Work, Work, Work, Work, Work...

“Work-life integration and work-life balance are two distinct ways to think about the boundaries (or lack thereof) between personal and professional lives.” Work-Life Integration vs. Work-Life Balance (uschamber.com)

“In accordance with the language of the law and the legislative history, the Department [of Labor] has interpreted ‘work’ as meaning the performance of services for which remuneration is payable.” Definition of "Work" for Purposes of Section 3304(a)(7) of the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (doleta.gov)

In unraveling the work-at-home practices from the pandemic, the concept of work-life balance is being rethought. I welcome this. I hope we abandon our prosaic view of work being separate from life.

I was mid-career before I heard about work-life balance. The words were sprung on me by younger co-workers to limit their hours. The concept was that the right amount of time spent at life, i.e. socialization and fitness, would make them more effective at work.

The idea confused me. It made no sense that “work” was one thing and “life” was another. Work needs to be done when it needs to be done. If your job is putting out fires, you can’t schedule it around sporting events. In my view work is one ingredient of life. Life is a fluid blend of family, faith, friends, recreation, rest, and any other factors that provide fulfillment including employment. All in solution. No boundaries.

I am from a rural working family. This included my father and mother having paid employment outside the home as able. But it included more. We raised and harvested crops and livestock for our own consumption. We gardened and canned. We built our family home. My parents, my siblings, and I provided the labor. We worked when we had to work. We didn’t view it as a hardship. We liked working together. Our motto was “make hay while the sun shines” and we took it literally.

Nobody was paid. By macro-economic measurements, no value was created by our efforts.

My family’s work ethic bred my professional attitude. I loved being an engineer. It was a heady feeling. I could change the character of large, complicated equipment and make it more cooperative. With my know-how, erratic became predictable, inconvenient became easy. Every hour that I worked someone was made more productive and profitable. So, I worked as much as I could.

My wife adapted. She enlisted people to do the home projects that I neglected. She kept her calendar flexible to fill in the gaps attending to our child and, eventually, forfeited her career to that. Then, she became the neighborhood’s mom. She drove our child and others to their activities. She checked with other parents to ascertain schedules. She listened to the kids. She was the eyes and ears for other parents on the child-raising issues we all faced.

This was work. But she wasn’t paid. So, our economic participation lowered by her income.

In his hierarchy of needs (Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory (simplypsychology.org)) Abraham Mazlow theorizes that as we fulfill our basal needs, which includes family and friends, we are free to seek status and become the best version of ourselves. While everyone can advance on the hierarchy, circumstances can inhibit growth, so most people don’t achieve the pinnacle of self-actualization. But the pursuit explains much of human behavior. Mazlow’s theory comports with an economic model that each of us seeks our highest achievement as recognized by society: the esteem afforded to exceptional performers as demonstrated by the trappings of income.

While the world hasn’t been clamoring for my opinion of Mazlow, I wonder if we don’t take his theory too seriously. I observe most people have an almost spiritual instinct to invest in something more than themselves. That hierarchy typically centers on family and progresses through friends and community in an ever-widening circle. Investment means work. Employment, parenting, grand-parenting, elder caregiving, church committees, and school associations are all work. Most of it is uncompensated. But we do it, and maybe it is more satisfying than Mazlow’s hierarchy would predict. I argue these choices optimize our well-being, and the well-being of our communities, in ways that defy measurement. Much of society’s most valuable work remains uncompensated.

When the word “work” is used by our government, it implies effort for income. Income is taxed. For that reason, the government would like to see as many people receiving income as possible. Media uses the word “work” in this context so often that other meanings are neglected. This narrow definition of “work” distorts our view of how we each add value. Sometimes with twisted consequences.

For example, while the birth rate has declined to its lowest point in history, the United States has a crisis of child-care capacity. (While not provided, references for these claims are numerous.) So, there are now more parents per child, and more grandparents per child, than there has ever been. Yet, somehow, there are not enough caregivers. This condition can only exist if the work of child-care is not provided by parents or grandparents.

Why accept such an assumption?

Our leadership class is steered by macro-economic measurements. In their view, parents working outside the home contribute income to the tax base, so it should be encouraged. Then, to satisfy child-care needs, tax credits subsidize outside providers, whose wages must be equitable, and whose work also contributes tax. This enables specialization. In alignment with Mazlow, everyone should experience their highest level of achievement. Nice. Tidy. Symmetrical.

But maybe wrong. If not, why the crisis? And there are downsides. While every situation has nuance, conventional wisdom is that children raised in a nuclear family with attentive parents are most likely to lead fulfilling lives. It follows that the farther we move from that condition, the less likely that outcome. Yet this is the natural tendency of chasing macro-economic goals with self-based psychological theory. These incentives discourage among the most beneficial uses of our effort.

An associate recently challenged that this argument only holds for traditional families. I disagree, but that would be an entirely different column. The point is that the most important work we do as humans is perhaps beyond economic measurement, and submitting exclusively to such steerage may corrupt our more valuable impulses.

I acknowledge that my career was psychologically rewarding. I cannot claim that my wife’s sacrifice was without regret. It seems unfair. But frankly, I couldn’t have talked her out of it. Her instinct to work unpaid in our family’s interest made a positive difference in more people’s lives than our child. She and people like her deserve to be honored.

Our pandemic response seemed like a step backward but was maybe a step forward. I’m optimistic. The captioned article makes the point, “…work-life integration is centered on the belief that there is no distinction between the two and that both must coexist in harmony.” That seems very common sense. I hope it leads to a more wholistic view of what work is. More like how I grew up. Because my family’s work ethic permitted us to eat better and laugh harder than households with twice our income.