Search results

This paper focuses on achieving a balance between work and life. It discusses how under survival conditions the division and specialisation of tasks by gender is necessary and that to be a winner under these conditions is to have offspring who survive. It poses that the original work/life balance was to have one parent bear and nurture young, and another parent to protect and provision them. Today however, this simple division of labour no longer suffices. Technology has remade the environment we live in - economically, socially and biologically - and our present sense that life is out of balance is the result of our attempts to adapt to those changes. The paper points out that the problem of 'role strain' afflicts women far more than it does men, and that issues relating to parenting are the most important ones in the quest for work/life balance.