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BALANCING WORK
AND FAMILY
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One of the challenges many people face in our increasingly busy times is balancing work and family. Research was published in the Journal of Marital & Family Therapy (October, 2001) that sheds excellent light on ways to do so. Principal investigators, Drs. Shelley A. Haddock and Toni Schindler Zimmerman, along with Scott J. Ziemba and Lisa R. Current authored, "Ten Adaptive Strategies for Family and Work Balance: Advice from Successful Families." With their permission, edited excerpts from the findings of these researchers at Colorado State University's Human Development and Family Studies Department are reprinted here. The aim of this article is to help people both solve and avoid relationship problems. This research well serves the latter. "Evidence exists that most employed women and men believe that there are strong benefits to combining family and work, and that the benefits outweigh the costs. [However] a significant number of people in the United States also report that attending to the myriad responsibilities in their lives can be difficult. "Therapists are increasingly being called on to assist families in managing the many responsibilities of their lives. In fact, the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy reported that approximately one-third of their couple cases involved difficulties with work-family balance." The Colorado State investigators found "ten foundational strategies" in their research with forty-seven couples, considerably diverse in professions and work schedules, that guided them in meeting their various responsibilities. The first two are quoted below: Valuing Family Forty-six couples stressed the importance of maintaining a commitment to family as the highest priority. Through word and deed, both members of the couple worked hard to maintain family as their highest priority in making decisions about their behavior in daily life. To do this, couples proactively created opportunities for family time, which often involved family rituals, routines, and special family time, such as "pizza night" every Friday, attending soccer games, and bedtime stories. Second, in terms of relative importance, these couples emphasized family happiness over professional responsibilities and advancement. In fact, they often discussed employment as a means for ensuring family well being. It was not uncommon for participants to limit work hours, sacrifice career advancement, make career changes, or accept less-prestigious positions to keep family as the number one priority in life. Striving for Partnership Forty-five couples stressed that striving for equality and partnership in their marital relationship was critical to their success. Although differences emerged in the degree of equality among couples in this sample, as a group they possessed a relatively high degree of equality. They discussed the importance of three principle components of marital equality, the first revolving around division of labor. Second, the couples stated the importance of making decisions together as partners who have equal input into the process and outcome of decisions. Third, the couples said they were partners on an interpersonal level as well. They told stories about how they respect, appreciate, and support one another. "If I win and she loses, then we both lose. If she wins and I lose, then we both lose. [This belief] has probably made all the difference...because you just can't live your life trying to win in a relationship. You will just come out a loser, period." Additional adaptive, foundational strategies found by the researchers in the forty-seven couples studied are detailed at: For more information about Dr. Marshall Colt,
San Diego Individual & Couples Therapist, go to: |