Work / life balance - a good trick if you can do it

by Tamsin Hemingray in At home on 26.09.08

Yesterday my seven year-old daughter called a family meeting with her father and me. The topic: why aren’t we spending enough family time together? Being a creative kind of a girl, she’d produced a flyer for the meeting. Or at least, she got half way through doing so - but then we had to leave the house since both her father and I had early meetings in London and so she was being dropped at school (and picked up) by a friend. The irony was not lost on either of us.

At 7.30pm last night the three of us sat down in the front room and my daughter let rip. She was fed up with us never doing things as a threesome. Weekend activities always involved one of us hanging out with her while the other one ran around doing “boring stuff” [trans: housework / life admin / etc]. In the week, things were even worse: “We’re always rushing to get ready for school or work, or washing up, or cooking and no one even says ‘how are you?’ or asks anyone else how they are feeling!” she bemoaned.

Her father and I hung our heads in shame. She’s right, of course.

The two of us both work full time on jobs that require a lot of our (admittedly limited) brain power. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) tells me (via its Labour Market Statistics survey) that in June the average weekly hours worked by women working full time was 33.7. (The average full-time man apparently worked 39 hours each week in June). I’d put my own working week at around 45 hours (when there’s not a rush on). Him indoors works about the same plus has a two-hour commute to deal with on three out of five days each week.

There’s not always a huge amount you can do about working hours. If you’ve taken a job that makes those kinds of demands on you, then that’s that in most cases. But what was so reasonable about my daughter’s requests were that she didn’t ask for more time overall - she just wanted us to spend more time all together as a threesome at weekends. And be polite to each other during the hectic routine of the week.

We had a trial run this morning. Instead of barking orders - “get up!” “get dressed!” “walk faster!” and so on - I talked to her. I used a normal voice instead of a hysterical shriek. I asked her how she had slept. We discussed what she had on at school for the day over breakfast instead of sitting in silence with more news of doom pouring from the radio. She sang me a song about how “anything is possible” as we walked to school - a change from the usual moody silence as I drag her along the pavement at a speed that means she has to jog most of the way.

To my amazement, we weren’t late, the world didn’t stop turning and, believe it, we had a nice time. I never knew the morning routine could be that way.

This weekend we’ve made a deal that if there is “boring stuff” to be done (which there is, of course) then we’ll do it all together. And then we’ll reward ourselves with some fun stuff. All together.

Now, if I can just persuade my employer to hire a few more people so I don’t have to work late every night I’ll be laughing. Perhaps this work/life balance thing isn’t so tricky after all?

IMAGE by Flickr user Kaptain Kobold