My husband came home last Friday night and announced that his boss wants him to start carrying around a Blackberry. He also said that Steve wasn’t being a team player, because he didn’t go drinking with his co-workers on Friday nights.
Let me get this straight. He’s gone from the house for 60 hours per week. He sees his kids for an hour per day. And now he’s supposed to be checking his e-mail, while he watches his kid’s soccer game. The people that he spends 10 hours a day with are making him spend more time in the evening with them, so they can do jello shots and pat each other on the back for closing all those deals. As he’s pounding shots and head butting the other guys, the kids and I are supposed to amuse ourselves.
After I processed this information, I arranged the words, shit, fuck and damn, in all sorts of unique combinations.
We discussed the dropping test scores and college admission rates of boys the other day. One of the hypotheses that might explain the drop is that boys don’t have male role models. Many boys are raised in single family homes and don’t have male teachers. They need guidance from older men with similar interests to keep them motivated, some researchers maintain. Well, even in two parent homes, the dads are increasingly absent.
Corporate life is the enemy of the modern family.
As I was pulling nails at Chris and Tammy’s house last Saturday, I told everyone about this new development. My dad asked why the wives put up with this. Well, hardly any of Steve’s co-workers are married. And those that are married have wives that have been bought off. The wives accept the absent husband, because they have those awful handbags with the logos.
I don’t know too many of these women, aka the Handbag Patrol, because I avoid places where they congregate like Pilates classes and PTA meetings. I got an insight into their mindset after reading Sandy’s post on Darla Shine’s book, Happy Housewives
It is important to note at this point that this absent father/bought off mother model is not everywhere. It is a very small subset of families with the high powered money or policy jobs. Not all guys so willingly shun responsibility and not all women accept the payoff. Husband to his credit holds back the wolves from work and refused the blackberry and the drink fests.
I explained to my dad the corporate family life as we did the demo work. Dad may be conservative in some ways, but not in this way. He was appalled and said that this was a return to the 50s. Assigned reading for all.
The absent father syndrome is bad for the kids and bad for the women. I am a big believer in quantity time with kids. They need lots of regular hanging out time with both parents. Also, if parenting isn’t the central concern of both people, then one ends up like the women in The Feminine Mystique – isolated, abandoned, unappreciated. Trading their equality in for a nice leather bag.
Apt. 11d 
Great post.
When fathers have to work longer hours, mothers are forced to cut back on the time that they can spend away from home. Which means that women are seen even less in the workplace… which means that the workplace becomes more of an old boys’ club …. which means that a hardy woman asking for a flex time arrangement increasingly fights the battle alone – with neither men nor women co-workers to champion her cause…
Mothers lose, but so do fathers, the kids and, over the long term, the community as a whole.
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If you want a slightly different perspective (but with equally absent dads) read Jennifer Weiner’s “Goodnight Nobody”. Fiction, but none the less very interesting portrayal of a lifestyle and marriage that seems to be a lot like some of the ones in Happy Housewives.
I ran across an internet paper that does a nice comparison between Marabel Morgan’s “The Total Woman” and Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” (wrote about in my latest blog, but here’s the link: http://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/article-selfhelp.html
I can’t figure out why any SAH-mom (or housewife, as some of us seem to prefer) would embrace the former as more empowering than the latter. Either it’s part of the current retro political climate, or the anti-feminist marketing is better.
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I read a very interesting book about this the other day – I’ve got a blog post about it.
It comes at the problem from the corporate end – what is happening in corporate life that is making work take over people’s lives? Its answer is that current management theory and the nature of jobs these days is that employers need people whose emotional energy is captured by their work – when so much of work is using your brain – the more useful you are if you are constantly thinking about work.
So, for a single person, or double income no kids couple, it’s not just that they don’t mind doing the ridiculous hours, they probably enjoy it (I know I did, on balance, when I was in that position). But that doesn’t help people who have a life other than work.
The trouble is that at the moment, there are enough people willing to do it, that it’s career threatening to say no, unless you are a very proven good performer. I’m hoping that’ll change as the babyboomers retire, and there aren’t enough junior people to replace them.
It also makes serious part-time work harder to organise if full-time work is 80 hours a week.
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Good post. Such corporate mentality is not possible unless one parent doesnt work or works less than full time.
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“Corporate life is the enemy of the modern family.”
Truer words were never written. Good for you, Laura. And good for your dad. And good for Steve! I hope he keeps telling those Blackberry-toting idiots they can shove it.
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> even in two parent homes, the dads are increasingly absent.
The amount of work being done is increasing at the low and high end of the income scale and staying reasonable at the middle. At the low end people are working two jobs, at the high end people are working 60+ hours at one job. In the middle, people are working 40 hours a week.
Boys do reasonably well in school when the parents are on the high end of the income scale. I would be suprised if it hurt boys acedemically to have their dad work 60+ hours.
Darla Shine’s book looks scarry. She seems to actively keep the kids away from the dad on the weekends because of the dad’s “incompetence” in handling the kids.
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I’m an associate at a large Boston law firm and, at the behest of my firm became one of those “blackberry carrying idiots”. To my suprise, it actually became a liberating thing for me. The reason is that it allows me to be out of the office and still connected/availabe. This has freed me up to get away with my wife for an afternoon when I otherwise wouldn’t be able to do so and not stress about leaving earlier in the evenings than I otherwise might have been able to do. I agree that there are dangers–but for me, so far, the benefits have far outweighed the costs.
As for drinking with the guys from work, I still pass on that one. I have much better things to do at home.
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I’m an associate at a large Boston law firm and, at the behest of my firm became one of those “blackberry carrying idiots”. To my suprise, it actually became a liberating thing for me. The reason is that it allows me to be out of the office and still connected/availabe. This has freed me up to get away with my wife for an afternoon when I otherwise wouldn’t be able to do so and not stress about leaving earlier in the evenings than I otherwise might have been able to do. I agree that there are dangers–but for me, so far, the benefits have far outweighed the costs.
As for drinking with the guys from work, I still pass on that one. I have much better things to do at home.
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mefinks your husband’s company is a bit late on the blackberry front.
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My advice: Leave the East Coast. Immediately.
I am surrounded by families earning considerable money, fathers who physicians, presidents of companies, etc. They don’t carry Blackberries, they see their kids a lot, and there’s a much more family friendly atmosphere.
I was shocked at how stressful and depressing it was to live in the NYC suburbs until I left. My kids are much better off. They have MUCH better schools, they are free to roam the city without me worrying. Our standard of living has gone up considerably, and my husband makes as much money but has more time with the kids.
Oh…big drawback. We can’t get to see Broadway shows.
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Families, Corporations, and the Blackberry
11D has an interesting post on the pressure that her husband has been getting to carry a Blackberry around with him and go to the bar with the “team” from work on Friday nights. 11D summarizes her anger thus:Let me…
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Families, Corporations, and the Blackberry
11D has an interesting post on the pressure that her husband has been getting to carry a Blackberry around with him and go to the bar with the “team” from work on Friday nights. 11D summarizes her anger thus:Let me…
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Good post. Sorry for the multiple track backs. I keep finding and correcting spelling errors.
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Nate and Travis say that the blackberry brings more flexibility and frees one from the structured workplace. Well, that wouldn’t happen in my husband’s case. He is still expected to put in his 10 hours a day, but now he’ll have to catch up on work on the busride into New York instead of reading his books, and he’ll have to check in periodically over the weekend. He’ll never be free from the office.
That Darla Shine and her minions are truly scary. You should read her supporters comments in Sandy’s post. Wow. What a shocker that there are still people out there like that. I have to wonder if they were always such doormats or, when faced the reality of absent husbands, they adapted.
I’m sure that this model of corporate drone/paid off wife is part of a small subgroup of families out there. But you see how the pressure of the workplace can lead to a retro-traditional family arrangement.
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If you need a friend, get a dog.
–Gorgon Gecko from Wall Street
While the posts of doctors and lawyers are nice to hear, the reality is that they likely had to put time in the suck and put in some major hours before they started their own practices.
Wall Street is a much different animal, and a comparison to that of other professions cannot be made.I worked on a trading desk and the rush is like that of workign in an emergency room when a bus accident rolls in. Except the bus crash is from 9.30-4 everyday. For investment banking its 24X7, where deal are made over dinner and relationships with other banks and memebrs of syndicates improve the chances that the schmuck you are eating at 21 with includes you in their next deal.
My suggestion is that if this becomign a problem that an exit strategy is necessary. I still work on Wall Street still, have a blackberry, and bring my laptop home every night to do more work.
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I think Kip has it right. In our house it’s the missus who has the Blackberry – I work a (much less well-paid) job which I can leave every day at 430 and go home and deal with kids and cook dinner. If we’re lucky, she comes home in time for 730 dinner and (later than is optimal for the kids) bed time. Often, she doesn’t.
Work-life balance? If she didn’t do that, her practice group would get squeezed out by other practice groups whose members worked harder. So either she gets out of the business, or we suck it up and make it work. And it’s work she likes to do.
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“Corporate life is the enemy of the modern family.”
I don’t see how you can generalize from your own experience, which your husband presumably chose, to corporate life generally. It is more true to admit that generating wealth always conflicts with other pursuits, like watching your kids’ soccer games.
And while I don’t have a blackberry, like Travis, I’ve found that the technologies that allow me to work away from the office (especially email, internet and cell phones) have greatly increased my family time. Last fall I was able to spend a week on the beach with my family only because I could still talk to my office and respond to email from the beach house. So while I did have to spend two hours over the course of the week working, it was technology that allowed me to go at all. Without the technology I would have had to spend the week in the office, waiting for the two hours of work.
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What Kip said. And, when I moved a coast away from Wall Street, found that Blackberry’s and Trios are still a part of my corporate life. I find them less instrusive than a phone call given that you decide when to check in which is generally not during soccer games.
BTW – my husband’s an academic, and have noticed over the years although the hours are considerably easier, the politics are more brutal than on Wall Street… but that’s another topic.
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The administrators at my esteemed institution who have Blackberrys seem completely enslaved to them They sit in meetings, barely paying attention, apparently thinking that nobody else knows why they are constantly fiddling in their laps.
If, corporate life is the enemy of the modern family, academic life is hardly the friend. Far from it, really.
But MM, I agree: scheduling flexibility is much better, but the politics…. oh my!
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re: corporate life v. academic life. One of things that we liked about Steve’s job change from the academic to corporate world was the lack of nonsense. Very little head games and dancing around large egos. With all business out in the open, there was little space for the monkey business that dominates academia. We actually preferred corporate life until very recently. There just isn’t any room to slow down or room for non-conformity. I have to think that it must be illegal to pressure company employees to attend non-work related functions, just because they can’t deal with non-conformity.
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Obviously there are other variables affecting all our family-work arrangements besides technology. There are a variety of corporate environments (which often themselves vary from place to place within the U.S. or overseas), and there are lots of ways in which families adjust to those environments. But the reason why we can’t just dismiss technology’s role in this is that, in the situation described by Laura, Steve’s possession of a Blackberry becomes in the hands of his boss a way to extend the ethos of his workplace (as Matt pithily put it, “generating wealth”) into environments that, I think at least, ought to be free of such (like at his kid’s soccer game). Do gadgets like the Blackberry represent a great advance in flexibility, the ability to arrange spaces for family life and other pursuits free from work? Sure–would that we could all have jobs like Matt’s or Travis’s, whether they be academic or professional or whatever. But we don’t; and given the fact that most corporations are structurally designed around the sole goal of “generating wealth” (whereas actual human beings usually hold a variety of goals simultaneously–what might be called in Laura’s words “nonconformity”), perhaps there is good reason to fear that a lot of the time, the upshot of this new “flexibility” will be to maximize Steve’s support of the corporation, rather than the other way around.
But now I’m ranting in the usual way. Sorry.
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“Corporate life is the enemy of the modern family”
Such is the conclusion that Laura, over at 11D, is coming to. She gets to this point not through ideology: she is not a radical feminist. Rather, she is coming to the realization that good jobs might actually be
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I find this all very fascinating to read because I suppose I am one of those people who not so subtly forces these cultural corporate changes to occur. I run a mid size IT company. I am the CEO and a woman. I have two kids. I have a husband who works from home (thank-God!). I can be very demanding, and I communicate frequently via email and from my ‘treo’. So, everyone else does too. I also rarely work on the week-ends or evenings and I openly take time off to go to my kids ballet recitals, their doctor’s appointments etc. And, I don’t socialize after work. I go home to be with my family. So, everyone else does too. Its amazing what a little leadership can do. Humans are programed to follow the cues of the pack leader. Monkey say, monkey do.
I exited out of the big corporate job to run my own show at a smaller company precisely for the reasons that 11D highlights. The “boys” were all ego driven, elbow jostling, golf clubbing company climbers and if you didn’t play their game, you were limited in getting ahead, no matter how bright, and talented you were.
So I agree with Russell’s post that there are many corporate environments. Some are very aggressive (high-T environments, in my vernacular). Others are less so, like my company. Technology deployment can be used to improve productivity and thus free up time, or be used to further enforce the unwritten, club culture and further demoralize talented people, who just want to do a good job.
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Re: corporate vs. academic non conformity …My spouse and I sometimes laugh that we would do better if we switched jobs and I was no longer the ethnic looking lone women in the conference room and he wasn’t the 6 ‘3″ blond WASP symbol of the patriarchy in academia.
Few people get to run their own show, so in the end it’s the compromise you can live with. You guys seem to be in touch with your feelings and needs so I am sure that you will figure it out.
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Nancy, that was a great story. I hope that you have been interviewed by a newspaper about your business model. I think that your example should replicated thousands of times.
I could have given more examples of how the frat-boy business culture is hostile to families. The guys joke amongst themselves how angry their wives are at them. After drinking for hours after work, they grab a beer in a paperbag for the train ride home. Meetings are purposedly scheduled for Friday after 5:00. yadda yadda.
Yes, we have things in check here. I have my own methods for keeping my husband’s mind at home. And he’s a good guy, so it isn’t too hard. We’re also saving a lot, so if it all becomes too much, he’ll be able to move to a less competitive company.
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How many hours a week is too many to be away from home and still be a good father/husband? Whatever number you select, please estimate how many non-wealthy fathers met that standard 25 or 100 years ago.
I suspect, in the scheme of corporate life, your husband may have it pretty good if he does not need to travel. In many high paying jobs, nights-away-from-home is the real killer in terms of soccer games and bedtime reading.
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David,
I think you are forgetting that even in the fairly recent past, family and work were deeply intermeshed, and continue to be so in an agricultural setting. I spent many a tolerable Saturday during my 1980s childhood squelching through mud in the rain, helping out with various cattle roundups. That was a crucial part of “family time.” The same holds for hay harvesting and firewood cutting.
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Leaving aside farming, as well as hunter-gathering, I just want to get a sense of historical perspective. Laura’s husband works in NYC and makes reasonable money (perhaps 90th percentile?) and has been in the work force for not too long (5 years?). How many of the men in 1980 working in NYC, earning at the 90th percentile, and at the start of their careers spent much less than 50 hours per week at work. In 1905?
Very, very few.
It is not today’s corporate life that Laura has trouble with, I think. It is a standard feature of the free market in US history that high paying earners at the start of their careers in places like New York City spend a lot of time away from their families.
That doesn’t mean that such a reality is good or bad. I just think that a sense of historical perspective is helpful.
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Is the historical perspective helpful? I don’t know. Whenever I write a post that critiques some aspect of today’s work world or family politics, I often get a comment that says “well, in Victorian times, everyone had maids. No one watched their own children. Everybody worked a lot more.” Truthfully, i don’t know enough about social history to respond. But I’m also not sure that it is a useful way to think. Just because prior to the 1950s, people worked a lot more and had a lot of hired help doesn’t mean that was the optimal way to operate. I mean Victorians also believed in social Darwinism and phrenology.
just playing devil’s advocate
One thing about today’s work world compared to the past is that technology has enabled the work world to reach its claw into the home. The blackberry is exhibit number one.
I was talking to a friend about her husband’s blackberry this weekend. She said that it almost ended her marriage. She described an awful vacation where he brought along the blackberry and every time that it beeped, it sent chills of adrenaline down everyone’s spine. No one ever relaxed.
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Living in NY suburbs, and needing to earn that kind of money to have all the things you want/need to have is a choice. There are many alternatives.
If you choose the high-pressure, big-city suburb lifestyle, you get the big bucks. You get the long commute and the blackberry. That’s the consequence of the choice.
If you move elsewhere to a place where people don’t commute that far, or earn less money, or don’t live in the cultural and corporate center of the universe, you get time. But you lose that throbbing beat of life at the core, and the pressure that goes with it.
It’s a choice. Not a given.
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The thing is, it’s not just technology or NYC “wealth generating” jobs or high-income job starters. Think of the boundless expansion of the exurbs, where families move so one of them (typically the wife) can afford to quit her job, while the other one adds an hour-each-way commute to his job, but the kids are in all those Ozzie-and-Harriet activities and the newly SAHM gets to have all this great bonding time with the kids, the neighbors, etc. It’s a classic update on the 1950s situation, and it’s going to be Betty Friedan all over again, as the commuting parent disconnects from his (or her) family from sheer self-protectiveness (who wants to be emotionally disconnected because he’s working a 50-hour week and commuting another 10? better to pretend you don’t want that) and the at-home parent (not always, but sometimes) slowly stifles from being the one doing all the homelife maintenance. It’s a strict division of labor that comparative-advantage proponents love, but it has real consequences for families and for the emotional ties that keep them together.
And it’s not just a malady affecting the upper middle class.
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Laura asks:
Well, I suspect that most historians would differ!
If your point is that it is a tragedy that the streets aren’t paved with chocolate, I guess that we might all agree. But most of us would not get too worked up about it since it is difficult to imagine an alternate reality in which this might be true.
Similarly, if your point is that the world is evil because highly paid finance jobs in NYC come with a lot of responsibilities, I guess we might agree. But anyone with a clue about the world of finance would point out that this is an inevitable — or it at least has been true for hundreds of years.
Now, change can and does occur on the margin. Feel free to agitate for that. But Steve’s boss, as best I can tell, is not an outlier. Most managers in financial NYC firms would feel the same. If you really think that they are all wolves, then you/Steve need to plan now for other options (as you seem to be doing).
If Steve’s boss wants him to have a Blackberry now, I would bet that he’ll insist on it a few years from now.
The real problem here is that you imply that every family in which “parenting isn’t the central concern of both people” is flawed or worse. Why are you so critical of people who make choices different from your own? My father was away from the house for more than 80 hours a week. Did that, ipso facto, make him a bad father?
Judging parents by how many hours they spend with their children seems ridiculous on its face. Not that there is anything wrong with lots of kid time (I coach both my daughters’ soccer teams), but it is just a lousy measure.
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I just have to say that I much prefer my husband’s blackberry to his cell phone. A blackberry can be checked once a day, he responds to all the emails at once, taking 10 or 15 minutes. When a client calls him on his cell that call alone will take 10 or 15 minutes. It has given him far more flexibilty to go to the ortho, or a scout meeting or pick up a kid from pre-school. I like it.
It is an extension of the work day, with work creeping into home life. But for us it has allowed bits and pieces of home life to creep into the work day.
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I never wrote that working a lot of hours makes one a bad father. There are too many variables to make such a black and white statement. Some dads are home lots of hours, but use that time getting stewed in front of the football game.
I did talk about the impact of one person working 80 hours a day and how it impacts on his wife. Often she has to assume the huge bulk of childrearing and it could, though not necessarily, lead to a return the 50s with the husband marginalized from family life and appreciated only for his paycheck. That book, Happy Housewives, is aimed at those families. I don’t know how many of them are out there, but it must be enough to justify pubishing the book.
Hours at work must have some impact on home life. However, I do think that smart people with their priorities in order can overcome these obstacles.
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A tip for your friend:
The Blackberry can be put on a “silent” setting, so vacations need not be ruined by beeping.
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David,
“If your point is that it is a tragedy that the streets aren’t paved with chocolate, I guess that we might all agree. But most of us would not get too worked up about it since it is difficult to imagine an alternate reality in which this might be true.”
By calling up an impossible example, you presumably want to make it seem that all other “alternate realities” to the present-day corporate, high-finance culture, are equally impossible. But they aren’t. Of course, any serious change in how we think about what ought to be a part of wealth-generation is going to have serious consequences for how and how much wealth actually is generated….but those are hardly impossible questions to ask. It’s a simple as comparing the relative wealth and work habits of, say, Sweden to the U.S. Within both one can find corporate capitalism and centers of high-finance; but what’s done within those centers, in terms of both productivity and impact on family time (and probably even Blackberry use, for that matter!), differs radically, without any chocolate paving involved. And moreover, as hard as it might to imagine, the historical record (again!) makes it pretty clear that societies can in fact move from one to the other.
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I find it interesting that no one questions the structural setup of the American workplace. It is clearly tilted towards encouraging companies to do everything possible to overload individual workers. The resulting impact on the family has been much discussed by various different people. Joan Williams’ Unbending Gender uses the term “ideal worker” to discuss the Blackberry-available person Steve’s office would like him to be. And Elizabeth’s discussion of part-time work talks indirectly about some of the barriers you face when you strive to not be that ideal worker:
http://www.halfchangedworld.com/2005/08/parttime_work.html
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So leave the corporate structure. You can do it. Just leave. Make the choice that bringing home the big fat paycheck, the hefty 401K match, etc. are less important than your time. It’s not the corporation’s fault. That’s the way it is. There are dozens and dozens of options. They all require sacrifice. They all have consequences, good and bad. But no one is holding a gun to the head of affluent, middle-management, demanding they all carry Blackberries. It’s a request. Say no, and leave.
You can tell the world to change to suit your desires. Or you can take your own life in your hands.
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I think everyone would agree with you, Jenny. Nobody is forcing anyone to work for a big nasty company.
Still, it is fair for us to say that big, nasty corporations are big and nasty. They do this and that, which directly impact on their workers’ quality of life. They could do this and that to improve the quality of life for their workers without impacting on their bottom line at all. Perhaps we should worry if these companies do this and that in their workplace, because this and that could trickle down to every workplace.
I don’t know. I just think it is interesting.
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Especially as a parent I disagree that you can simply turn your back on corporate life in this country. For many, the only place they can find paid work for their skill set is in a corporate environment. (Examples: a corporate recruiter, a database modeler, a person who specializes in business-to-business communications.) Take that person and give them a child with an expensive chronic illness such as asthma. Then tell that person that quitting their job is simply a choice. It’s just not that easy.
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Laura first wrote that “The absent father syndrome is bad for the kids and bad for the women.” She then wrote that “I never wrote that working a lot of hours makes one a bad father.”
Forgive my confusion for thinking that the first statement implied the second, at least probabilistically. Being away from home for 60 hours a week has costs and benefits. You may want to have all the benefits and few of the costs, but, like chocolate on the streets, that isn’t really an option, at least in NYC.
Russell makes a reasonable point that one can imagine (even visit) other societies. Perhaps. I only want to establish that Laura’s husband’s boss is perfectly typical. If he is a “wolf,” then virtually anyone that he might work for (male or female) in an NYC financial firm is a wolf as well. Laura should not think that a change in employer would matter much to the Blackberry issue.
I would say that your disdain for families that make a different choice fairly leaps off the page. Nothing wrong with a little disdain now and again, but, please, you clearly implied that (most) every family in which “parenting isn’t the central concern of both people” is flawed or worse.
You said that because you clearly believe it. And perhaps you’re right! But don’t pretend that you’re not being judgmental when you are.
If you weren’t so judgmental, your blog would be much less interesting.
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“If you weren’t so judgmental, your blog would be much less interesting.”
Okay, we’re good then. All I want is love.
Mooooovin’ on. Just watched four episodes of Entourage, and I’m feeling very shallow. We need some happy, fun posts.
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There was an article about TV sitcom writers and one of the TV writers said that the different shows had different writing schedules. The sitcom writer said that on some shows the writers would fuck around all day long then work late into the night. His theory is that the writers hated their families. On other shows, the writers would get everything done in time to come home relatively early.
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Policy levers and the domestic glass ceiling
Having been quoted as saying I don’t know what’s going to break through the domestic glass ceiling, I’ve been thinking a lot about what will. In Judith Warner’s op-ed on Friedan, she suggests the usual laundry list of family-friendly policies:
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http://mahalanobis.twoday.net/stories/1596423/comment
“…Which is more stressful: being a cop or a banker?
WSJ Europe (print edition): Which employee is most likely to wig out in the long run: the police officer or the investment banker? Turns out Wall Streeters experience more types of stress than many other professions, including those where employees might confront a weapon. In a paper, Noushi Rahman and Irem Aktas of New York’s Pace University compared results from a few dozen studies of thousands of employees in 21 occupations and found that business and finance types exhibit more “stressors” than just about ony others. Worries include poor job fit, problems with management and work/home trade-offs. Police, on the other hand, expect and often crave thrills, the authors conclude..”
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Why did you women have babies if you did’nt want to raise them?
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