Balancing Acts: Easing the Burdens and Improving the Options for Working Families

Changes in what researchers have called the "fundamental arithmetic of the family" - the ratio of jobs, including management of the home, to adults in the household - are creating stresses that affect both family life and workers' performance. One result has been an increase in work-family conflict. Workplaces are changing in response to this new arithmetic, yet, while there are exemplary companies, for the most part work is still governed by practices suited to a mainly male, full-time employee with a wife to attend to the home job. This collection of essays, from a symposium sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Department of Labor, brings together key experts from the research, labor, and business communities to discuss the latest findings and trends in the area of work and family life.