WASHINGTON — While Americans are exhaling a sigh of relief to be employed, if at all, the discussion of work-life balance is still at the top of many people’s priority lists.
And while the needs of families have greatly changed since the early 20th century, especially with the increase of more than one working parent in many families, there is no law that limits the amount of hours a person can work at anytime.
The Fair Labor Standards Act, originally instituted in 1938, but amended several times, places no a cap on the number of hours per day or week that employees 16 or older are required to work.
“Now the expectation is total work devotion,” said Brigid Schulte, a fellow at The New America Foundation, the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, who has spoken at several conferences on how to balance work and family.
“I will jump. You say how high,” Schulte said.
And when women entered the workforce in record numbers in the 1960s and 70s, it was incredibly crushing, she said.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, among married-couple families with children, 95.8 percent had one employed parent in 2011 and 58.5 percent of those families had both parents working, up from 58.1 percent in 2010.
The proportion of mothers with a recent birth or soon-to-be mothers in the labor force—whether married or not—is at 55 percent according to the most-recent U.S. Census numbers.
With that many working parents, the question becomes whether it’s possible to strike a balance between careers and families.
“There really isn’t a balance,” said Sharyn Rossi, a post-doctoral fellow in neuroscience at John Hopkins University, who has a 2-year-old daughter with her husband, Jon Agnew.
Rossi said that before giving birth to her daughter she would normally work until 7 at night and then go home and work more.
Since having her first child, she now needs to leave work a couple of hours earlier, pick up her daughter from daycare, cook and clean.
“By 10, we are just tired,” Rossi said about the entire family. “That is the schedule of a working mom.”
With the current state of the economy and the recent election, work life balance needs seem less important. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
“People have to make demands” for the always-on work culture to change,” said Susan Seidman, a psychologist specializing in work and family issues who works out of her own practice in Scarsdale, N.Y.
Add to that, the men who are feeling pressure more than ever to contribute at home because their wives are working longer hours, Schulte said.
The time men spend with their children has tripled since the 1960s — from two to seven hours weekly, according to Schulte’s research.
The time women spend with their children has almost doubled from 10 to 14 hours a week—as much time as stay-at-home mothers in the 1970s—while working the same amount of hours, sometimes 10-hour work days, Schulte said.
But despite these statistics, Seidman said “numbers are being crunched and people are having financial problems. This is not the time to make those changes.”
Still, the issue of work and family balance is not going away.
According to an OECD Better Life Index—Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development—which includes 34 of the most-developed countries and a number of emerging economies as members, “an important aspect of work-life balance is the amount of time a person spends at work. Evidence suggests that long work hours may impair personal health, jeopardize safety and increase stress.”
Twenty percent of all Americans in the U.S. work upwards of 60 hours weekly, with approximately 30 percent working over 40 hours and less than 15 percent working less than 15 hours, according to a 2007 report from the International Labour Organization based out of Geneva, Switzerland.
The report said that in developing countries, the incidence of both long hours and short hours is high, causing average figures to be potentially misleading.
Men make up most of the higher statistics of very long paid work hours in the United States at 15 percent compared to 6 percent for women.
And while men log more hours at work, woman log more hours at home, with the distribution of tasks thought to be influenced by gender roles.
While on average a man in OECD countries spends 131 minutes per day doing unpaid work, a woman spends 279 minutes per day on domestic chores including cleaning, caring and cooking.
Rossi said what helps her family be more fluid is working together. She admits that both she and her husband are stressed out with the baby, but they are on the same page because they take turns “doing what needs to be done.”
“It’s all about teamwork,” said Rossi.
Schulte said at a recent work and family conference that one of the biggest issues with labor in the U.S. deals with the needs of families changing over time, while policy has not.
The lack of policy in the U.S. is in stark contrast to so many other countries around the world that place a bigger emphasis on the work-life balance and provide more support for working parents, in some cases up to 80-100 percent of paid time off for up to 16 months after having a child, or in some countries, before the child is born.
While overall, Congress is not currently considering any legislation to make changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act with regard to putting a cap on the number of hours a person can work in a day or week, a spokesman from the United States Department of Labor said one thing they are looking to do is provide fair wage coverage for in-home care workers who have historically not been included as a class of workers under the FLSA.
Considering the lack of current legislation, Karen Yasgoor, a psychologist and mother raising children, said it is up to the individual business or corporation to make it a family friendly workplace.
“Employers—both small and big corporations—need to revisit vacation policies in regard to all levels,” Yasgoor said. “They need to allow for, and, embrace family time.”
While the U.S. still has yet to catch up on work-life balance legislation in the workplace, it is also the only OECD country without a national paid parental leave policy—not including Liberia, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland who are not yet factored into the index—though some states provide leave payments with time off, usually around 12 weeks, depending on the employer.
In the U.S., the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 mandates up to 12 weeks of leave, though there is no law that demands employers pay employees for this time away.
Many European countries, such as Germany, Italy, and France have examples of family policies where employees have no choice but to take time off, Yasgoor said.
“America really needs to look at those policies and institute some of their own,” Yasgoor said. “If they want more for their employees to make it a more family environment, they need to embrace these policies and say that this is not a choice.”
While mothers in the U.S. may be struggling with balancing their lives outside of work, they are not the only mothers who are concerned.
According to the International Labour Organization, while the number of United States working hours has hovered between an average of 40.9 hours weekly to 42 hours—with the increase occurring mostly in the years 1997-1999—developing countries such as Costa Rica, El Salvador, Peru, Philippines, Thailand and Turkey have longer working hours exceeding the average of 35-45.
More industrialized countries were found to have more stable working hours including Australia, Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, with higher income countries having shorter working hours.
France, Slovenia and Argentina experienced a reduction of working hours during the last 10-15 years.
France saw a reduction in hours from by 2 hours from 1995 to 2002, with a greater increase since due to the 35-hour law. Slovenia took a reduction by four hours—from approximately 40 hours to 36— during the last decade and Argentina’s decline since the 90s is seen mostly among women who are now working less than 35 hours a week.
With the discrepancies of some employees working very long hours and some working short in certain countries, including the U.S. as a top contender, the International Labour Organization proposes a solution: place the focus on the manufacturing sector.
Studies show, on average, that weekly working hours have been stabilized in the last ten years in many countries as a result, but their 2007 report says that there is no sign that developing countries are ‘catching up’ just yet.
Working longer hours can be stressful for anyone, especially those with children.
Schulte said that mothers are feeling “stuck” because they are realizing that it is not really possible to “have it all.”
And Rossi advises potential parents to consider the factors before having children:
“Make sure you are ready to have a child.”
She said that while a lot of moms want to believe they can do it all, it comes down to picking which one you care about more.
“I guess I haven’t reached that breaking point,” Rossi said. “I would never give up my family. If anything I’d give up my job.”