on Friday, Nov. 12, 2010.
It's parents vs. the childless at some workplaces as benefits geared to parents are seen as biased and unfair.
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
With the holidays approaching, tension is mounting in some workplaces over which employees get time off — and which remain in the office while their co-workers enjoy turkey leftovers and long weekends out of town.
On one side: parents; on the other: childless people. Productivity demands have caused increased stress for all workers who feel they’re doing their job and two others; yet it’s often the child-free employees who pick up the slack because of a co-worker's flexible schedule, holiday plans or maternity leave. In this time of tight budgets and lean staffing the left-behinds are saying “enough.” They flock to online forums like The Childfree Life and STFU Parents to vent about being taken for granted because they have no children.
"You can work all the holidays, you can take the weekend trips, you can work late when your colleagues have to run home for the soccer practice or the recital," said Laura S. Scott, Roanoke, Va.-based author of "Two Is Enough" and founder of The Childless by Choice Project. "There's an assumption that the childfree don't have lives outside of work. There needs to be an acknowledgement that all employees, whether they have children or not, need work-life balance."
The work-life field was born in response to the flood of women entering the workforce in the 1970s, and in recent decades became mainstream as more employers recognized the value of flexible work benefits in attracting top talent. This summer, the Obama administration has spotlighted workplace flexibility through public statements, the first-ever White House summit on the topic and a pilot program giving federal workers greater flexibility.
But as employers compete to appear family friendly to both prospective employees and the government, they risk alienating child-free candidates who worry they will become second class citizens in the workplace. "The best employers provide flexibility equitably," said Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute. "Where the person with a kid might need to take off the day after Thanksgiving, the person without children may have a friend who is ill. None of us are without personal responsibilities."
With young people delaying marriage and child-rearing, and some never having children, there are more child-free people in the workplace. Nearly one-in-five American women will never bear children, double the percent in the 1970s, according to the Pew Research Center. But everyone has parents. In the last year, 42 percent of workers the Families and Work Institute surveyed have had elder care responsibilities, and 49 percent expect to in the future, Galinsky said.
Why Do Dads Lie?
This article was originally published by Slate on Thursday, June 17, 2010.
Why do dads lie on surveys about fatherhood? And why their lying is socially significant.
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
A new Boston College study makes the modern American dad look positively Swedish in his dedication to his children and his zeal to participate equally in raising them. The yearlong qualitative study of 33 first-time fathers, released yesterday, found that they viewed themselves as sharing family responsibilities 50-50 with their wives and claimed to devote an average of 3.3 hours each workday to child care. The new dads openly gushed about the way parenthood had changed their priorities and career aspirations. "I love being a father so much more than I thought I would," said one study participant about his new baby girl. "The highlight of my day is in the morning when I hear her start to wake up and I can just go in there and pick her up."
Could that be true? Has the American father adapted so quickly to modern feminist demands? The researchers themselves were somewhat suspicious. After all, the most recent large-scale, benchmark studies on time use found that fathers spend significantly less time on child care than mothers. The Families and Work Institute, for instance, puts fathers at three hours and mothers at 3.8 hours with kids under 13, while Census Bureau time-use surveys found that married men spend about 1.2 hours per weekday caring for children under age 6, while married women spend 2.6 hours on the same activity. (For both benchmark surveys, the most recent year available is 2008.)
The answer, it turns out, is that the men in the Boston College study were probably lying about how they spend their time. But that's no reason to be disappointed. The Boston study relied upon in-depth interviews with men after the fact. Time-use studies involve questions about the previous day's behavior. With in-depth interviews, researchers expect subjects to have imperfect recall or exaggerate behaviors they perceive as being socially desirable—weight loss and breastfeeding are classic examples. But the direction in which they lie is socially significant. Thirty years ago, dads claimed to spend less time with their children than they actually did, since child-rearing was considered women's work. Now they are lying in the opposite direction, which suggests that they perceive doing half of the parenting to be a manly affair.
The Return
This story was originally published by the Washington Post Magazine on Sunday, April 4, 2010, in conjunction with an online discussion.
A stay at home mom attempts to go back to work after nearly two decades. Can she revive her career?
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
Amy Beckett put away her reading glasses and file folder and stood up.
It was time. It was almost past time.
She tossed the empty paper cup into the trash and swung open the door to leave the deli on Rhode Island Avenue NW. As Beckett walked into an upscale office lobby, her scarf slipped from around her neck and drifted to the ground. She scooped it up and shoved it into her shoulder bag. She didn't want to arrive late for the job interview.
She handed the security guard a photo ID. Once in the elevator, she looked up at the ceiling and exhaled noisily. "I'm never doing this again," she said, closing her jade-colored eyes for a moment. At the seventh floor, she opened the heavy wooden door to Suite 713, identified in gold lettering as the Law Offices of Stephen H. Marcus. The suite's unique double doors, parquet floor and crown molding signaled its former life as the ticket office for EL AL Airlines. The receptionist looked up from her desk with a smile. She took Beckett's business card and said it would be a few moments until Marcus finished with a client.
With her back straight in a modern brown chair by the door, Beckett folded her hands over the bag on her knees and waited. It was March of last year, three days after she had turned 52 and 17 years since she'd last held a job.
When You Find Your Valentine On The Job
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2008 Newhouse News Service
Photo by Kraig Scattarella
Office romance often brings to mind an adulterous affair or supply-closet rendezvous a la "Grey's Anatomy."
But people who met a soulmate at work are fighting to change that rap, which discourages many from dating a colleague. They tout the workplace as the ideal venue to get to know possible partners.
"The office lends itself to these old-fashioned courting rituals of yore," said Stephanie Losee, San Francisco-based co-author of "Office Mate." "You get to know the substance of the person."
The 40-Hour Workweek?
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2007 Newhouse News Service
Pop quiz: Since the 1950s, the length of the average American workweek has ... A) climbed. B) declined. C) stayed roughly flat.
If you picked A, you're wrong. The average employee worked 39.2 hours a week in 2006, nearly two hours less than the 40.9 the Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded for 1956.
So why does it feel like we're working harder every year?
A third of those surveyed in July by Indianapolis-based business consultants Walker Information said they're forced to devote too much time to work, and 45 percent sacrifice personal balance for their jobs — increases from Walker's 2005 survey.
What's going on?
For starters, statistical averages can be misleading, lumping white-collar professionals with blue-collar and part-time workers.
While a growing chunk of the labor force regularly works 50- or 60-hour weeks, those in manufacturing have seen their hours dwindle to an average 34 per week this year. That's down from the nearly 39 the BLS reported for 1964.
"There's a bifurcation process going on where some people work excessively long hours, and there are other workers who can't get enough hours,'' said Vicky Lovell, director of employment and work/life programs at the Institute for Women's Policy Research.
Moreover, the labor force is now dominated by two-worker families, leaving less time for child rearing and housekeeping duties that haven't gone away. People report working almost 10 hours more per week than their ideal, said Arne Kalleberg, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina. Married employees "are working three jobs — two in the workplace and one at home,'' he said.
Modern Dads Balancing
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2007 Newhouse News Service
Photo by Kraig Scattarella
Today's dads are changing diapers, driving the carpool and cooking dinner — shouldering more child and household responsibilities than the previous generation of fathers.
The numbers tell the story: Fathers do 67 percent more housework and 50 percent more child care than 25 years ago, according to surveys by the Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit organization based in New York.
Decades ago, men responded to fatherhood by honing their ability to support a family. Now, more are making career sacrifices and adjusting their work days as they try to reconcile the roles of provider and parent.
Yet they don't always find sympathy at their jobs. Bosses and colleagues who nod knowingly when a new mother scales back may react with surprise when a new father wants to do the same. And the biggest career-oriented rewards, many experts say, still go to those with few home duties, who can devote their full energy to work.
"The culture still remains one based on the whole breadwinner-homemaker model,'' said Ann Bookman, executive director of the MIT Workplace Center at the Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Mass.
The model of fatherhood is changing because wives expect a partnership and men want to be actively engaged with their kids.
"We ... have ratcheted up the expectations of what the father would do compared with previous generations,'' said Daniel Isaac, 38, of Yardley, Pa., a research scientist and teacher at Princeton University.
Cheatin' Heart? Your Tax Return Will Tell on You
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2007 Newhouse News Service
Illustration by Monica Seaberry
Now that you've filed your taxes, take a hard look at your return. The innocent-looking pages of numbers could reveal a nasty surprise: a cheating spouse.
Why would a dishonest mate be truthful with the Internal Revenue Service?
"Your spouse may forgive you, but the IRS never will,'' said Helen O'Planick, a tax professional in Manchester, Pa. "They have a little longer arm and there are so many paper trails.''
Employers Should Eye Workplace Romance
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2007 Newhouse News Service
Illustration by Monica Seaberry
The arrest of astronaut Lisa Nowak may be an extreme example of an office crush gone awry, but it nonetheless highlights some real concerns for employers regarding workplace romance.
Managers must balance respect for staff privacy with vigilance for signs that a personal relationship might be jeopardizing the productivity or safety of their employees, workplace experts said.
"They want to make sure nothing escalates to the level of this situation," said Mimi Moore, an employment lawyer at Bryan Cave in Chicago. But "there's a line that employers have to draw in terms of getting too involved in people's personal lives."
