There’s another reason that we have to choose together if we value work life balance: if we don’t, we’ll hurt kids.
Not the kids of computer programmers. The market’s done a truly terrible job so far at creating computer programming jobs with worklife balance. But as our population ages, the number of people who absolutely have to have worklife balance — to take care of their elderly parents and their kids — will grow so large that people with more market power will get real worklife balance. When researchers talk about how companies will be forced to use worklife balance to assist in hiring and retention, these are the folks the researchers are thinking about. Their kids will be okay (eventually).
But janitors’ kids? Even if the market eventually provides work life balance for janitors — and that includes creating janitor jobs that pay enough so janitors don’t have to work two or more jobs & insanely long hours to just put food on the table — it’s going to be a very, very, very, very long time coming.
So if we just choose by ourselves, here’s how it’ll play out. If you’re clever enough to be born into a family where your parents are professionals, your parents will have the time and flexibility to go to your soccer games, to help you with homework, to really spend time with you. And if you’re born into a family where your parents have low-wage jobs, they won’t.
In other words, choosing by ourselves means we’re stacking the deck even further against kids on the bottom.
This is why the first step in the model — figuring out what are our values — is so crucial. If you focus on the value of worklife balance without also focusing on the value of equal opportunity, you’re gonna leave janitors’ kids behind. It’s scary how many good people who write about worklife balance miss this.
(It could also be that they are so elitist that they don’t give a crap about low-wage workers and their kids. But they seem like good folks, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt)
Bottom line: if we value work life balance and we also value giving everyone a fair shot, we’ve got to Choose Together.
