More Father Looking to Balance ,Work and Family

More Father Looking to Balance, Work and Family

As fathers across the state were celebrated on Sunday for being great dads, a replacement study on fatherhood shows that an increasing number of men are seeking alternatives to a standard 40-hour workweek so as to spend longer with their kids.

Take Michael Sherman, 38, who last year removed of his law offices in Mobile, Ala., and into a headquarters, cut his workload and hours by quite half and began homeschooling his four kids, ages 2 to 12.

Sherman said he was feeling burned out by his divorce and family practice. His stressful workload, including the very fact that his oldest child was in secondary school and before he knew it his kids would be off to high school then college, prompted the change. “Time was flying by,” he said.

Jason Chupick, media director for PR firm Crenshaw Communications in NY, also wanted to form sure he had time for his 2-year old son. So when he found a replacement job, he chose an employer that allowed him to craft a versatile schedule.

He now works three days every week, leaving at 4:30 p.m. so he can devour his son from daycare.

“I needed the pliability,” he said.

Like Sherman and Chupick, more dads are beginning to get up and invite more flexible work arrangements — from a day off after a baby is born to reduced hours and days. Such options were once thought to be a mother’s domain, but now an increasing number of dads want to be more hands-on in raising their kids. Others are driven by economics: a wife might earn extra money or not have flexibility at work.

“It’s changing pretty quickly, because of the changing dynamics of the manpower,” said Jamie Lodge, professor of management and organizational development at Northeastern University and co-author of a replacement study on working dads released last week called “The New Dad: Exploring Fatherhood Within a Career Context.” “Women are quite half the workforce, and most of the layoffs we’ve seen during this downturn are mostly male-dominated jobs. So men are having to line up.”

The result? “You’re seeing more dads at college at drop off and devour,” Lodge said.

In search of flexibility

Of course, working fewer hours also means a smaller paycheck. On top of that, the recession has added to worry over family finances and increased expectations to perform at work.

“My rule of thumb in our household is we attempt to have two incomes but we live as if there’s one,” said Chick. “We even have a small mortgage and have crop the maximum amount as we could.”

Despite having flexible hours, Chupick works harder than he ever did before, writing a blog, updating his skills, and getting to industry events. “You need to stay employable.”

Like working mothers, an outsized number of working fathers also are trying to find the elusive work-life balance.

“Men are even as likely as women to require flexibility,” said Cali Yost, CEO of consulting company Work+Life Fit Inc. Her nationally representative annual Work+Life Fit Reality Check survey found that 90 percent of men were trying to find flexible hours to assist balance work and residential life, compared to 92 percent among women.

And some men are leaving work behind altogether when kids come along, said Sylvia Ann Hewlett, economist and founding father of the middle for Work-Life Policy, a process she calls off-ramping.

“Over the last five years, there’s been a doubling of the share of men who off-ramp for reasons of kid care — and nearly double for those that off-ramped for eldercare reasons,” she said.

And, she added, 38 percent of men, compared to 58 percent of girls, take a “scenic route, stepping back without stepping out.”

“Increasingly men are ‘ramping down’ — performing from home Friday afternoons or staggering their hours so as to select up more domestic responsibilities,” she said. “This is especially true in households where wives out-earn their husbands. These households are on the increase because the Great Recession clobbered men quite women.”

Corporate America still catching up

Steve Moore, a person's resource specialist at Administaff, believes the will for more work-life balance may be a generational thing but not a gender thing.

For those under 30, he said, “it seems that some traditional stereotypes are beginning to lessen just a touch in terms of who’s liable for care of the youngsters .”

But Yost maintained that corporate America has not trapped with this reality.

“Time and again, companies primarily address the way to manage work-life issues and use flexibility within the ‘women’s initiative’ albeit the policies and programs that are in situ are theoretically intended for everybody,” she said.

That may explain why men are more likely to hunt informal flexibility within the workplace.

According to “The New Dad” study:

“The fathers were much more likely to exercise informal flexibility instead of inviting a proper flexible work arrangement. While many of the lads did use flexibility to be available to share childcare responsibilities, or attend physician’s appointments, this was always wiped out an off-the-cuff or ‘stealth’ fashion. Virtually none of the lads felt a scarcity of support from their manager or co-workers when utilizing flexibility.”

Indeed, there's still a stigma for working dads who are trying to find the pliability many moms are requesting for years.

“Certainly you get snide remarks from men occasionally,” said Marc Vachon, who does IT support for a marketing research company called Chadwick Martin Bailey. he's employed a reduced workweek, with Wednesdays off so he can spend time together with his preschool son.

Vachon, who’s been touting the advantages of shared parenting for years and recently wrote a book on the subject, “Equally Shared Parenting: Rewriting the principles for a replacement Generation of oldsters,” said men got to intensify and invite flexibility regardless of what society thinks. “From my perspective, the hurdles are mostly personal as against systemic and institutional.”

Tradeoffs

When it involves the law, men are alleged to be treated equally with women once they invite reduced hours or day off.

For example, under the Family and Medical Leave Act, men also are eligible to require an unpaid leave of absence after a baby is born or after an adoption, said Ashley Brightwell, a labor lawyer with Alston & Bird, who said she’s seeing more men taking advantage of protections under FLMA.

“Employers got to treat employees taking leave an equivalent ,” she said. “Decisions got to be made no matter gender.”

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Unfortunately, she said, that’s not always the case. “There is certainly prejudice out there. tons of employers assume, especially within the context of a birth, that the mother goes to wish day off. they're not typically as understanding when tables are turned and pop wants to require a day off .”

Even if employers are hospitable dads spending longer with junior, there are tradeoffs for fathers. for instance, it's going to be harder to urge the highest jobs.

“Work is vital to me, but the corner office isn't my goal,” said Vachon. “My goal is to possess a sustainable, enjoyable life.”

Just as moms have known for years, maintaining work-life balance is extremely difficult.

“Certainly, there are tons of challenges with younger children, tons of stress and chaos,” said Sherman, the attorney from Mobile who scaled back his work life to spend longer together with his kids.

He plans to build up his work again within the fall, but stick with 30 hours every week so he can arrange his home-schooling schedule accordingly.

Sherman’s wife, Kathy, maybe a full-time, in-house corporate attorney. Sherman said he has gotten some odd looks from people that determine their reversed roles, especially from men who can’t see themselves in such a task albeit they'll be looking for longer with family.

“If the rationale they’re not doing it's out of some sense of pride or ego, they'll be sorry at the end of the day that they missed a chance to strengthen that reference to their kids,” he said.