Unit A - Blog 4

A good family life, for me, would entail spending time with your family and enjoying that time. I do not even think that a good family life has to be rich, but not being in poverty would be essential. It is much more difficult to support a family and enjoy them if you have to be at work all the time or when you are home, you are too stressed about bills, etc to take care of your family. A good family life would be having at least one parent around who cares about you all the time. Ideally you would want both your mother and father around but there are many people who live happy family lives with just one parent.

Balancing a career and family life means that you must take on many responsibilities as a human being. You are responsible for creating wealth at your business and being attentive to your company and bosses' needs. You also must be able to think about your families' needs and what they expect from you. What this essentially boils down to is that there is no time at the end of the day to ever be on your own and do something for your personal needs. Balancing a career and family also needs to include balancing personal time which I feel is the reason many working mothers are upset and feel inadequate. We expect so much from mothers and fathers who work and have a family but no one ever talks about the need to maintain your individualism as a person as well.

There are many factors that make this balance difficult. If you have a sick child, husband, or other person you are taking care of, you are required to spend much more time on them. If you are at a high level within your company you are required to work more hours and be more dedicated to your business than the average worker. If you are the "average worker" you are expected to never ask for time off. You get your two weeks vacation and that should be sufficient in the mind of employers. This never takes in account the problems that arise in family life. Balancing also becomes difficult in economic crises. Your family feels the pinch of money and therefore the money earners in the family need to work more hours, forcing you to choose work over family.

Traditional family roles used to designate moms as nurturers who had time to stay home and make their family dinner and do all the cleaning and the laundry. Dads went to work and came home to play with the children so the mom could clean up. Now that women are going to work and raising families-which is almost expected in this day and age, there is less time to nurture but the emphasis is still there. We still want moms to clean and cook and be there all the time but when they have jobs they are exhausted and worn out. It leads to men having to step up in family chores but they are generally just as tired after working all day too. This is why there needs to be a sense of community within a family. Like I have mentioned before, a family needs to work together and forget about the "gender" roles. When a couple has a baby they are both responsible for raising that family. The only way to do that with both parents working is to help each other.

Employers are generally family people themselves. If they are they should place themselves in the shoes of their employees and understand when you need to leave 2 hours early to make it to Billy's championship soccer game. If employers are not family oriented, they were once part of a family so they should know what it is like to have a mom and dad around or to not have a mom or dad around. If employers stopped looking at the bottom line so much and started looking more at the faces of their employees and understanding that humans needs to care about each other instead of working to death, then maybe this world can stop itself from destroying each other. It is sad how companies only care about profit. People buy products or use services and in the end if you don't take care of people, there is no point to money.

Having a supportive friend, family, or neighbor would be immensely helpful to balancing priorities. It seems like now many people feel that they have to do everything themselves. If they don't do it themselves, then they feel like they failed somehow. When we ask for help, it is like we feel guilty for doing so because we should be able to do it ourselves. Instead, we should all be there for each other, helping without feeling guilty because that friend or family member WANTS to help. That's why people that have a loving family member, friend, or neighbor are so much happier. They don't feel guilty asking for help and therefore can actually accomplish a lot more and feel okay doing it. In the end, if we all acted like a community we might actually do some good in the world.