Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #469 The Work Family Reset - A Conversation With Jenet Erickson
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
- 0:07Speaker 1: time poor parent who just wants answers. Now having more
- 0:11Speaker 1: time to connect, it's being able to be with them.
- 0:15Speaker 1: It's not taking that caregiving and giving it to someone else.
- 0:19Speaker 1: And now here's the stars of our show, my mum
- 0:22Speaker 1: and dad.
- 0:23Speaker 2: Hello, this is doctor Justin Coilson. I'm the founder of
- 0:25Speaker 2: Happy Families dot com dot au. During COVID, some fascinating
- 0:29Speaker 2: things have happened when it comes to the work life
- 0:33Speaker 2: of parents. And with me for a conversation today that
- 0:36Speaker 2: I think is going to be just so interesting. Is
- 0:39Speaker 2: an associate professor from Brigham Young University whose research is
- 0:43Speaker 2: all about the distinct contributions of mothers and fathers in
- 0:47Speaker 2: children's development. Associate Professor Janet Erickson is also a research
- 0:51Speaker 2: fellow at the Institute for Family Studies in the United States,
- 0:55Speaker 2: and just recently she published an article there called the
- 0:59Speaker 2: Work Family Reset in post COVID America. And there's enough
- 1:04Speaker 2: overlap between what happens in the United States between work
- 1:07Speaker 2: and family and balancing our lives and what happens here
- 1:10Speaker 2: in Australia that I decided that I was going to
- 1:12Speaker 2: invite Associate Professor Ericson on the line. Jennet, thank you
- 1:15Speaker 2: so much for joining me for this conversation. It's great
- 1:17Speaker 2: to have you on the Happy Families podcast.
- 1:20Speaker 1: Great to be on justin thank you.
- 1:22Speaker 2: So I've heard a couple of podcast interviews that you've
- 1:24Speaker 2: done recently, and one thing has led to another, and
- 1:27Speaker 2: I've kind of gone down this rabbit hole of Janet Ericsson,
- 1:31Speaker 2: and I love the things that you're talking about. I
- 1:33Speaker 2: wonder if you can just tell us a bit about
- 1:34Speaker 2: what you found when you were looking at how COVID
- 1:36Speaker 2: is affected what families are experiencing in terms of working
- 1:40Speaker 2: from home versus working from.
- 1:42Speaker 1: Work justin thank you. It's interesting. At the end of
- 1:46Speaker 1: kind of the really intense COVID period, there was an
- 1:48Speaker 1: article from Meggan McCardle in The Washington Post and she said,
- 1:52Speaker 1: sometimes disasters, as horrible as they are, can serve as
- 1:57Speaker 1: a kind of reset button. She just commented at what
- 2:01Speaker 1: had happened with work and family, and so we followed
- 2:05Speaker 1: a per article with our own research looking at what
- 2:07Speaker 1: families wanted, and it was really fascinating to see that
- 2:11Speaker 1: this reset really looked homeward bound, with more than half
- 2:15Speaker 1: of parents who'd had the opportunity right to engage in
- 2:18Speaker 1: workplace flexibility coming home during that coronavirus crisis period. More
- 2:23Speaker 1: than half of them want to be working at home still,
- 2:26Speaker 1: either most of the time or half of the time.
- 2:29Speaker 1: And that was mothers and father's and so it really
- 2:33Speaker 1: did create the pandemic, just provided this really unique opportunity
- 2:36Speaker 1: to think about the kind of future we want, what
- 2:39Speaker 1: we really see as a good work family balanced situation
- 2:44Speaker 1: that we maybe didn't think was even possible. I clear
- 2:48Speaker 1: back in two thousand and five, I did some research
- 2:51Speaker 1: with a national institution that was looking at a nationally
- 2:53Speaker 1: represents sample of mothers, trying to get a sense of
- 2:55Speaker 1: how motherhood was going. And one question we asked was
- 2:59Speaker 1: what is your cur work situation and what is your
- 3:02Speaker 1: ideal work situation? And we had a list of options,
- 3:05Speaker 1: and one of those options in the ideal work situation
- 3:08Speaker 1: was work for pay from home. And when we looked
- 3:13Speaker 1: at the percentages, only one percent of mothers were actually
- 3:18Speaker 1: working for pay from home in two thousand and five,
- 3:21Speaker 1: but thirty percent chose that as their ideal option. So
- 3:25Speaker 1: we have this we have this massive gap between what
- 3:28Speaker 1: people were doing and what they wanted to be doing
- 3:31Speaker 1: with that one feature showing up. And so it's so
- 3:33Speaker 1: remarkable that during the workplace flexibility created during the coronavirus,
- 3:38Speaker 1: to all of a sudden you had all these mothers
- 3:42Speaker 1: being able to work from home and fathers as well.
- 3:46Speaker 1: And then at the end we see what do you
- 3:48Speaker 1: want and they're all saying, you know, the majority are
- 3:51Speaker 1: saying that's what we see as best.
- 3:53Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think the Australian experience is quite similar.
- 3:56Speaker 2: I know I don't have any hot evidence, but anecdotal evidence.
- 4:00Speaker 2: People keep on saying this is great so long as
- 4:02Speaker 2: they've got spaces, as long as the kids aren't crashing
- 4:04Speaker 2: into their zoom meetings all the time. The overwhelming response
- 4:08Speaker 2: from people is we don't have to commute, we save costs,
- 4:12Speaker 2: we get to be with our families more, we've got
- 4:13Speaker 2: the flexibility to step in and out of the office,
- 4:16Speaker 2: whether it's the spare bedroom or the former rumpus room.
- 4:20Speaker 2: Like people are responding really really well to it in
- 4:23Speaker 2: Australia as well, and at the moment there's an increasing
- 4:27Speaker 2: push to get people back to the office and there's
- 4:30Speaker 2: quite a lot of resistance to that from both mums
- 4:32Speaker 2: and dads.
- 4:34Speaker 1: So interesting. I'm glad you mentioned the commute because along
- 4:38Speaker 1: with that data, there was an other day that came
- 4:39Speaker 1: out about women just experiencing more capacity for self care
- 4:44Speaker 1: not having to do that commute. There was it freed
- 4:46Speaker 1: out time for things that they had not had time before,
- 4:51Speaker 1: and just it was associated with just better well being, happiness,
- 4:55Speaker 1: better well being. The other piece that came out was
- 4:58Speaker 1: that when we talked to about what do they want
- 5:01Speaker 1: in terms of childcare situations, all of a sudden they
- 5:04Speaker 1: could have this option that nobody thought about being possible for,
- 5:08Speaker 1: and that's both parents working flexible hours and sharing childcare
- 5:14Speaker 1: so you're not taking your children to childcare, you're actually
- 5:19Speaker 1: navigating that together at home. And that was the high
- 5:23Speaker 1: that was the most frequently preferred option of our list,
- 5:26Speaker 1: where you saw, on the other hand, full time center
- 5:29Speaker 1: based childcare, where you're taking your children to a center
- 5:33Speaker 1: based childcare, was only chosen by eleven percent of parents.
- 5:38Speaker 1: So really you saw this, Oh my goodness, we can
- 5:40Speaker 1: do something we did not ever think was possible before,
- 5:43Speaker 1: and that's husband and wife, mother and father can actually
- 5:46Speaker 1: work on caring for those children together by having their
- 5:50Speaker 1: work place being more flexible. Well, it really did open
- 5:54Speaker 1: up a new way of thinking about things.
- 5:55Speaker 2: Yeah, fascinating. I'm curious. It seems like this is an
- 5:58Speaker 2: I have awhelmingly positive response to this. Are there any negatives?
- 6:02Speaker 2: Are any families looking at this situation filling in this
- 6:04Speaker 2: survey daughter and saying, actually, I really need to get
- 6:07Speaker 2: back to the office. It's driving me crazy being at
- 6:09Speaker 2: home with kids.
- 6:11Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. You were right. It was not all parents, right,
- 6:14Speaker 1: it's fifty three percent of them overall men and close
- 6:18Speaker 1: to that women. Sixty five percent of college educated dads.
- 6:22Speaker 1: So more of the college educated dads wanted to work
- 6:24Speaker 1: from home than not college educated fathers, and there were
- 6:28Speaker 1: some who did want to go back to the workplace.
- 6:30Speaker 1: I think what's interesting is in light of that is
- 6:33Speaker 1: the question when all these mothers came home and children
- 6:36Speaker 1: are home, and you would get this anecdotal report on
- 6:39Speaker 1: now women are back in that gender unequal situation where
- 6:44Speaker 1: they're doing all the care and they're trying to work,
- 6:47Speaker 1: and where in the world is the dad or where
- 6:49Speaker 1: is the partner in that? But in fact, it actually
- 6:53Speaker 1: opened up more possibility for sharing responsibilities between husbands and wives,
- 6:59Speaker 1: mothers and fathers because dads also wanted to be at home.
- 7:03Speaker 1: So rather than entrenching gender inequality that we feared that
- 7:07Speaker 1: this going home might do, it opened up the possibility
- 7:11Speaker 1: for sharing responsibilities. Now having said that, we have more
- 7:15Speaker 1: moms saying they want that shared care situation where both
- 7:20Speaker 1: mother and fathers share childcare than fathers are saying. So
- 7:24Speaker 1: we're still seeing a little lag I think there in
- 7:26Speaker 1: terms of men and women seeing their responsibility that way
- 7:30Speaker 1: or how they want to work that out a little
- 7:32Speaker 1: bit differently, with more women saying yes, this shared care
- 7:36Speaker 1: is what we want, with mother and father both engaged
- 7:39Speaker 1: and father's more fathers saying that, but not at the
- 7:41Speaker 1: same rate as mothers are saying that.
- 7:43Speaker 2: Fascinating. So after the break, we're going to find out
- 7:45Speaker 2: I dig a little deeper into why moms might want
- 7:48Speaker 2: to be more egalitarian and have more shared care and
- 7:52Speaker 2: dad's resisting that. I've got a feeling that I know
- 7:55Speaker 2: exactly why that will be, but I want to pick
- 7:58Speaker 2: the brains of the expert here. Plus, we're going to
- 8:00Speaker 2: find out a bit more about preferences around work. What
- 8:03Speaker 2: do mums and dads actually want on average when it
- 8:06Speaker 2: comes to being at home versus working, even if work
- 8:09Speaker 2: is from home. It's the Happy Families Podcast.
- 8:12Speaker 3: Imagine a home where discipline got results without anyone having
- 8:15Speaker 3: to feel bad or in trouble. The do's and don'ts
- 8:18Speaker 3: of Disciplined as a webinar to help parents set limits
- 8:20Speaker 3: with love, compassion and humanity. Find it now at happy
- 8:24Speaker 3: families dot com dot au slash shop.
- 8:28Speaker 2: It's the Happy Families Podcast, the podcast for the time
- 8:30Speaker 2: poor parent who just wants answers. Now it's doctor Justin Colson.
- 8:34Speaker 2: I'm hanging out today with Associate Professor Jenet Erickson, a
- 8:37Speaker 2: researcher from Brigham Young University in the United States, and
- 8:40Speaker 2: we're talking about issues around COVID working from home and
- 8:44Speaker 2: the gendered division of labor when it comes to who's
- 8:48Speaker 2: bringing in the bacon, who's working, who's looking after the kids,
- 8:50Speaker 2: and all that kind of thing. Jennet, we were just
- 8:53Speaker 2: discussing this issue of mums wanting more shared care with
- 8:56Speaker 2: their husbands, but dad's being a little bit more resistant
- 9:00Speaker 2: to it, even though both can now work from home
- 9:02Speaker 2: in this post COVID environment. Can you tell me why
- 9:06Speaker 2: do you think it is that Dad's a little more reluctant,
- 9:09Speaker 2: a little more resistant to the idea of having a
- 9:11Speaker 2: weightier level of involvement in sharing the care of the kids.
- 9:17Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, that's just that's really interesting. I do
- 9:20Speaker 1: think there's been change over time. We can see that
- 9:23Speaker 1: with fathers doing much more care work than say in
- 9:26Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties nineteen sixties, that they're more involved at home,
- 9:31Speaker 1: but still mothers are doing more of that kind of
- 9:34Speaker 1: care work. So I'm going to say two things, one
- 9:37Speaker 1: being when we look at what men women prefer, you
- 9:41Speaker 1: will consistently see, even though we've seen a lot of
- 9:44Speaker 1: change in the percentage of mothers working, mothers who have
- 9:47Speaker 1: young children overwhelmingly do not prefer full time employment. It's
- 9:53Speaker 1: not what they see as ideal. When they have children
- 9:55Speaker 1: zero to five. In particular, they really do want to
- 9:59Speaker 1: be able to pry poritize care for those children.
- 10:02Speaker 2: So what sort of percentage are we talking there? Because
- 10:05Speaker 2: I mean, in some ways that's a pretty provocative thing
- 10:07Speaker 2: to say. We leave in twenty twenty two and everybody's
- 10:09Speaker 2: saying it equal rots on that sort of thing. But
- 10:11Speaker 2: you're saying that the survey data shows moms specifically as
- 10:15Speaker 2: saying when my kids are young, I don't want to
- 10:17Speaker 2: be in full time work. Yes, well, what's right, what's
- 10:20Speaker 2: the percentage is that it's.
- 10:21Speaker 1: Probably sixty five percent. You get different different numbers, right,
- 10:25Speaker 1: but they're right around that range that you don't that
- 10:28Speaker 1: it's it's you know, as sixty five percent that do
- 10:30Speaker 1: not prefer full time employment during that period of time
- 10:34Speaker 1: with young children. And now now having said that, many
- 10:37Speaker 1: of them want part time work and they would see
- 10:40Speaker 1: as ideal work that's meaningful, that you know, you can
- 10:43Speaker 1: grow in and that you get paid it right in
- 10:46Speaker 1: an appropriate way for But they don't want to bear
- 10:49Speaker 1: the responsibility of primarily being the provider for their children
- 10:52Speaker 1: and families. And that's just that just has been very
- 10:56Speaker 1: consistent over time, and we saw that in this data
- 10:58Speaker 1: as well. It showed up again here mothers with young children,
- 11:01Speaker 1: they want to be able to prioritize care for their children.
- 11:04Speaker 1: They are interested in work, They don't want to be
- 11:06Speaker 1: the primary provider in general. Now you see men on
- 11:09Speaker 1: the flip, they do tend to really prioritize work when
- 11:13Speaker 1: they have young children. They do prefer being the primary provider,
- 11:17Speaker 1: and that's just been very consistent as well. So It's
- 11:19Speaker 1: interesting that you see they want to come home, they
- 11:21Speaker 1: want to maintain primary providing role, right, but they also
- 11:24Speaker 1: want to get involved in caregiving. And I think women saw, look,
- 11:28Speaker 1: have this could work out better than me taking the
- 11:31Speaker 1: kids to daycare. You're home and we can work this
- 11:34Speaker 1: out where we're we're both involved in their care, even
- 11:37Speaker 1: if I'm doing more of it than you're doing. But
- 11:40Speaker 1: it's a family thing together, right, It's not somebody else
- 11:44Speaker 1: doing it.
- 11:45Speaker 2: Jennet. Something that I found fascinating. I can't remember the
- 11:47Speaker 2: research study. I can't remember many of the details around it.
- 11:51Speaker 2: But when we're talking about these complimentary roles, we're talking
- 11:54Speaker 2: about the work life balance. I read something about the
- 11:58Speaker 2: more egalitarian than the most that women have choice in
- 12:02Speaker 2: terms of what they do in terms of work versus family,
- 12:04Speaker 2: the more likely it is that they're going to choose family,
- 12:06Speaker 2: even though they've gotten more choice. I might be making
- 12:09Speaker 2: a miss of that data that research, and you able
- 12:11Speaker 2: to shed some lot on that and mightbe set me straight.
- 12:14Speaker 1: This is such fascinating data. There's two pieces maybe to cover.
- 12:16Speaker 1: One is you're right in Nordic countries Norway, Sweden, Finland,
- 12:20Speaker 1: right where we might say there's a lot of effort
- 12:23Speaker 1: to make egalitarian access to the workplace, and that one
- 12:27Speaker 1: is not prioritizing caregiving over professional work. Right, there's a
- 12:30Speaker 1: lot of there's also a lot of focus on family time.
- 12:32Speaker 1: But what you see is women still choosing caregiving types
- 12:36Speaker 1: of professions more than men, and you see them choosing
- 12:41Speaker 1: not to engage in kind of high demand full time
- 12:44Speaker 1: professions so that they can prioritize family. And so you'll
- 12:49Speaker 1: see men choosing to work more with objects and things
- 12:52Speaker 1: and women choosing to work more with people and children,
- 12:55Speaker 1: and you'll kind of see that that shaping shaking out
- 12:59Speaker 1: even though they're a really strong egalitarian focus. So that's
- 13:02Speaker 1: very important. The other piece of that is tasks. So
- 13:06Speaker 1: we just have really recent data looking at preferences around
- 13:09Speaker 1: tasks at home, and it shows up the same way.
- 13:12Speaker 1: You'll have very egalitarian couples saying, right, we share all
- 13:16Speaker 1: the same things, we do all the same things. But
- 13:18Speaker 1: when you ask them to rank what kind of task
- 13:21Speaker 1: they prefer, you see women overwhelmingly choosing caregiving kinds of tasks,
- 13:27Speaker 1: men choosing yard work, garage and working with the things
- 13:31Speaker 1: of the house. And yet they'll say we are fully egalitarian, right,
- 13:36Speaker 1: We do all the same kinds of things, and yet
- 13:37Speaker 1: their preferences suggest a different orientation. And it's really really
- 13:42Speaker 1: remarkable how overwhelmingly they make those preferences.
- 13:46Speaker 2: We've definitely got to continue this conversation, but in wrapping
- 13:49Speaker 2: up today and we'll get you back again to talk
- 13:52Speaker 2: more about this brain science and the complementary roles of
- 13:55Speaker 2: moms and dads. I think it's fascinating and also how
- 13:57Speaker 2: working it feeds with that in some ways. But let's
- 14:00Speaker 2: wrap this up with a quick question. I know that
- 14:02Speaker 2: as a researcher, what you're mainly doing is looking at
- 14:04Speaker 2: what has happened and extrapolating from there and considering the data.
- 14:09Speaker 2: I'm curious about a prediction that you might make as
- 14:12Speaker 2: you look at the way people are responding to what
- 14:14Speaker 2: COVID has done to the workplace, what COVID has done
- 14:17Speaker 2: to the opportunities to work from home, these preferences that
- 14:19Speaker 2: are coming out, What do you think what do you
- 14:22Speaker 2: foresee over the next couple of years in relation to
- 14:25Speaker 2: work life balance, in relation to working from home and
- 14:28Speaker 2: kids and families. What do you think's going to happen?
- 14:31Speaker 1: Yeah, great question. I just prior to COVID. It's fascinating.
- 14:36Speaker 1: Twenty nineteen comes out this article about workism, and the
- 14:41Speaker 1: author at the Atlantic just said, we have this, we
- 14:43Speaker 1: have this whole new religion around work where identity is
- 14:46Speaker 1: bound up in work. And you see adults seeing this
- 14:49Speaker 1: is my meaning, this is my purpose, and all of
- 14:52Speaker 1: this workplace effort to create like a home away from home,
- 14:55Speaker 1: right where everything's there at the workplace. And it's fascinating
- 14:58Speaker 1: because in comes COVID interrupting that, and you see people
- 15:03Speaker 1: all of a sudden they're valuing in a different way
- 15:06Speaker 1: what they could do in the presence of their family
- 15:09Speaker 1: members with you know, when they're home with children. And
- 15:13Speaker 1: and so I think the pressures justin are to they
- 15:17Speaker 1: are a workist pressure, right to define ourselves by our
- 15:20Speaker 1: work and to make policies that make a workplace focused
- 15:26Speaker 1: as opposed to family friendly work policies. Rights it's making
- 15:31Speaker 1: your family work friendly instead of making the workplace family friendly.
- 15:36Speaker 1: And so there I think there's going to be strong
- 15:39Speaker 1: pressure still to orient ourselves around work. But there's a
- 15:43Speaker 1: taste for what really really fills me up, you know,
- 15:47Speaker 1: as a person, and that's having more time to connect.
- 15:51Speaker 1: It's being able to be with them. It's not taking
- 15:56Speaker 1: that caregiving and giving it to someone else. So you
- 15:59Speaker 1: think you see things like having dinner consistently. It's fascinating, right,
- 16:04Speaker 1: But if people can just have dinner consistently, even if
- 16:08Speaker 1: they go back to work, it reduces the stress between
- 16:12Speaker 1: work and family life. And it could be as brief
- 16:14Speaker 1: as twenty minutes. But like, just having that consistent time
- 16:17Speaker 1: that is protected for families to have really is an
- 16:21Speaker 1: important part of well being. And we've got a taste
- 16:23Speaker 1: of it. We have to remember the taste of it, right,
- 16:26Speaker 1: because the pressures are to go back to a workist orientation.
- 16:30Speaker 1: But I also think we're not going to go back.
- 16:32Speaker 1: My husband works from home permanently now, and there's a
- 16:34Speaker 1: lot of us who are saying that, and they do
- 16:36Speaker 1: it because they want to do it, and it was
- 16:38Speaker 1: made possible through COVID, And so we're going to see
- 16:41Speaker 1: that continued shift from workplace to more being done at
- 16:47Speaker 1: home in the presence of children and family. Yeah, I
- 16:50Speaker 1: love that.
- 16:51Speaker 2: I think that that's a fascinating prediction and also a
- 16:54Speaker 2: really nice take home message when I look at what
- 16:56Speaker 2: COVID has done. I used to catch like one hundred
- 16:58Speaker 2: and twenty flights a year. I was going for I'm
- 17:00Speaker 2: home at least one hundred plus nights per year, and
- 17:03Speaker 2: during COVID, I haven't had to travel more than a
- 17:05Speaker 2: couple of times a year, and it's been heaven. I
- 17:08Speaker 2: don't want that to change. Associate Professor Janet Erickson, thanks
- 17:11Speaker 2: for joining me on the podcast for this amazing conversation.
- 17:14Speaker 2: Can't wait to have you back.
- 17:15Speaker 1: Thanks Justin.
- 17:17Speaker 2: That is Associate Professor Janet Erickson from Brigham Young University,
- 17:20Speaker 2: also a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies,
- 17:23Speaker 2: talking about how COVID has changed work life balance, what
- 17:26Speaker 2: parents really want when it comes to work and life,
- 17:29Speaker 2: and a really nice take home message about making sure
- 17:31Speaker 2: that we have that dedicated family time no matter how
- 17:33Speaker 2: chaotic life gets. The Happy Family's podcast is produced by
- 17:36Speaker 2: Justin Ruland from Bridge Media, with Craig Bruce, our executive producer.
- 17:39Speaker 2: If you'd like more info about making your family happier,
- 17:42Speaker 2: you can visit us on Facebook at doctor Justin Colson's
- 17:44Speaker 2: Happy Families or Happy Families dot com dot au.