Could we be misconstruing the idea of work-life balance from its original intent?

Is it possible that the presence of millennials in the workforce has affected how this phrase is interpreted today? Employers have been putting tremendous effort into determining the best way to appeal to millennial workers, and this phrase often comes up with this age group.

In the 1980s, “work-life balance” first appeared when discussing women re-entering the workforce. Since then, it has, in my view, become detached from its original meaning. The phrase now seems adrift in a sea of interpretations and is often taken to mean, “I am working too much. Eight hours of work needs to be balanced with eight hours of play to create a fair daily life-choice menu option.”

This misinterpretation of the phrase “work-life balance” is now being addressed by many successful business leaders. They are providing clarity around this “loose cannon” phrase that is blowing holes in the walls of business, and simultaneously not giving us what we need. Originally, the phrase aimed to integrate family life into work, not to create a rigid wall of separation between work on the one hand and “life” on the otherhand. Isn’t work a very part of life? Isn’t life itself, a glorious gift, by very definition a combination of hard work at our day job, and caring for children and shopping and investment?

Now, some young people have mistakenly created a wall where none need be created, a wall between their job and all the rest of what is generally categorized as “life”. This false dichotomy has “family life” over here and “work life” over there, and the two never seem to meet. The idea that the two should be “balanced” creates a nearly impossible challenge. It reminds me of the silly old question, which is actually a defective question: Is it colder in the winter or in the Mountains? There is no correct way to answer a poorly phrased question, excetp to call it out as a poorly phrased question. Sometimes when a person engages in this fallacy, I hear them saying, “Oops, it’s after 5 p.m. It’s ‘me’ time, so I can’t think about work,” or “Oh, it’s working hours, so I can’t discuss family matters.” That is not an integrated view, and I think it is a fallacy, in my opinion.

Perhaps the true balance lies in recognizing that we are holistic beings, not separated by mutually destructive forces, but rather by misunderstood allies. Perhaps it is not balance we need, but a rephrasing of the problem.The word we might consider in its place is “work-life integration.” The incorrectly interpreted phrase “work-life balance” has come to mean equal parts “yuck” and “yay”—eight hours of boring work (yuck!) balanced by eight hours of exciting me-time (yay!).

Babies in the workplace

Perhaps what we really need to is flip this problem on its head. Since we all tend to spend the best years of our lives working for another person in an office on a computer, maybe we need to be brining our babies to work like we did for thousands of years. Maybe we need to make babies welcome in the marketplace and zoom calls and google hangouts, rather than shush them off to a daycare we can barely afford. Wouldn’t it be nice if your Realtor joined a home showing with a baby strapped on their chest or back? Wouldn’t the toddler learn how to interact with others in a better way?

Children love their parents- they are wired to learn about life. I recently read that a 4 year old asks 400 questions per day. Why not bring that 4 year old to work in an integrated and balanced way? With the 2020 push for work at home jobs, it is a perfect environment to reconsider working from home, and raising our children at home, and making our workplaces more welcoming to toddlers and babies.

What we do at our company

We encourage babies to join our zoom and google hangout videos. We have one young mother who has worked with us for over 5 years, and who has raised her 2 year old entirely at home while working a full time job in our company. She is an amazing young woman with a college degree, and working on her master’s degree, and she is raising a child at home, working from home. This is a beautiful thing, and speaks well of the concept of work-life integration, and work-life balance. We have made a company conducive to family, and welcoming to babies and children. What else could we do to make corporate America more welcoming to our families, rather than shunning children and shooing them off to the side?

Let’s take back the definition of work

Have we lost the intrinsic value of work? I don’t think so, but for some perhaps so.

Upon close examination, our happiest workers are those who integrate work and life. They manage both without complaint, answering calls and messages promptly, making them valuable to the company and integrated into their family dynamics. Avoiding work calls can increase next-day stress levels. By embracing a holistic approach and taking life head-on, these individuals perform well and remain happy.

I’ve heard employees express the mental struggle of this false dichotomy: “I worked for my boss for eight hours today, which was filled with other people’s stuff and priorities. Now I need eight hours to play, relax, and shut off from all the nonsense imposed on me during the day. Don’t interrupt ‘me’ time, or my work-life balance will be thrown off, and I’ll become mentally, physically, and spiritually unbalanced.”

I am interested in freeing us from this false bondage and realizing a simpler core truth. From the beginning of time, we have had work and we have had families. These are not mutually exclusive but are perhaps simply in need of integration. It’s not a balance of yin and yang we need, but a blending and intermeshing of activities.

Instead of a professional mother who is detached from her children all day, a professional mother who has a play pen next to her desk.

Instead of fathers telling their sons, “This is my work, go find your own, and I’ll see you at your baseball game,” he might bring the son to work and show him how the world goes ‘round.

A poor interpretation of the phrase “work-life balance” can undermine its original intent. We need rest, and we need to have jobs to support society and our well-being- but how do we balance both? Or Integrate them?

Reflecting on my own life, the decision to bring my boys to work and involve them in learning and experiencing life was influenced by my own upbringing. My father took me to work during summers and throughout the school year. He taught me the trade and ensured I took the California contractor’s license exam at the early age of 21. It was so unusual for someone so young to qualify for the contractor’s license that a state examiner came to our home to verify our proof of experience.

I vividly remember standing in the driveway under a blue sky, between the house and the shop where my dad called “home base” for our family construction business. The examiner was satisfied, and approved my license, thus launching a construction career for the second generation of our family and allowing me to focus on specialty fireplace installation work in the future.

So, to my dad and my grandfather, I say “thank you” for bringing us boys to work while my friends were playing the latest ’90s video games. We are doing real stuff, and real stuff matters.