On men and work-life balance...among other things.

So, today is my last Monday in my current role. It has arrived, is passing somewhat peaceably, and I am trying to do all that I can to a)make and leverage business contacts, b)apply for job opportunities and research companies online and c)recreate myself into someone who knows a bit more about the modern age, i.e. social media marketing, Twitter, Digg, etc. I've become an enterprising little bee trying to learn how to adapt and evolve predominantly for the purposes of survival. In the back of my brain however, I am also thinking about party planning for my daughter's first birthday, figuring out what I am going to make for dinner, and mentally trying to schedule a hair appointment.

It's a funny dichotomy: I have two completely different personas that only meet in the middle by the happenstance of need. I have an enterprising and solutions-oriented mind and a head for the analytics of business processes (or at least its talent acquisition) and yet in my personal life I am far more the sardonic philosopher and earth mum focused mainly on my family and relationships. I guess it comes down to - "you do what you need to do, be who you need to be". Combining two different sides of yourself can sometimes result in true identity issues; keeping them separate for myself at least, is almost impossible. I am a one-woman juggling machine and invariably, the balls of career and life get confused.

I bring this up because a good friend of mine, Molly, brought up to me as a good writing topic the fact that you never ask men to talk about work-life balance. In pondering this (and subsequently watching my husband) I've concluded she is right. There is a huge difference between the ways that men and women operate when it comes to their personal lives and their careers.

My own husband, a good egg entirely, seems to compartmentalize the work and life elements of his existence fairly well. He works when at work, and is a husband and dad at home, and rarely two shall meet. He does not ever really seem to get stressed or have trouble focusing on his job when things are going on in our personal lives - and he readily shifts personas as needed. Far less emotional than me, he does not sit at his desk and wonder what the baby is doing and if she's happy. He does not make lists in his head of household talks or plan the groceries. While professionally he is in a management role, at home he is more than happy to let me steer the ship. He will help execute and will do the laundry, garbage, etc. when it comes to our home life, he leaves he planning/worrying/remembering bits to fall on me unless absolutely forced to do otherwise.

You'd think that in this economy, that has to be changing, doesn't it? More men are staying home and taking over the childcare etc. while mom goes out and earns a living. In my own family, I worked more hours a day than my husband, meaning he technically had more time with the baby than I did. One girlfriend leaves her house at 5am to complete an hour+ commute and her husband works from home; another has 6 month old twins and works full-time while her husband is not working. Doesn't that mean our husbands are picking up an even greater share of those responsibilities?

Not necessarily. It may just be the company of superhuman mommies that I keep but every working mother I know, regardless of the hours they put in the office, still seems to spend more time than their spouses trying to find time to do everything. Of the situations I described above, every one of those mothers is the one getting up at night with the baby. The mom of twins routinely feeds both babies simultaneously, not out of innate skill but of necessity. My commuter friend has not been able to get to the gym even twice a week to work out but her husband still managed to go to hockey games several nights a week. And somehow, it is a misguided logic we tend to be willing to accept.

I think a couple things are happening here. First - it is relatively well-accepted that women are built as more emotional creatures. We look at how things interact with each other, we are concerned about relationships. Without making it sound too warm and fuzzy, we're not taught to put ourselves first and often find ourselves either naturally or socially put into caretaker roles. We are not trained to think selfishly - even when perhaps we should. My mother could be cooking 8 things, still shout orders, and make sure that we got our homework done: from an early age I was taught to do and think about multiple things at once. We act where we see a need; men don't seem to notice the need until we point it out explicitly.

But I think we also maybe set ourselves up to some degree. When our daughter was born, for example, I was worried (as he'd not ever been around babies) that he would not be willing to handle diapers a la #2. I made it clear to him at that point that as far as I was concerned, that task was his - and it has been. When I finally got frustrated at always being the one who wakes up for the baby and was past the point of exhaustion, I finally told him that I resented his ability to sleep and told him straight out that he needed to start helping. Well, for the most part - I still get up with the baby. But to give him the credit he deserves, I also now wake my husband up and send him downstairs at least for the bottle. I've started being very clear in asking for help and making him accountable for some of what needs to happen on a daily basis, and to an extent that has been successful.

So maybe part of the work/life balance man/woman thing is genetic: maybe we as women are built a little differently and able to handle multiple tasks at once. Maybe part of it is emotional, and men don't have the same level of relational maturity that we do - maybe we expect them to see what they need instead of telling them. And it could be in some ways we are setting ourselves up by making assumptions about their inabilities and not holding them accountable for their share of the mental load.

Regardless of what the cause though, I know several sleep deprived women that will likely reading this while they're stuck in traffic commuting this evening - trying to fit in some reading before they get home and try to get 1000 other things done before tomorrow. If you are driving behind one of em, give em a brake. :)

Here are a couple of interesting articles I found on this topic:

Newsweek: Equal Stress?

MPR News: Men Feel Conflict in Work/Life Balance


If you have any ideas, advice, or article suggestions, feel free to comment, email me at this address or Tweet Me on Twitter! You are why I write and I want to make the time you take reading my stuff worthwhile. I would love to hear from you!