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Key points
- The blended work/family life isn't always compatible with work or family; you're rarely off the clock.
- Spillover from work contributes more to family stress than family stress does to satisfaction with work.
- While effort tends to result in success at work, it doesn't always guarantee the same at home.
- Work and family boundaries operate similarly for men and women.
One of the reasons Clare likes her work as a bank officer is that when it’s over, it’s over. "I never think about my job after I leave the bank. It’s like I’m one person from nine to five and someone else the rest of the time,” she says.
Tom, her husband, is a physician, and despite his efforts to leave the office behind, he’s always on call, even when he isn’t. “He’s forever beholden to his patients, and that’s exactly the right word, beholden,” she says . ”They have a hold on him that supersedes all his other obligations, including his commitments to his family.” While she understands it, what makes their marriage work is that she willingly accepts the obligations that come with her other job, the “second shift,” entailing the emotional and logistical management of family life.
For many women, the work/life boundary is more fluid and permeable than it is for men, even when rules, roles, structure, and culture distinguish it from the personal sphere. But that’s not true of all women. “I didn’t mean to put my whole self into my career,” said Marcia, whose ascent to the C-suite was faster than for many colleagues who started at the company when she did .”But the fact is, I didn’t have anything compelling besides my career, at least nothing that rewarded my efforts the way it did. I can’t point to a time in my life when I consciously made the tradeoff.”
In fact, as she learned in therapy, it didn’t just happen; it happened because she felt more competent and confident at work than she did in her personal relationships, so that’s what she concentrated on, to the eventual exclusion of romantic entanglements. “The lines were clearer; the more effort I put into my job, the more rewards I got. But that wasn’t true of my personal life, because it wasn’t in my control the way my job was,” she says.
Since the end of the pandemic, have the boundaries between your work and your life changed?
The pandemic put issues of balance in stark relief for many people, men as well as women. “I really felt like a part of my family in a way I never did when I was at the office," says Mike, an architect. "I probably put in just as many actual hours, but I put many more into family stuff, too. I didn’t just come home from, work, have dinner, spend half an hour with the kids, and go right back to it."
Being back full-time in the office has changed how he feels about the career that was always the most rewarding part of his life. He’s looking for a job that would enable him to spend more time away from it; in fact, he’s been offered a job-sharing arrangement that would entail a reduction in salary, and his wife is willing to make the adjustment in household economics required by such a change, at least until both their kids are in school full-time.
Some women gravitate towards a blended life. As a writer, Rachel says she’s always working, even when she’s not at the computer . “I’m observing, taking mental notes, listening for the phrase, the anecdote, the overheard conversation, and thinking, I can use this somehow. Occasionally I wish I could turn that part of me off, fully immerse myself in an activity or experience without standing a little bit away from it, observing myself observing it,” she says.
She admits that what she calls her “seamless” life has its disadvantages; “When my relationships or other commitment\s aren’t going well, my work practically grinds to a halt, and vice versa. But when things are going well\ in one aspect of my life, it seems to ratchet up the other to a better level of functioning. I have more energy and enthusiasm, more confidence and joy in every area of my life."
What she doesn’t have when she’s on a roll is time, which for many women is the devil in the detail of the well-balanced life. Even women who work in more structured, nine-to-five jobs often find it hard to keep the lines between work and life separate. They may turn off their computer, clear off their desk and close the door when they leave the office, but even when they’re fixing dinner or reading their child a bedtime story, they're often mentally rehearsing the presentation they’re making in the morning or wondering how the audit’s going.
While they’re sharing a romantic moment with their partner or coaching the soccer team, another part of their brain may be roughing out the brief that’s due by the end of the week or thinking about the upcoming performance review. That’s multitasking, which is jargon for doing a lot of things at once; it’s also a synonym for letting your work spill over into your life and vice versa.
Does work interfere more with family life than family life does with work?
Research into the often-conflicting tugs of the personal and professional domains indicates that spillover from work contributes more to family stress than spillover from family does from work. Emotional exhaustion in the professional domain is measured by burnout, mood, work overload, work-family interference, and marital satisfaction. While work and family boundaries are asymmetrically permeable, family boundaries are more permeable than work boundaries. In a study of both men and women, there was no evidence of gender difference in the pattern of asymmetry; in other words, the dynamics of work and family boundaries operate similarly among men and women.
How satisfied are you with the boundaries between your work and your life? Would putting more or less effort and energy into your career change how you felt about it? Would deciding that family commitments or the pursuit of personal happiness will always take precedence over the kind of professional obligations that aren’t central to the job ( such as drinks after work with your colleagues) be a statement to your manager that your heart really isn’t in your work?
Do you ever (or often) think that if it weren’t for all the obligations, time, and energy you pour into your work, your relationships, hobbies and other activities would bring you as much satisfaction and greater rewards than your career ? If your answer to that question is yes, it may be time to rebalance your priorities in both life and work.
