Families Seek Experts to Help with Competing Demands
It’s not news that families today are juggling competing demands; how they manage is. In response, parents are becoming adept at seeking out and employing a variety of expert resources to make their lives easier. And they are spreading the word to help other challenged families.
A 2005 Families and Work Institute study reports that one in three American employees is chronically overworked, while 54% have felt overwhelmed in the past month by the amount of work they had to complete.
Four factors contribute to this sense of being overworked:
- increased job pressure,
- increased multi-tasking,
- doing work that is not valued, and
- the expectation of availability at all times. Cell phones, personal computers, pagers, email, and flexible work schedules encroach on the healthy boundaries between work and personal time.
Another study supports keeping family as a priority, as discussed in the book, Being Together, Working Apart: Dual-Career Families and the Work-Life Balance, edited by Barbara Schneider and Linda Waite. “Spending time together seems to be an antidote to these issues of stress,” said Schneider in a news release from the University of Chicago. “People’s sense of well-being is elevated when they spend time together as a family.”
Time-starved families look for ways to create quality time that encourages play and learning. To manage the complexity, savvy families increasingly rely on the support of outside service providers to make the most of their resources. People have always had family doctors and lawyers. Now financial planners, home remodeling professionals, personal trainers, landscapers, take-home meals, and elder and day care providers are added to the family’s support system. Parents, determined to make sure their children don’t miss opportunities to develop, take advantage of interest-related summer camps, tutors, special courses, music lessons, and club sports teams.
A new trend is emerging in the ever-changing and competitive college and job markets. Families have moved their attention beyond test preparation courses to engaging expert support in helping their children select the best career paths and colleges. Why? These families are making significant investments and want to make great decisions that ensure an advantage for their child.
“When we talked with young adults engaged in their own job hunt, they often told us that they could have made better use of their time in school if they had known how to use it to make themselves more employable,” said Richard Nelson Bolles and Carol Christen in their book, What Color Is Your Parachute? For Teens. The authors also interviewed adults who still didn’t know how to find work they love. They observed, “For those planning on college, few received helpful guidance on selecting a major, even though finding the right major can be an important step toward finding a great job. Almost none received guidance in how to discover what they most wanted out of work and life, or what employers wanted and expected of them.”
Just like other professionals, career experts know the right questions to ask to spur reflective conversation and help families develop informed plans. In a time-crunched world, investing the time to discuss and plan for the future is a smart strategy with a lasting impact.