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Quarter-life crisis or just Tough Choices - Quarter-life crisis or just Touch Choices |
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Written by Erin Frustaci and McClatchy Tribune
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Thursday, 16 November 2006 |
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Page 5 of 5
Families come first for Gen X, Y workers
Erin Frustaci
 After her first child was born, Jamie Galyon, 27, of Fort Collins wanted to work from home despite having a successful engineering career.
“We just decided we didn’t want other people taking care of her for extended periods of time while she is so young,” Galyon said. “It’s an important time for her development and we want to be the ones raising her.”
Cutting back on hours as a civil engineer for TST Inc. allows Galyon to spend more time with her 3-month-old daughter, Alexis. Now she works at home part-time. Soon, she’ll just work when she wants.
And she’s not the only one. Many of today’s parents share one similar goal — to put family first. After watching baby boomers spend their lives on the corporate treadmill, divorce in historic numbers and often lose their jobs to downsizing, studies show that today’s 20- and 30-somethings want something different for themselves and their children.
Following the philosophy of “do it all, just not at once,” more women — and a small but growing number of men — are becoming stay-at-home parents while their children are young. Those who can’t afford such an option or don’t want to give up their careers are rebelling against traditional work schedules.
Instead, young parents are demanding flexible hours, alternative shifts or work-from-home arrangements, even if getting them means they have to switch careers, take pay cuts or start their own companies.
Galyon said many of her friends are also stay-at-home moms or there is at least one parent at home at all times, an environment parents create by working odd shifts.
“A lot of us had working moms and now the trend is going back to staying at home,” she said.
Balancing home and work is not a new dilemma. But young adults today say they have special reason to worry. Most 20-somethings grew up watching both their parents working and know the toll and skill such juggling takes. Divorce rates in the United States hit an all time high when they were just babies. And the number of single-parent families continues to soar, as does the cost of living and housing.
“It’s really hard to do on one salary,” Galyon said.
Her husband, Eric, 31, works for the academic computing and networking services department at Colorado State University. His job has some flexibility because he can work from home a couple hours here and there if needed. Galyon said when she was growing up her mom worked, but her husband’s mom stayed at home.
“Technology has helped a lot with having the capability to do jobs at home,” Galyon said. “I can now be at home with the baby and virtually on the network for work.”
The percentage of Americans with flexible work schedules that allow them to vary when they begin and end work has more than doubled in the past 20 years, from about 12 percent to almost 28 percent of all employees, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Many women feel a freedom that didn’t exist before. It used to be that women had no choice. Staying at home was a given. Then, they fought for equal rights in the job force. Now, society is at the point where women truly have the choice, Galyon said.
“I haven’t had anyone be anything but happy for me staying at home,” Galyon said.
When today’s young women start having kids, a growing number no longer see juggling their roles as supermom and supermanager as the solution, said Laurie Ashcraft, who studies gender and generational differences in jobs.
Increasingly, she said, young women go from being career-oriented in their 20s to dropping out of the workforce when they save up enough money and want kids. In the past three years, a survey by her firm showed the number of women ages 20 to 25 who saw themselves in the workforce in the next five years dropped from 84 percent to 72 percent, while those unsure doubled from 10 to 20 percent.
Young women aren’t the only ones re-evaluating their priorities.
According to a study by the Families and Work Institute, men are spending more time on child care and chores. Furthermore, men and women in Generations X and Y are half as likely as their baby boomer counterparts to place work before family and say they would gladly trade career advancement for more time off.
The Galyons make family a priority by eating together seven days a week.
“We try to wait for each other or work around each other’s schedules,” she said. “It keeps us connected. I think it will be very important as Alex gets older.”
McClatchy-Tribune contributed to this story. | Only registered users can write comments.
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