Wharton Work/Life, Author at Wharton Work/Life

Having a Baby While in B-School and More

Contributor: Alice Liu

Work and Life is a two-hour radio program hosted by Stew Friedman, director of the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project, on Sirius XM’s Channel 111, Business Radio Powered by The Wharton School. Every Tuesday from 7 to 9 PM EST, Stew speaks with everyday people and the world’s leading experts about creating harmony among work, home, community and the private self.

On Work and Life, Stew Friedman spoke with current Wharton MBA students about how young women are thinking about their careers, families and future lives.

In the second segment, Friedman spoke with Kristina Milyuchikhina (WG ’14) and Meaghan Casey (WG ’15), about what it’s like to start a family while in business school and the importance of choosing a partner who not only shares parenting care, but also shares the same values and ambitions. Following are edited excerpts of Milyuchikhina and Casey’s conversation with Friedman.

Stew Friedman: Kristina, I’d like to start with your story. Unlike the other three students, you just gave birth last semester. How did you actually make it work here at Wharton?

Kristina Milyuchikhina: When I got into the Wharton MBA program, I was recently married and one of the important questions for me was to decide whether school fit in my plans to start a family. After discussions with my husband, we agreed that we would try to do both. I was able to leverage the University of Pennsylvania’s amazing medical facilities, an insurance plan that covers maternity, and the course match system at Wharton which allows you to construct your perfect schedule.

SF: Was the birth scheduled so that you were able to control the timing?

KM: It was a natural birth so it wasn’t scheduled, but it happened during fall break when I was done with finals. I missed only two classes, and I was back to school the next day.

SF: What was it like coming back to the classroom two days after giving birth?

KM: Well my friends at school were shocked, but they were very welcoming. But it’s not only about support, it’s also about preparation. For example, getting into business school is a long process, and you have to prepare for it. In many ways, starting to have a family is a similar process, and you can prepare yourself for it as well. I did an enormous amount of research. I researched everything from facilities to logistics to apartments. I was plenty ahead in my course load. I was working with the MBA Program Office to get them ready to help me collaborate with professors if I missed any classes.

SF: So you really took control of those things that could be controlled.

KM: Exactly. Often in life when you see something happen easily, there is usually a huge amount of preparation standing behind it. That was my case.

SF: Meaghan, what brought you here to business school?

Meaghan Casey: I didn’t originally intend on pursuing a career in business. I am really motivated by social impact work, and for the past two years I worked with social impact entrepreneurs and non-profits in Washington D.C. and India. I came to business school because I really wanted to gain some of the skills and education that I felt could help make me credible so that I could more effectively continue living my purpose.

SF: What do you mean by living your purpose? What is your purpose?

MC: I think right now my answer to that is I would love to work in organizational development. I did management consulting for three years and then social impact for two years so I saw the very different work environments first hand. I experienced very female-empowered to very male-dominated, and from very stressful and chaotic to very inspirational. Most recently, the entrepreneurs I had been working with had designed value-driven businesses where everyone from the bottom to the top of the organization was passionate about and empowered by their work. I thought to myself, “When I go to business school in the next two years, how can I learn to create a positive and productive workplace where people really feel empowered?”

SF: What are you being exposed to here at Wharton that helps you see the possibilities for greater freedom of opportunities for both men and women in the workplace?

KM: The Wharton MBA experience has been life-changing for me. The exposure to the tools, professors, and knowledge here is the best in the world. I’m focusing on three majors, because I realize that in the area where I want to be successful and create impact – corporate business development and strategic development – I have to be able to understand so many distinct issues that move businesses. Wharton is the perfect place to gain this kind of knowledge as well as the tools that will allow me to create change.

SF: Meaghan, as you think about your own personal future, what do you think about the “shared care” model – having women and men share responsibilities in their partnership?

MC: I love it. I think it’s fantastic, and I also think that more men should feel more confident and empowered to be advocates of shared parenting.

SF: How do we get there?

MC: I think leading by example is always effective, so I’d call on fathers – no matter where they are in their children’s development – who are holding back from developing stronger relationships with their wives or their children to let themselves step into that role and let it be known at their companies how they are integrating their work and their life. I think women do a great job role modeling this all the time, and many men do too, but I think that they can take a stronger stage.

SF: Kristina, is it a shared-care model with you and your husband? How do you manage this?

KM: First of all, it starts from the beginning. He is a partner at his company and was able to negotiate his relocation to Philly. That was step number one, because to have a little kid at Wharton without the support of your husband or in a long-distance relationship would be very tough and not realistic. He was also able to negotiate flexible work hours – sometimes he works from home, and that works out very well. The key here is to pick your life partner wisely, because while picking a career and a business school is great, we spend our lives with our families. It really is a very important choice.

SF: This is something that Sheryl Sandberg advocates – that the most important career decision you can make is who you marry.

KM: Exactly. That’s why it should be a person who shares your values, desires, and ambitions, and who also wants to have it all while you’re still young and strong. Someone who is willing go through some sleepless nights to get your family to where you both want it to be.

MC: I think you’re spot on. I think Jessica DeGroot, the radio guest from last week, said start the conversation early on in a collaborative way, talking through what kind of life do we want to build together as partners, what kind of family do we want to have, and how are we going to make time for our relationship and our family in a mutually beneficial way.

SF: What do you hope the world will look like by the time your newborn son is your age?

KM: I hope that by that time there will be more awareness for women who want to have healthy families and healthy careers to be able to combine both. For example, like me, women can consider starting families while in a top MBA program. I hope that there will be more support, not only on the side of their partners, but also on the side of business schools as well. I hope that by that time we will have the most talented women applying for business schools and not sacrificing their ambitions because of their fears that they will not be able to fit family in later on.

MC: I’m very inspired by Kristina’s story. Knowing that she’s been able to do both is the biggest sign of changing times. I think that the more people that integrate work and life successfully and the more normalized it becomes, the better off we’ll be in achieving 50/50 – the best talent coming from both men and women in corporate America.

Join Work and Life next Tuesday, February 25 at 7 PM on Sirius XM Channel 111 for conversations with Deika Morrison (W ’94, WG ’08) and Jerry Jacobs, Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania,about work and life in different labor markets. Visit Work and Life for a full schedule of future guests.

About the Author

Alice Liu is an undergraduate senior studying Management at The Wharton School and English (Creative Writing) at the College of Arts & Sciences.

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Wharton Work/Life

Filed Under: Millennials, Women and Work | Leave a Comment

Wharton Women on Hopes for a 50/50 World

Contributor: Alice Liu

On Work and Life, Stew Friedman spoke with current Wharton MBA students about how young women are experiencing and thinking about their careers, families and future lives. In the first segment, Friedman chatted with Nohemie Sanon (WG ’15) and Pamela Freed (WG ’14) about how they perceive the current role of women in business schools and in the workplace as well as what they hope to see change in the future.

Following are edited excerpts of Sanon and Freed’s conversation with Friedman.

Stew Friedman: What prompted you to come to the Wharton School?

Nohemie Sanon: For me it was about career progression. I was at a certain level in my career where I was ready to make the next move, and I wanted to make sure that I had the best education possible to help me get to that next level.

Pamela Freed: I knew that I wanted to go to business school ever since I was an undergraduate. My father had gone to business school and seeing how much it helped his career really influenced me. After three years of working at JP Morgan after college, I started to feel like my career was going well, but I knew that business school would help accelerate it.

SF: Who are the important people – the key sponsors or mentors – who have influenced you and helped you get here?

NS: The key influencers would definitely be my mom, my family, and also mentors at work, such as my boss and other colleagues who really wanted to push me to make sure that I attained that next level.

PF: My parents definitely had a big influence. In particular, I think that my mom had probably a bigger influence on me than anyone else. She had a long career working in media, and growing up, I watched her passion for her work and how it gave her drive. That was really inspirational for me, and I always knew that my career would be something that would be very important in my life.

SF: What was the most surprising thing to you when you got here.

NS: I was struck by the ratio of men to women. The class of 2015 has about 42% women, and I was excited to find that number so surprisingly high. As you walk through the halls of this school you don’t feel like it’s 42%, you actually feel like it’s 50/50.

PF: I think I was surprised by how much I learned outside of the classroom. One of the most rewarding things for me has been the extracurricular opportunities. I’ve been fortunate to serve as co-president of Wharton Women in Business this year, and I’ve learned far more from that than any class I’ve taken. As Nohemie mentioned, Wharton has 42% women, which is more than any other top business program, so the women’s community here is very strong.

SF: How has that particular experience shaped your thinking about the future?

NS: I think it’s not only very inspiring, but it also gives me hope that more women will eventually rise to the top of the ladder in a variety of industries. It’s a big signal to me that it’s possible for women to achieve that level.

PF: At Wharton, there’s definitely a sense that women are equal to men. You see just as many women participating in class as men. Women are receiving academic honors at the same rate as men and are going on to as good careers as the men here are. We’re equals while we’re at Wharton, I’ll be interested to see what happens when we leave Wharton, and how my male and female peers perceive their treatment in the workplace.

SF: The ratio of women at the top of organizations is not nearly the same as it is at the entry level. What do you see happening within companies today that is really going to make a difference in changing this gender inequality?

PF: I hope that companies will be able to implement more policies to help women find ways to stay, particularly after they have families. At Bain & Company for example, they have very flexible work policies – flextime and sabbaticals – for women who have had children, and they claim that 80% of women who are partners have taken advantage of some of these flex policies. If over time companies are able to roll out more flexible policies and make it the norm to take advantage of these programs, then hopefully more women will be inspired to stay.

SF: And are you optimistic or pessimistic about that?

PF: I’m definitely optimistic. I see senior female role models that I can aspire to be like someday.

SF: That’s so important to have people you can look up to and say, “Yes, she did it. Therefore, I can do it too.” Nohemie, was this an important consideration when you thought about your summer plans?

NS: Yes. Throughout the time that I was recruiting I’ve met all different kinds of women who made it a point to tell me about the infrastructure set up to support working mothers – for example, a facility where you can bring your child in the morning and then see them at lunchtime. It’s also incumbent on us as women throughout our careers to lean in and open ourselves to opportunities as they reveal themselves to us, especially after we have our children and raise them. Very often we tend to not accept and not be willing to step into available new roles.

SF: Why do you think that is? Why do you think women hold back from opportunities to advance their careers?

NS: Maybe, because of fear of not being able to provide for their family in the way that they want to. You want to be there for your family not only financially, but also emotionally, and you may hold back from opportunities because you’re afraid that you’ll miss important things like your children’s recitals.

SF: Is it different for men and women at Wharton? Do you travel in different worlds?

PF: I don’t really think it’s that different for men and women here. I think that Wharton is a very equal place and if anything I think that women may have an advantage here, because we do have Wharton Women in Business and all that it provides. All 700+ women at Wharton are automatically members. We do many things – we bring thought leaders to campus, we have workshops to help women with negotiations and communication, we have connections with alumnae, we have an annual conference with more than 400 attendees, and we even have social events such as golf workshops to make sure that women will be able to keep up with men in the workplace. Men are invited to many of these things but generally you see more women taking advantage of these offerings so I think that’s something that makes the women’s community very strong.

SF: As you dream about your future, what’s the most important change that you want to see happen in the world over the next 15-20 years?

PF: Something that Debora Spar, the president of Barnard College, talked about at a recent Wharton Women in Business event is the expectation that women place on themselves for perfection – a perfect career, a perfect family, a perfect life. I hope that in the future women will feel s less pressure to do everything perfectly.

SF: How might men help with this goal?

PF: I think Sheryl Sandberg and Anne-Marie Slaughter both emphasize the importance of partners and making sure that each partner is sharing the housework and sharing in child raising, for example. It’s important that both partners are part of the conversation about how each can each integrate work and life.

SF: What about you, Nohemie? What do you wish to see change in the next 15-20 years?

NS: I would agree with Pam, and I would also add that I wish to see a world where women allow themselves to be more involved in their careers if they so choose and also more involved at home if they so choose.

SF: What’s the one thing we could be doing at this school to make that happen faster?

NS: I think that women as a community could encourage other women to take a bigger role in their careers and/or at home.

PF: I would love to see more men joining these conversations, attending more Wharton Women in Business events, and talking about integrating work and life and how men can help women get ahead.

Visit the Forum tomorrow for the second segment of Stew’s conversation with current Wharton MBA students, Kristina Milyuchikhina (WG ’14) and Meaghan Casey (WG ’15), about what it’s like to start a family while in business school and the importance of choosing a partner who not only shares parenting care, but also shares your values and ambitions.

About the Author

Alice Liu is an undergraduate senior studying Management at The Wharton School and English (Creative Writing) at the College of Arts & Sciences.

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Wharton Work/Life

Filed Under: Gender Equity, Gender Roles, Millennials, Women and Work | Leave a Comment

The Path to Shared Care — Jessica DeGroot on Work and Life

Contributor: Kate Mesrobian

Jessica DeGroot founded ThirdPath Institute in 1999 to encourage employees at all stages in their lives to follow a “third path” – one that allows success at work while creating time and energy for their lives outside of work, as opposed to an exclusive focus on one or the other.

On his radio show, Work and Life (on Sirius XM’s Business Radio Powered by The Wharton School), Stew Friedman spoke with Jessica DeGroot about the overwhelming priority work receives and why we need a cultural shift in our approach to work and the rest of life. DeGroot offers practical solutions for individuals and couples to improve life outside work.

Following are edited excerpts of DeGroot’s conversation with Friedman.

Stew Friedman: What was the origin of ThirdPath Institute?

Jessica DeGroot: When I first came to Wharton as an MBA, I thought about what might be a logical solution to creating healthy families. Healthy relationships are good for an organization and for business. If you have an employee who is in healthy, satisfying relationship, they are more focused and ready to work each day. I wanted to equip families with tools for how do work differently. “Shared care” is about two people sharing in the care of a family. Some families figure out how both parents can care for the family. – For example, both parents working, so that the dad isn’t the sole provider. Planning where the couple is headed and considering how they want to think about care together is important.

SF: We don’t have to choose between career and family aspirations. But so many people still struggle to make a shared care model work.

JD: Yes, and right now, we are talking about professional families, where the mom and dad both work in professional jobs, and the biggest worry is that if they don’t follow the normal path, their choices will have a negative impact on their career trajectory and they will not be able to earn as much. We call that the “work first” model, where you have to have your work come first.What we’ve been able to do over the past six years is have leaders show that there is a different model out there in which male and female leaders have not followed the work first model and been able to gain leadership positions and make all parts of their life accessible.

SF: What would you say is most essential to making that model real?

JD: The couple needs clarity about their priorities and to watch each other’s back. They need simple solutions and a back up plan, what we call a Plan B, for situations that arise.

SF: What do you mean by Plan B?

JD: Starting your own job outside of the corporate world, writing for a year. There are a lot of other alternatives nowadays if your current circumstances are not aligning with your priorities. One example is a mom who created a flex-year solution. She really wanted time with her kids, and summers were a big opportunity. So she went to a 20-hour per month schedule in the summer. Before the summers, she trained people to manage the time she was away. She was such an incredible mentor that her mentees were plucked away and put into other assignments because of their increased skill levels.

SF: I talked earlier about the New York Times magazine cover story “Does a More Equal Marriage Mean Less Sex?” What’s your take on the connection between romance and the 50-50 model?

JD: I have done a lot of reflection on why we use shared care. If both members of a married couple have a full time job, both have given most of their energy to work. The rest of their energy is reserved for family, children, bills, but probably not for sex. One in five couples are considered a sexless couple, meaning that they have sex 10 or fewer times per year. We are all just overwhelmed, and we need to take action today. This is bigger than the trend of egalitarian couples – as a society, we are overwhelmed, and we are disproportionally giving energy and time to work and not to the other things we care about. One unique thing about shared care couples is that we tell them to be more intentional about their time.

SF: So an important part of the solution is to be mindful and intentional with time?

JD: My husband and I go to Miami once a year, just the two of us. We prioritize this time. We not only prioritize sharing household responsibilities, but also what’s important to us. Personally, my priorities are about having a passionate marriage and having fun.

SF: What are some of the things you’ve learned about staying true to those priorities?

JD: We have learned what we call “21^st century skills.” We learned how to turn our cell phones off, to take a vacation and “turn off” work by setting boundaries. There’s a pattern for learning better skills to cope with our crazy, overwhelming world.

SF: What are the important things for listeners to be mindful of to create boundaries?

JD: Experiment with these thoughts starting today. Take that vacation and turn off work for that whole week. If a family has kids, the primary focus is to develop this mindset to model these actions for your children, such as having dinner together and putting the cell phone away. This can be difficult with the slippery slope of letting work slide into our lives, but modeling the behavior is important. If my son tries to text during dinner, I will say “You know we don’t text during dinner,” and he knows that because we have been doing that for 15 years.Parents have to role model and show the value of prioritizing life and family themselves.

SF: Let’s talk about businesses and what organizations can do to enable the full immersion of both parents in both family and career life.

JD: Flexibility for everybody is key. Whether for caring for children or an aging parent, you want people to look for the right answer. I would tell companies to think of a solution for the triple win: effective for the employee getting work done, effective at meeting the firms’ own needs, and also good for their colleagues and clients.

SF: But there’s no one size fits all solution, and companies can make that mistake.

JD: You have to customize the flexibility to your business, and you have to have leaders who model what they believe in. If you are in an organization and cannot leave, you can look inside the organization and find a more supportive manager to work normal hours, which means not working nights, still having dinner with the family, and not having to work on the weekend. If you set that boundary, you can improve your life quite a bit. The first step is for couples to clarify their priorities, have a collaborative conversation, and become a resource to one another.

SF: Where do people find the time to step back and make change? Do you have to reach a point of stress where you need to make the change or can you be more proactive?

JD: The starting point is being able to step back and get off that gerbil wheel. Teenagers are actually more proactive with this. I can’t tell you how many times I see parents on their phones with their kids pulling on their sleeves, going, “Could you put the phone away?”

SF: It’s easy to ignore those signals to put the phone away and stop using technology when you have a client on the line.

JD: I think of this as a muscle. These are families that want to change, but they absolutely make mistakes. People are developing this skill of how to set boundaries and turn off technology. Learn to see what it feels like to stop and turn of that cell phone and slowly develop that muscle.

SF: What have you learned in your work with families?

JD: I think professional families have a lot to learn from other families. Professional families put a lot of investment in their profession. I’ve learned from working class families, however, the importance of couples having their priorities pretty straight and making time for them. In many such families, they are willing to change jobs to have time for the things they care about. They demonstrate how to make work part of your life but not all of your life.

SF: What would you want to say to current MBA students?

JD: Dream big. It’s all possible. Keep track of what’s important. Don’t be afraid to experiment and learn from others who have experimented with different work/life style integrations with their partners.

Work and Life is a two-hour radio program hosted by Stew Friedman, director of the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project, on Sirius XM’s Channel 111, Business Radio Powered by Wharton. Every Tuesday from 7 pm to 9 pm EST, Stew speaks with everyday people and the world’s leading experts about creating harmony among work, home, community, and the private self (mind, body and spirit). Join Stew next week, Tuesday February 25, at 7 PM conversations with Deika Morrison, co-founder and President of Do Good Jamaica, and with Jerry Jacobs, Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, and Founding President of the Work and Family Researchers Network.

About the Author

Kate Mesrobian is a sophomore in the Huntsman Program in Business and International Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Posted on February 19, 2014 by Wharton Work/Life

Filed Under: Fatherhood/Men's Roles, Gender Equity, Gender Roles | Leave a Comment

What I Wish I’d Known: Get Credit for What You Already Do

Contributor: Liz Stiverson

What I Wish I’d Known is a series in which MBAs offer lessons learned about integrating work and life in their first jobs.

“I will never forget my first bad review. I was an Analyst at an investment bank in Milwaukee, and at the end of my first deal, I sat down with the Vice President to talk about my performance. He opened the conversation by saying, ‘You’re doing good work, but I’m afraid you’re not putting in enough time on projects, and that could really limit your long-term potential here.’ I was speechless. I had been at my desk seven days a week, 14 hours a day for the past two months. When I said as much, my boss looked confused and asked ‘Why don’t I see emails from you on nights and weekends?’ I had assumed the polite thing to do was to respect his personal time and delay the delivery of all my emails until normal working hours unless it was an emergency. I was putting in the wrong kind of face-time – visible where he couldn’t see me and silent where he expected to hear me.”

— Joanna, 28, MBA candidate

Joanna’s is a familiar story. For many people, it takes a lesson learned the hard way to realize that how you work can matter as much as the quality of the work you do. Here are two insights to spare you the same hard knocks:

Know the norms about communication on- and off-peak time.

Face time and flexibility mean different things in different organizations. Joanna assumed that what counted was being in the office, but what mattered to her boss was not where she worked but how much time he was able to observe; she could work anywhere she liked as long as he was aware that she was putting in the time. After that first difficult conversation, she started working weekends from home, sending all emails immediately. She was as productive but spent less time because she was saving time on her commute and she was now getting credit with her boss for the work she was doing.. Recent Catalyst research found that most high-potential employees have access to some kind of flexibility at work, in hours or location. When starting at a new firm, in a new department, or with a new manager, ask about these unwritten norms. If you don’t feel comfortable initiating that conversation with your boss, ask your office mates, other members of your team, or colleagues who have worked with your boss before. This will help you both deliver on the real expectations at work while allowing you to have time for the rest of your life.

Look for ways to work smarter, not more.

For a smart and motivated new hire, the easiest and perhaps most natural response to Joanna’s boss would have been a chagrined, “Sure, I can definitely put in more time.” Our bosses are also smart, motivated people who want to get things done, and most of us will be challenged at some point about how much time we spend at work completing specific tasks or projects. Another common form the question takes is, “Why do you think it will take to the end of the week to finish this? Can’t you do it by Wednesday?” Joanna did an important thing when she answered by giving her boss more information and asking clarifying questions. Rather than immediately offering more time – thereby trading off time for yourself, your family and friends, and your other interests – be sure you understand what’s needed. It might be simply better communication. Protect the time you spend not working by leveraging the work you’re already doing.

Not working for a firm that offers flexibility, or wondering what happens when face time is non-negotiable? Visit the Forum next month for a What I Wish I’d Known perspective on realistic expectations for work/life integration at the beginning of your career, and first steps you can take toward more flexibility.

About the Author

Liz Stiverson is a 2014 MBA candidate at The Wharton School. Reach her in the comments section of this post.

Posted on February 15, 2014 by Wharton Work/Life

Filed Under: Millennials, Productivity | Leave a Comment

How to Avoid Maxing Out — Conversation with Katrina Alcorn

Contributor: Morgan Motzel

On Work and Life, Erin Owen, as guest host for Stew Friedman, spoke with Katrina Alcorn, author of Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink. Following are excerpts of Alcorn’s conversation with Owen:

Erin Owen: How we can have work that is compatible with having a healthy, enjoyable personal life?

Katrina Alcorn: Businesses have an incredible opportunity to create desperately needed change in the American workplace. Employers need to start looking at how to empower their employees with more autonomy. I know from having been a manager that this idea can be really scary. You might feel, for example, as though your job is to make sure that everyone is in their seat and working hard. But that’s not necessarily the best way to go about it. Just seeing someone present in the office doesn’t mean we’re getting the most out of our employees, nor does babysitting them mean we’re being good managers. One interesting new management strategy is the high-performance or results-oriented work environment. The idea is that you can empower employees – whether they are knowledge workers or people who work on a factory floor – to make the best decisions and do the best job that they can. In this model, employees have control, instead of the boss is telling everyone what to do. When people are empowered and have real responsibility, they find their work is a lot more meaningful. It’s also great for morale because no grown-up wants to be babysat.

EO: This implies a culture shift that affects every level of an organization and gives employees more responsibility to make decisions.

KA: That’s right. And the other side of freedom is holding them accountable. It’s not just about showing up. It’s not about how many sick days you took. It’s about holding yourself accountable to doing the best job you can do.

EO: Are you suggesting that having a more meaningful work will translate to having a more healthy and enjoyable personal life?

KA: It’s not as though we become one person when we step into the office and a different person when we go home, although sometimes it may feel that way. We are one person with one life, no matter what we’re doing. Part of our growth involves bringing our humanity to everything we do and not turning it off when we’re at the office. Our humanity makes us good at our jobs.

I started in a managerial role after my first child was born. At the time, I was just learning how to manage people, and I started noticing all the ways that being a mother actually made me a better manager of adults. It wasn’t that I was mothering them, but I found that being a mother taught me to put my ego in check. Being a mother also helped me learn how to rise above conflict and to be the one to help people come to resolution without holding grudges. Things about motherhood translate back to your work in wonderful ways.

EO: That’s just one more reason for employers to want to bring parents back into the work force after a parental leave.

KA: That’s right. Another important thing for employers to think about is productivity. Americans now work the longest hours and have least time off compared to workers in any other country. We think this is part of what makes us so productive, but the research is showing that – while it may be counter-intuitive – working less can actually make us more productive. When we consistently work long hours, for example, we actually can go into what is called a “negative productivity cycle.” Employees are so overworked that they are sitting in meetings but it’s as if they’re not even there, or at least that their brain isn’t. People are making decisions, but they are often bad decisions because they’re just so exhausted. Having employees working really long hours doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re more committed or that they’re doing a good job.

EO: You’re saying that, as a manger, I need to empower my employees to make their own decisions. Next, they need to work less. Isn’t this a danger to economic performance?

KA: Research shows that long hours kill productivity, profits, and people. The author of a summary of cited 150 years of research, including studies spanning multiple industries over decades, which showed that when you work more than 50 hours per week, things start to go wrong.

EO: We talked about ways to cultivate more meaningful work so that it can be compatible with a healthier personal life, from the employers’ perspective. How about from the employees’ point of view? What can we do as individuals?

KA: One of the things I’ve been told I need to work on is learning to say no and how to set good boundaries. I know there are tons of people like me who are also people-pleasers and who also find it hard to say no to people. I want to say yes. It’s a practice that I have to constantly keep in mind. For example, I just got an email today asking parents to chaperone a field trip at my kids’ school. I try to chaperone lots of field trips because that’s one way in which I can really help out. Plus my kids love it and I really enjoy it. This time I ignored it because I have a meeting that day. But then the school sent out an email saying, “please, please, please, we’re going to have to cancel it!” I had this feeling that I just have to say yes. But then I thought about how impossible my week was going to be if I took a half-day out to do this. Sometimes I do have to say no, and it doesn’t always feel good. And the “no” extends to work issues too, not just life issues.

EO: You really need to be clear about what’s best for you, what helps you be healthier, more present, and more focused in all parts of life.

KA: Exactly. I think what we need to do is start really valuing our physical health and our mental health in a new way. Everyone feels stress, and that’s a normal part of life, but we all know when we’re crossing the line or when it’s just too much. The truth is that no one is going to advocate for you, especially in the workplace, but even in your personal life too. Only you are going to do that, and if you don’t do it no one will. We have an obligation to take ourselves seriously and really look at what we need in order to make sure our life is healthy, enjoyable, and meaningful.

Katrina Alcorn is the author of Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink. She is also a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post as well as her personal blog “Working Moms Break” which can be found at www.workingmomsbreak.com. To learn more about Katrina, visit her website at www.kalcorn.com.

Tune in to Work and Life next Tuesday, February 18 at 7 PM Eastern on Sirius XM Channel 111 for conversation with the Wharton Total Leadership Mentor corps on that work for improving performance in all parts of life. Visit Work and Life for a full schedule of future guests.

About the Author

Morgan Motzel is an undergraduate junior in the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business at Penn focusing on Management and Latin America.

Posted on February 14, 2014 by Wharton Work/Life

Filed Under: Overwork, Stress, Women and Work | Leave a Comment

“Encore” Careers with a Lasting Impact

Contributor: Morgan Motzel

On Work and Life, Erin Owen, executive coach at Wharton, sat in as guest host for Stew Friedman and spoke with Marci Alboher, journalist/author/speaker and Vice-President of Encore.org. Alboher discusses purpose in life’s second half – what we know now and what we can do to move forward.

The following are edited excerpts of Owen’s conversation with Alboher.

Erin Owen: Let’s give our listeners some foundation for our conversation. Tell us a little bit about Encore.org, what it is, and how it works.

Marci Alboher: Encore.org is a non-profit organization spearheading the new movement of later-in-life work that combines social purpose with continued income and personal meaning. We help people who want to use the later part of their careers to make a difference in their communities and in the world. People are hitting mid-life and saying, “life is short, I want to make sure that what I do matters and that what I do contributes to the world”. At Encore, we do a lot of programs about second careers with meaning.

EO: You’ve coined the term “slashes” – give our listeners a little background on what “slashes” are and who “slashers” are.

MA: Years ago, I started noticing that it became a very trendy thing to define yourself with a lot of different “slashes.” It was happening within all strata of society. For example, celebrities like Angelina Jolie began identifying as an actress-slash-activist. We are seeing people take their passions and weave them in to these kinds of composite identities. It used to be that having multiple jobs was the purview of the very rich, who could easily move in many circles, or the working class, cash-strapped people who had to hold additional jobs as moonlighters. What’s changed is that big swaths of our society are now working in this way, and it’s happening for so many reasons. The modern world of work has involved so much free-agency, so much consultancy, so much “solo-preneuring,” that many people are taking their passions, their interests, and the causes that matter to them and figuring out ways to make very big commitments to multiple things at once. That’s where the slash idea comes from.

EO: Is that confusing for employers to see somebody like you – a lawyer/author/journalist/speaker? How would I fit you in my categories or my ideas of where you might fit in my organization?

MA: Yes, it can be confusing. When you say “fit” in an organization, I think you’re talking about a very specific issue that comes up with people who have multiple identities. If you’re looking for a traditional job, you’re really going to have to focus on the identity that fits in that situation instead of emphasizing your other identities that are irrelevant to the position. It may be that once you’re in the job, you find ways that your other identities enhance your ability to do your work. Alternatively, you may find that your other identities present ethical issues or conflicts of interests that you will have to navigate around. This is an area about which you really need to think carefully if you do choose to do multiple things. In many cases, people who do multiple things are self-employed and tend to have to worry less about those issues.

EO: So in a traditional job search situation you may need to have more than one resume customized to each of your slashes.

MA: Right, but if you have a job and you have a non-profit that you’ve founded or you’re involved on a Board for a cause you really care about, those things often really enhance your profile at work. You can find ways to involve your company in a local children’s organization in which you’re involved, for example, and you can arrange donations or leverage your work connections for fundraising. Stew Friedman talks about this with his idea of the “four-way-win” – how you can create synergy between the different domains of your life. A classic example could be someone who wants to raise money for an organization while getting in shape. They might organize a big bike ride for their company, and then suddenly they involve their kids in it so they have more family time. Throughout this, they’re raising money for their organization while at the same time raising their leadership profile at work. It’s feeding all parts of life in a multi-tasking kind of way. That’s when slashing works really nicely.

EO: We see great examples of individuals who take their own life experience, especially a challenging experience, and turn it into a wonderful organization to benefit others. How does this tie into the mission of Encore.org?

MB: One of the things we’re very interested in at Encore.org is how life experience is often the pathway to what you’re going to do next. Weaving together the strands of your life is something we see all the time. There’s this reinvention myth out there that you’re going to reinvent yourself anew out of whole cloth but so often, the strands of who we want to become are already there, and people are tying those strands together differently when they hit mid-life because they’re realizing that they are revisiting something, an earlier passion, or an earlier skill set, or a life experience that has helped shape them to where they’re going to go next.

Marci Alboher is the author of The Encore Career Handbook: How to Make a Living and a Difference in the Second Half of Life and One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success. She is also a frequent contributor to the New York Times, where she originated the “Shifting Careers” column and blog. Learn more about her work at her website: heymarci.com.

Tune in to Work and Life on Tuesday, February 11 at 7 PM Eastern on Sirius XM Channel 111 for conversations with Jessica DeGroot (WG ’94) on how couples can share caregiving to mutual advantage and then with current Wharton MBA students Pamela Freed, Nohemie Sanon, Meaghan Casey, and Kristina Milyuchikhina on how women planning business leadership roles see their future work and family lives. Visit Work and Life for a full schedule of future guests.

About the Author

Morgan Motzel is an undergraduate junior in the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business at Penn focusing on Management and Latin America.

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Wharton Work/Life

Filed Under: Meaningful Work | Leave a Comment

Manliness, No Longer Synonymous with “Macho”

Contributor: Arjan Singh

In a sea of macho stereotypes, new voices are changing the face of manhood. One of them, a niche men’s lifestyle website called The Art of Manliness, publishes articles, such as On Being Neighborly and The New Dad Survival Guide, alongside tutorials on straight-razor shaving and the art of Krav Maga. Started in 2008 by Brett McKay, a former lawyer, the site eschews the cartoonish, hyper-masculine and macho images conjured by the word “manliness” in favor of the quest to become a well-rounded man in all aspects of life (not just at the bar and the gym). In the past, men were not generally expected to have a hand in the “feminine” tasks of raising a family, such as changing diapers or cooking meals. Today, however, the role of the man is shifting.

Family and Work – Not Just a Women’s Issue

Stewart Friedman, Director of the Work/Life Integration Project, has widely discussed the pushback he received in 1987 when he introduced the topic of family to a class of MBA students. Work and family, especially at elite business schools, has long been seen as a women’s issue, if it was discussed at all. However, a September 2013 Pew Research Center study found that 550,000 American men are staying home full-time with their children – nearly double the number of that from the 1970s – and this number is expected to increase. While many young men will now grow up to become stay-at-home-dads, an also-increasing number will become parents in dual-career homes. Discussion of family and the integration of work and life seeps into the classroom and public sphere with less pushback now than in 1987, with men embracing the issue of family and work.

Time to Take Action

We need conversations by men and for men. As Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In movement goes global, work/life integration continues to seem tailored for women. Yet a March 2013 Pew Research Center study found that nearly equal proportions of fathers and mothers are struggling to “do it all.” Evidence shows that men today spend three times as much time with their children than their grandfathers did. If you’re a guy, bring to light these conversations with your friends, family and colleagues. And women – encourage the men in your lives to embrace their “manliness” and become better boyfriends, husbands, and fathers. Discussions with my peers – driven young men ages 18 to 24 – reveal that we have goals that go beyond our careers and making money. No longer are men okay with a “Cat’s in the Cradle” existence of broken homes and neglected children in order to rise professionally. Indeed, this is what Friedman observed in his 2013 book about the Work/Life Integration Project’s study of the differences between the Wharton Classes of 1992 and 2012, Baby Bust: New Choices for Men and Women in Work and Family.

Deloitte Dads, otherwise known as the Fraternity of Paternity, are an example of modern day alpha fathers who are committed to work/life integration. The men in this group focus on time management, precisely tailoring their work schedules weeks in advance, in order to create more flexibility at home. In-person meetings are often moved to conference calls and “out-of-the-office” options allow for more flexibility at work and at home. We need more groups similar to the Deloitte Dads that help men, both young and old, deal with the struggle of integrating all parts of their lives through bold and aggressive changes. Men, too, deserve to “have it all.”

For more on men and work/life integration, check out the Forum’s recap of Stew Friedman’s interview with Matt Schneider (W’97) on the rise of stay-at-home dads and their impact on families and businesses, and read about Stew’s conversation with Brad Harrington about the substantive shift in the role men play in their families and how organizations can support the “new dad.” For more conversations like these, tune in to Work and Life every Tuesday at 7 PM Eastern on Sirius XM Channel 111, “like” the Wharton Work / Life Integration Project on Facebook, and subscribe to the Forum.

About the Author

Arjan Singh is an undergraduate sophomore studying economics at The Wharton School.

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Wharton Work/Life

Filed Under: Fatherhood/Men's Roles, Millennials | Leave a Comment

The New Dad — Brad Harrington on Work and Life

Contributor: Liz Stiverson

On Work and Life, Stew Friedman spoke with Brad Harrington – research professor and Executive Director of the Center for Work and Family at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management – about the substantive shift in the role men play in their families from financial provider to equal caretaker, and how organizations can support The New Dad.

Following are edited excerpts of Harrington’s conversation with Friedman.

Stew Friedman: What are some of the major similarities and differences you’ve observed between mothers and fathers immediately after the birth of their first child?

Brad Harrington: The major differences are probably going to come as no surprise. First, becoming a father was more of an incremental experience than was becoming a mom. I remember Carol Evans from Working Mother once said that no matter how well-prepared you are, how much thought you’ve put into it, how many books you’ve read, nothing can quite prepare a woman for the experience of having a child. When that child arrives, all of a sudden all bets are off, and a woman has to re-think what she really wants to do with her life and how the work-family interplay will trade off. For men, the experience is more gradual. We’ve seen in multiple studies that men take only a few days off following the birth of their first child; 16% of men say they didn’t take a single day off.

SF: Is that because they didn’t want to, or because they didn’t feel it was legitimate for them to do so?

BH: It’s some of both, but I would put more onus on the men than I would on the organizations. The majority of men, 76%, took a week off or less, and 96% took two weeks off or less. Only one out of 20 men are spending more than 10 working days at home with their newborns. That contrasts, of course, with the experience of women, who on average take 12-14 weeks, and can often stretch a maternity leave to six months. There isn’t paid leave in most organizations, and there certainly isn’t paid leave across the board in the United States. Although we might say these men would have to take some time off without pay, that’s a sacrifice women have been making for years. One of the ways in which men and women are different is that women spend much more time in the first months of the child’s life bonding with the child, flying solo as a parent, really connecting with that little person. Men don’t have an opportunity to do that, and once they miss that initial opportunity, they are already moving down the path of being a supporting actor to the mother as primary player within the first few weeks and months of the child’s life.

SF: What can organizations do to really make a difference and move us forward on this front?

BH: If organizations can get a data point on where men are these days in their attitudes about work and satisfaction with their careers as well as professional aspirations and their role as parents, they would be quite surprised about the reality of the stereotype they hold about men and their career motivations. In particular, that men have a singular focus on their contribution to the family as the provider is a stereotype that is outdated. When we surveyed men at four major Fortune 500 companies, we looked at six criteria on being a good father and asked which was most important to them. One of the criteria was being a good financial provider. Of the six, that criterion came out fifth in the rating of importance to being a good father. More salient than being a good provider were being present and visible in the child’s life, being a good coach and role model, being a good mentor, and providing love and emotional support. If these new paradigms for young men were apparent to leaders in organizations, they would start to say, “Gee, we might need to really rethink our assumptions.”

Becky (caller from California): My husband and I have two daughters, a 22-year-old and a 19-year-old, and when they were born in 1991 and 1994, it was not very popular to have reversed roles. My husband and I reversed roles out of necessity – I had a standard job with retirement and benefits, and he was self-employed. We faced stigma and lost family and friends who said, “How dare he stay home and babysit while his wife works.”

BH: That stigma is very real, and sometimes it comes from the people closest to the men affected. Their parents and friends say, “You’ve dropped out of the workplace to stay home with your kid? When are you going to get back to your job to make money to support the family?” But usually, over a period of time, more people get up close and see how well this arrangement is working not only for the wife but for the husband and the children. After that people are much more accepting.

As one of my colleagues said, it isn’t about gender, it’s about competence. When women entered the workplace in large numbers in professional and managerial roles 30 years ago, we looked through a lens of “Can women make it? Can women be successful? Are women ambitious enough?” Over the past 30 years we’ve come to realize that it wasn’t gender, it was competence. When women were able to display their competence in leading, negotiating, facilitating, and analyzing, people stopped talking about whether women’s gender allowed them to be good enough in the workplace; it was simply about whether they were competent.

So often – especially in the media – we talk about men in the context of the family in disparaging ways. “He’s 100% committed to his career,” “He wouldn’t know what to do if we left him at home with the kids,” “He’s babysitting today,” “A man could never possibly fix his daughter’s hair or get her ready for school, or find clothes that match for his children.” If we talked about women in the workplace the way we talk about men in the home, we’d be sued for that, and rightly so. The jokes women had to put up with 30 years ago are the jokes men are still putting up with today. We see commercials where men sit around and drink beers with their friends when the wife leaves her husband at home alone and chaos ensues; we don’t see very many commercials of men being competent at caregiving and parenting.

SF: What is the most important advice you would give your kids so that they can have the opportunity to create lives for themselves and decide how they’ll contribute to the world?

BH: Don’t get stuck in a paradigm and assume the way things are is the way things need to be. It’s all about individual choice and having the courage to follow your convictions.

Brad Harrington is the author of Career Management & Work Life Integration: Using Self-Assessment to Navigate Contemporary Careers; learn more about his research in his 2013 white paper The New Dad: A Work (and Life) in Progress.

Tune in to Work and Life next Tuesday, February 11 at 7 PM Eastern on Sirius XM Channel 111 for conversations with Jessica DeGroot (WG ’94) and current Wharton MBA students Pamela Freed, Nohemie Sanon, and Meaghan Casey on how couples can share caregiving to mutual advantage and how women planning business leadership roles see their future work and family lives. Visit Work and Life for a full schedule of future guests.

About the Author

Liz Stiverson is a 2014 MBA candidate at The Wharton School.

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Wharton Work/Life

Filed Under: Fatherhood/Men's Roles, Gender Roles, Research | 1 Comment

Separators, Integrators, and Cyclers — Ellen Kossek on Work and Life

Contributor: Alice Liu

Work and Life is a two-hour radio show hosted by Stew Friedman, director of the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project, on Sirius XM’s Channel 111. Every Tuesday from 7 to 9 PM EST, Stew speaks with everyday people and the world’s leading experts about creating harmony among work, home, community and the private self.

On Work and Life, Stew Friedman spoke with Dr. Ellen Kossek, the Basil S. Turner Professor of Management at Purdue University and Research Director at the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence, about focusing on high-value tasks, setting boundaries, and taking small breaks to recover and enhance long-term productivity at work and at home. Following are edited excerpts of Kossek’s conversation with Friedman.

Stew Friedman: How did you first get into the field of work and life?

Ellen Kossek: I was a PhD student at Yale. I had been married about three years, and right in the busiest time of my fourth year of school, I was pregnant and about to have my first child. If I had taken any time off, I would have been stigmatized and I would have lost my fellowship, so I stuck it out. I think a lot of our choices as leaders stem from what happens in our own lives. I became passionate about wanting to make organizational changes to help others. I focused on this in my dissertation, and I never looked back.

SF: What is a healthy organization?

EK: A healthy organization provides social support to employees on the job. I think managers and workers need to support each other both with daily tasks and with recognizing when people have to handle their own difficulties. It’s actually family-friendly if you have a boss who is very clear about what matters most for high-value work. There are some things that really add a lot of bang for the buck to the company.

SF: Focusing on high-value of tasks can make a big difference. Is that something you see happening in your work?

EK: Very much so. If we feel like we have to redesign our whole life or change the company’s whole culture, change will never occur. One of the other things I’ve looked at is boundary management.

SF: What exactly do you mean by “boundary”?

EK: Well, we have psychological and physical boundaries in how we organize our roles and parts of our life. Even when some of us are physically at home, psychologically we might still be at the office. For example, if we are at dinner, we might see that email coming in on a smart phone. The small thing I’ve tried to focus on is to be in the moment, especially for high-value tasks. We know we shouldn’t text while we drive – why do we think we can look at our smart phones while we are listening to a friend or our family member?

SF: But people are expecting immediate responses to emails and texts, so isn’t creating that boundary particularly challenging in today’s digital age?

EK: Part of it is setting expectations and filtering. Most of the time we can wait a little bit. When people go away on vacation, sometimes they’ll send a message saying, “I’m out of the office for the holidays, if this is an emergency, contact me. Otherwise, I’ll talk to you in January.” I think we make ourselves more important than we need to be. We might be less stressed and get more done if we didn’t keep moving back and forth.

SF: So how does this relate to your study of boundary management?

EK: There are three different ways that we manage boundaries. First are “separators” – these are people who like to manage boundaries by working in chunks. For example, I’m trying to teach myself to be more of a separator by not sneaking a glance at my email on the weekends when I am taking a break. Another group is the “integrators” – people who are switching back and forth between personal and work all the time, and it’s one big blur. Some of them are fusion-lovers and in high control, and others are reactors, always feeling pushed and pulled by different communications. The last group is what I call the “cyclers”. They’re people that switch back and forth in patterns. Sometimes they have periods of high separation when they would really like to be able to integrate more. Think about somebody going on a big business trip. They’re forced to separate at times when they don’t want to. And when they come back from that trip, all of their personal life comes down on them. They would like to have fewer peaks and valleys.

SF: So what do the “cyclers” do?

EK: Some of them get very depressed and have a crisis. I think sometimes if we don’t take little breaks we just shut down. If you feel stressed, if you feel cranky, if your mood is difficult, it may be time to take a small break. One way to do this is to take advantage of transition times. For example, a woman I spoke to who works at an East Coast bank has a seventy-five minute commute each day. She says, “I love it, because I put on National Public Radio and start planning my weekend.” Most of our transitions are shortening. We’re on the phone while we are commuting. The vanishing vacation – or the vanishing weekend – is one of the problems many people are facing.

SF: How do you advise people to manage the problem of the vanishing vacation?

EK: If you never take a weekend off, there are health effects. In fact, there have been studies coming out of Europe that show your productivity on a Monday morning can be higher if you’ve taken a break over the weekend. Making time to exercise or doing things that you love that make you feel relaxed, and can enhance your productivity. Having breaks can be linked to recovery. If everybody is slogging along with 60-hour work weeks, it can hurt your creativity and well-being.

SF: But to play devil’s advocate here, don’t you get more done if people are working longer?

EK: In the short run, yes, but in the long-run, you burn your talent out. To have long-term change, you need to train leaders. You also need to have teams and co-workers and individuals relate to each other authentically and have conversations about how we are at work to support the company in a way that allows people to be all that they can be in their total life. Part of this dialogue is encouraging people to bring their identities to work, whether that’s mother, father, LBGT, older worker, married, divorced, runner, etc. and backing each other up.

Ellen Kossek has been among the most prolific researchers in the work-life-family sphere and is a mother of four. She is the President of the Work Family Researchers Network and the author of CEO of Me: Creating a Life that Works in the Flexible Job Age.

Tune in to Work and Life on Tuesday, February 4 at 7 PM Eastern on Sirius XM Channel 111 for conversations with Marci Alboher and Katrina Alcorn. Visit Work and Life for a full schedule of future guests.

About the Author

Alice Liu is a senior studying Management at The Wharton School and English (Creative Writing) at the College of Arts & Sciences.

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Wharton Work/Life

Filed Under: Overwork, Research, Stress | Leave a Comment

Dads as Primary Caregivers – Breaking Down Stereotypes with Matt Schneider on Work and Life

Contributor: Kate Mesrobian

On Work and Life on Sirius XM’s Business Radio Powered by The Wharton School, Stew Friedman spoke with Matt Schneider, co-founder and co-organizer of NYC Dads Group, about the rise of stay-at-home dads and new choices for men and women in work and family. NYC Dads Group exists as a meet-up community that gives stay-at-home fathers the opportunity to socialize and support each other in their role as primary caregivers. Matt Schneider spoke about breaking down through new marketing, social media engagement, and work place innovation.

Following are edited excerpts of Schneider’s conversation with Friedman.

SF: What were the things Dads cared most about when you started meet-ups with other stay-at-home dads?

MS: We cared about the same things any caring parent would care about. We had meet-ups about what dads were feeding their kids, potty training, choosing a preschool… Being good parents was first and foremost a priority.

SF: This was not something you were trained in your early lives to pay a lot of attention to, I imagine.

MS: I would say few of us, men or women, train to be parents or homemakers. We had caring parents as role models, but growing up in the 70s and 80s, women weren’t trained to be homemakers, either. There was simply an expectation that they could fill that role. Men and women are both scared as they jump into this thing called parenting. Our philosophy is: We’re all in this together. Let’s learn together how to be good parents, and make sure that neither one of us takes on too much of the role and pushes the other out.

SF: What else was on your minds when you got together as dads in the role of the primary caregiver?

MS: We thought of ourselves as a community. It was crazy to think that men could get together to talk and share ideas. Men don’t get together anymore. Developing community became important to us. We also have a lot of working dads who want to re-enter the work force.

SF: So this is not just about stay-at-home dads, this is about dads as primary- caregivers or equal partners in caregiving.

MS: Exactly. According to the Census Bureau, as of last year there are about 189,000 stay-at-home dads. But the Census defines stay-at-home dad as someone who does not make a dollar over the course of the entire year. The reality is there are a lot of dads out there that have part time jobs, so the number of a stay-at-home dads is much greater than one thinks. We have a wide range of dads in our group.

SF: What do you see as the primary driver for why society is changing in the way that it has with respect to the role of fathers?

MS: I think it has changed in some ways, and in some ways it hasn’t. The great news is that mothers and fathers who are making these decisions together are making good financial decisions. They are not being held back by gender stereotypes from the past. They decide whose career to rely on to provide for the family and who should step back. Today, there are a lot more dads who are thinking of themselves in a secondary bread-winner role because women have increased in the work force.

SF: What do you mean by a secondary work role? Secondary with respect to what?

MS: I now consider myself a work-at-home dad, but my career is secondary to my wife’s career. Every day I work a certain number of hours. The rest of my time is spent taking care of my kids, doing laundry, planning meals, shopping for groceries, and all that type of stuff. My wife and I made that plan before we were married. You should have this conversation before marriage. I was never forced into the situation; I was the one interested in the situation.

Caller from Denver: I love what you have founded, turning a simple meet up into a large organization. What advice or suggestions do you have to bring what you’re doing to other places?

MS: There are great groups like ours across the country. There’s a national organization – National At-Home Dad Network that has a listing of all the “dad groups” across the country

SF: How do you respond to stereotypes?

MS: Pop culture has been a big part of the problem for so long. Guys have been portrayed in the movies, TV, the media, as buffoons: duct-taping diapers together, wearing a gas mask until mom gets home and saves the day. We hear from moms all the time that they want a partner, not a husband portrayed as a buffoon. Many brands are recognizing that dads are a big part of the equation.

SF: And you’re helping some of these brands, aren’t you?

MS: We are. We will have meet-ups across the country this year where brands get to meet our dads directly. Our dads will use their products, tell them what we think, and share our thoughts over our blog and social media.

SF: How have you used social media?

MS: Other men now have license to say, “Wow, I can be the one holding our baby, pushing the stroller.” To me, the term “manly” is so weird. I think it’s manly to do what makes sense for your family. In so many cases it makes sense for both to jump in. I know my wife could not do the job she does if I weren’t at home with our children. I don’t want to take credit for her talents and success. She works in private equity and real estate. She worked at Goldman Sachs. These are very demanding, work-oriented environments. These are not people who prioritize work/life integration. She has had to devote herself to her career, and our joint decision for me to stay home has enabled that. So for good or bad she has been able to be very successful, and together, we have created the life we are looking for in New York. That’s not to say she isn’t an excellent mother as well. She jumps right in to parenting. And who knows? She might have to take a step back from her career. We talked about it before we got married. If it wasn’t working for me, we would talk and change.

SF: You set aside time to talk about these things regularly?

MS: With all decisions – financial, parenting – we talk. We are by no means perfect. We argue. We fight. But we try to make these decisions together. I actually don’t think there’s anything special in the way we communicate. The same kind of communication should happen with stay-at-home moms and bread-winning dads. We teach classes for expecting dads, and the first thing we say is don’t allow yourself to get pushed out of that parenting role. It sounds like a great short-term, easy solution to get diapers changed by mom. But it turns out that those moments of changing your child’s diapers are pretty special. That’s when your relationship develops. It’s the day-to-day moments we need to be a part of, and we encourage dads to get in the game. It’s rewarding to be an involved, active dad, and necessary from a parenting and partnership perspective. Both of you need to be capable of getting the stuff done.

Matt Schneider, a former public school teacher, is an at-home dad who lives with his wife and two boys in New York City. He is the co-founder of NYC Dads Group. He plans workshops, screenings, and lectures with parenting, family, and education experts on behalf of the group. Matt has written for New York Family magazine, Huffington Post, Big Apple Parent, Role/Reboot, and The Good Men Project. For more information about being a stay-at-home dad and for ways to connect with other stay-at-home dads, visit NYC Dads Group online or refer to the National At-Home Dad Network.

Join Work and Life next Tuesday February 4 at 7 PM on Sirius XM Channel 111 for conversations with Marci Alboher (Penn ’88), on finding purpose and meaning later in life and Katrina Alcorn, on strategies to manage the stress that comes from trying to have it all. for a full schedule of future guests.

About the Author

Kate Mesrobian is a sophomore in the Huntsman Program in Business and International Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Wharton Work/Life

Filed Under: Fatherhood/Men's Roles, Gender Roles, Women Primary Breadwinners | Leave a Comment

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