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Balancing Work and Family

 Michael Zigarelli

From: Christianity 9 to 5 (Beacon Hill Press, 1997)

Michelle stood at the bay window, staring out into the neighborhood.  With each passing set of headlights, she grew a little more impatient.  She wasn't worried that something had happened to Mark - twelve to fourteen hour work days had become pretty standard over the past several years.  She was just a bit lonely and eager to see her husband.  After briefly returning her eyes to the television, she heard a car door close.

 

"Hi there stranger!" Michelle greeted him with a cheery grin. "You want some dinner?"

 

Mark returned a warm but sagging smile, dropped his briefcase and removed his tie. "Already ate," he said. "But thanks anyway. I missed the kids again, didn't I?"

 

"Well it is 9:30.  Ryan colored this picture for you, though.  I told him you'd hang it in your office."

 

Admiring the multi-colored scribbles, Mark sadly shook his head.  This was the third day in a week he hadn't seen his son at all.  And his ten-month old daughter seemed to barely know who he was.  He peeked into the nursery and then stepped into Ryan's bedroom.  "He's getting so big," Mark thought as he adjusted Ryan's blanket and kissed him on the head.  "Where is the time going?"

 

"Can I at least fix you a snack?" offered Michelle as Mark returned.

 

"Thanks, but I'm absolutely beat," he replied, glancing at the mail on the kitchen counter.  "And I've got to catch a plane at 7:00.  I just need to turn in."

For millions of people everyday, this sad scenario is not fiction.  With only so many hours in a day, the more we spend at work, the fewer we have for our loved ones.  It's a zero-sum game that's not much fun to play.

Balancing work and family responsibilities has been a challenge ever since God commanded Adam to work in the Garden of Eden.  Did you ever find it interesting that in that very same chapter of Genesis, God gave him a wife?  Within three little verses, Adam goes from having the whole world at his feet and nothing to do but name the animals, to having both a full-time job and a full-time spouse.  Welcome to the world, son.  Here's a shovel and a wedding ring!

The proximity of these two Biblical events, I would suggest, foreshadowed the timeless juggling act that would be inherent to man.  The Lord created work and family in the same breath and His first instruction was for us to attend both.  Hence, the tension.  How much time and energy do we devote to each?  Does one have priority over the other?

Indeed one does.  The scriptures speak generously to the eminence of marriage and family in both the Old and New Testaments.  Beyond Genesis, and most notably, Christ Himself put His full weight behind the sacred nuptial union, underscoring that husband and wife are to become one flesh, that nothing should separate them, and that divorce is almost always prohibited (e.g., Mark 10, Matt. 19).  These are not simply disposable relationships, He teaches us; rather, marriage and family are absolutely central to the Lord's blueprint for civilization.  Accordingly, for these God-ordained institutions to be protected and nurtured, we must respect the priority of family over work as well as over all our other earthly endeavors.

For Christians, this is a no-brainer, though.  We know this to be axiomatic.  Still, many of us do not heed.  Notwithstanding the directives of the Bible, for many, the only place where family comes before work is in the dictionary.

And the problem seems to be getting worse.  According to a large 1994 study by researchers at the University of Maryland, parents now spend an average of 17 hours per week with their children, down 40 percent from 1965.  Parents, however, are not necessarily comfortable with that.  Sixty-six percent of over 3,300 adults recently surveyed by the Families and Work Institute, a non-profit research group in New York, said they wanted more time with their kids.  A lot of children are uneasy with this situation, too.  In 1996, Gary Bauer's Family Research Council reported results from a children's poll indicating that almost one in three children ages 8 to 12 say that they do not spend enough time with their fathers.

Many variables contribute to these numbers, but prominent among them is the sacrifice of family for job and career.  This sacrifice, of course, is not always by choice: sometimes we see no alternative but to compromise family time.  After all, a family needs to eat.  It needs to have a roof over its head.  And, more generally, we continually need to respect the unambiguous admonishment of 1 Timothy 5:8 : "If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."  Financial need certainly constrains many of us to spend more time away from home than we'd like.

As does the related issue of job security.  Some of us are employed in jobs where if we do not put in the requisite, oppressive number of hours, we'll soon be unemployed.  As a result, for the sake of the family, we are often physically absent from them.

However, some Christians have indeed made a choice - consciously or not - to permit work needs to dominate family needs.  Why would someone choose such a lifestyle?  For some, it is because work provides a much needed escape from the exhausting obligations of home life.  Anyone who's a parent - especially the parent of young children - knows that one's job can, in fact, be much less physically and emotionally demanding than life at home.  The real work, according to these folks, takes place on the weekends and in the evenings.  Consequently, their credo has become: "Thank God it's Monday!"

For others, the culprit is a basic human need for self-esteem.  We all have an intrinsic desire to feel that we matter, that we're important and valuable.  And when nothing on the home front seems to meet this need, most of us find something else that will.  Sometimes that "something else" is another person, and other times, that void is filled through investing inordinate amounts of time in one's career, tallying ego-boosting achievements.

Relatedly, some people, actually many people, choose work over family simply because they are engaged in the incessant quest to conquer the world - to gain power, status, money, possessions and the admiration of man.  Because the reward structure in most organizations is such that one rises faster and higher if one works 80 hours a week, pursuit of these prideful or greedy objectives - even the seemingly noble pursuit of securing many luxuries for our family - often entails making some wrong choices with respect to family time.  These choices may appear rational and defensible when they are first made, but later in life reveal themselves as abysmal, even tragic decisions.  Most of us have known at least one successful individual who has late in life regretted slighting family to ascend the corporate ladder.

Besides the possibility of a few regrets, though, what is the earthly price of permitting work to come before family?  Is it really that exorbitant?  Consider briefly just a few of the effects on marriages and children directly attributable to such choices.

When Work Is a Higher Priority Than Your Marriage

Not too long ago, a friend of mine confided in me that he and his wife were experiencing a bit of an estrangement.  I can't say that I was exactly shocked.  For years, Kent had been on the road as least as much as he was home.  It was simply part of his job as a sales representative.  And on the days that he was in town, he seldom returned from work without plenty to keep him occupied.  He loved his wife, there was no doubt in his mind about that, but she was becoming increasingly aloof.  Whereas they once had once had little trouble talking late into the night, now they seemed to have almost nothing to discuss and few common interests.

"Katie's been working a lot, too," he told me.  "More now than ever.  And she's stopped hinting at having kids.  Doesn't even want to practice at it, if you know what I mean.  I guess we're just growing apart."

I would hasten to guess that this conversation, in various forms, takes place thousands of times every day.  And I would further conjecture that the vast majority of the problems are rooted in the same things: failure to nurture the marriage and to treat it as a top priority in one's life.  If you don't water a plant, it will whither and eventually die.

Now, that's not terribly profound.  But no profundity and certainly no Ph.D. in counseling is required to diagnose this problem.  Kent and Katie were growing apart because, in large part, they stopped trying to grow together.  They plain and simply were not spending enough time together and had long-abandoned their attempts to meet each other's needs.  The work-family imbalance may have caused the problem, or it may have just been a symptom of a broader problem, but that was now immaterial.  If Kent permitted the imbalance to persist, it would operate like a choke hold on his marriage.

Don and Sally Meredith, in their book Two…Becoming One, describe four steps to the decay of a marriage: Romanticism, Reality, Resentment, and Rebellion.  Twenty-something Kent slid rapidly through this very progression.  A few weeks after our initial conversation on the subject, we had a second, significantly uglier one that started something like this:  "Mike, I know what you're gonna say, but I've just got to tell somebody about this!  I met the girl of my dreams at work.  She's unbelievable - a new trainee right out of college, and..."

Pathetic.  Woefully and egregiously pathetic.  Kent was now in open rebellion and embarking on a sordid affair whose storyline would read like something from daytime TV: frequent trysts, an unwanted pregnancy, an abortion, a suspicious wife who hired a detective, a desperate, last-ditch attempt at reconciliation, and ultimately, a highly-contentious divorce.

Placing work ahead of marriage does not guarantee infidelity, but it sure produces some fertile ground for it.  Many people reading this know it to be true from painful, first-hand experience; others can glean the connection directly from scripture.  Writing to the Church at Corinth, for example, Paul warns married couples not to allow anything to wedge itself between them - neither work nor children nor anything else - and to avoid extended periods of emotional or physical separation "so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control" (1 Cor. 7:5).  Permitting work to be an interloper in one's marriage fuels temptation.

It can then fuel sin as we, like Kent, acquiesce to that temptation.  When someone experiences perpetual discontentment at home, the workplace can quickly become the Enemy's playground.  It is here that we have many close friendships with members of the opposite sex.  It is here that we share with co-workers common trials that have the curious effect of bonding us.  And it is here that we usually see people at their most attractive.  For those who travel on business, the temptation becomes even more intense.  There's nothing like a lonely hotel room in Atlanta to get some unhappily-married person's mind wandering.

But regardless of whether working too much culminates in adultery, couples who sacrifice marriage for career often find themselves before a judge.  Indeed, the highest divorce rates in America exist among those whose careers are just starting to take shape: for men the highest rates exist in the 30-34 age group and for women, it is the 25-29 range.  Failure to keep spouse and job in proper priority invites at best a lackluster marital relationship and, quite often as the marriage unravels, a broken home and a broken life.

When Work Is a Higher Priority Than Your Kids

In his humorous but insightful book, Fatherhood, Bill Cosby writes:

"There is no commitment in the world like having children.  Even though they will drive you to consider commitment of another kind, the value of family still cannot be measured....This commitment, of course, cannot be a part-time thing.  The mother may be doing ninety percent of the disciplining, but the father still must have a full-time acceptance of all of the children.  He must never say, 'Get these kids out of here; I'm trying to watch TV.'  If he ever does start saying this, he is liable to see one of his kids on the six o'clock news."

There's a poignant truth in that wit.  How many kids bum around the neighborhood or roam our town and city streets with nothing to do after school?  How many children - even in two-parent homes - are starving for attention and seeking self-esteem in all the wrong places through all the wrong behaviors?  Far too many.  And the lion's share of the problem traces its roots, again, to the number of hours we invest in our jobs and, more broadly, to our frenetic pace of life.

What is the effect of this lifestyle on a child?  James Dobson, considered by many to be America's foremost family counselor, writes in Raising Children:

"The inevitable loser from this life in the fast lane is the little guy who is leaning against a wall with his hands in the pockets of his blue jeans.  He misses his father during the long days and tags around after him at night, saying, "Play ball, Dad!"  But Dad is pooped.  Besides, he has a briefcase full of work to be done.  Mom had promised to take him to the park this afternoon, but then she had to go to the Women's Auxiliary meeting at the last minute.  The lad gets the message - his folks are busy again.  So he drifts into the family room and watches two hours of pointless cartoons and reruns on television.

            "Children don't just fit into a 'to do' list very well.  It takes time to be an effective parent when children are small.  It takes time to introduce them to good books - it takes time to fly kites and play punch ball and put together jigsaw puzzles.  It takes time to listen, once more, to the skinned-knee episode and talk about the bird with the broken wing.  These are the building blocks of esteem, held together with the mortar of love.  But they seldom materialize amidst busy timetables.  Instead, crowded lives produce fatigue - and fatigue produces irritability - and irritability produces indifference - and indifference can be interpreted by the child as a lack of genuine affection and personal esteem..."

What a shame when this happens.  And how counter-scriptural this lifestyle.  Psalm 127 counsels us that: "Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children are a reward from him.  Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth.  Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them..." (vv. 3-5).  God, through Solomon, instructs that we are to treat our children as a reward and a blessing - not as a burden, not as one more thing to do among all of our other duties in life, and not as something of equal importance to our work.  They are a divine gift and we are charged to nurture them as such.

One person who appeared to have some difficulty applying this truth was Solomon's father.  The life of King David demonstrates that even an exceptional CEO who is "a man after (God's) own heart" (1 Sam. 13:14) can completely screw up his family.  Although David's name has become synonymous with giant-killing, with effective military leadership, and, of course, with adultery, his story also affords us some critical work-family lessons in the area of child rearing.

David's a guy who seemingly spent entirely too much time at the office.  The Book of Second Samuel tells us that during the first twenty years of his reign, between the ages of thirty and fifty, he was an overwhelming success, conquering thousands and bringing tremendous economic prosperity to Israel.  But then in the second half of the book, we learn of several family debacles.  His son Amnon commits rape and David does nothing about the crime.  After two years of David's inaction, another of his sons, Abselom, takes justice into his own hands and murders Amnon.  Abselom then turns the nation against David, sending his father into exile.  Such a calamitous sequence of events implicates family neglect: the failure to instill Godly values in children, the failure to reprove their sinful behavior, and the failure to cultivate a loving, respectful child-parent relationship.  David, it seems, may have been too preoccupied with his work to treat his children a reward - to spend time with them and to train them properly.  Consequently, he reaped the tribulations that are sown by parental indifference.

The central lesson here is that a child's position in his or her parents' pecking order of priorities is absolutely determinative of that child's growth and development.  You can be remarkably successful in the workplace, surmounting the middle management ceiling, accumulating extraordinary wealth and possessions, garnering the veneration of the world, and even doing beneficent things with your treasures.  But if you're not attentive to the home, when you later search your quiver, you may find the arrows blunt, warped, or missing altogether. 

Tips for Striking a Better Work-Family Balance

For the exhausted person attempting to juggle these many balls, what's the answer?  The starting point, I would suggest, is to step back and take an inventory of your life to ascertain if an imbalance between work and family life indeed exists.  Which has first priority?  As one measure, for the next few weeks, keep some mental notes regarding what's on your mind when you're at work versus when you're at home.  Do you find yourself thinking more about your work while you're at home than you do thinking about your spouse and kids while you're at work?  If so, it may indicate inverted priorities.  As another measure, ask your spouse, your kids, your closer co-workers, your other friends, and anyone else who might be able to offer an objective opinion on the matter, whether they think family comes before work in your life.  Listen to them carefully without arguing and then prayerfully weigh the evidence to establish whether an adjustment is warranted.

Some people have this priority thing mastered and would be much better candidates to write on this subject than is this author.  For the rest of us, though, after undertaking this introspective study, we'll need to pro-actively respond to strike a better work-family balance.

To shift that balance back to family, step one is to make a commitment to God that our life priorities will be God, then family, then work.  Getting on one's knees and making such a vow is pivotal - it will make or break this endeavor - because it prompts us to take this lifestyle modification seriously.  It compels us to forge ahead, to earnestly pursue this, and to persevere when it inevitably becomes inconvenient.  Making this promise to God is a watershed event that will undergird and perpetuate this difficult transformation.

Having made this vow, there are then several affirmative steps we can take to keep us on the correct path:

Be Accountable To Your Spouse

Nationally-respected counselors Gary Smalley and John Trent, in their book Love Is A Decision, furnish us with a simple yet effective technique for keeping spouse and work in proper priority.  Smalley writes of the turning point in his marriage:

"...I actually began to prioritize my life from zero to ten, zero being something of little value, ten something of highest value.

            "I established God and my relationship with Christ as the highest - a ten.  On a consistent basis, I began looking to my spiritual life and asking the question, 'One to ten, where is my spiritual life with Christ?' 'How highly do I value His Word?' 'Prayer?' 'Sharing my faith?'

            "Then I placed Norma above everything else on this earth, way up in the high nines.  With this relationship, too, I often asked myself (and Norma), 'How am I doing at making you feel like you're up in the high nines, above every one of my hobbies and friends and favorite sports teams?  What can I do to keep you believing you're a high nine?'"

For many, conceptualizing issues - even relationship issues - in numeric terms is useful.  Quantifying the relative priority of our spouses (something that Smalley and Trent call the "honor quotient") and regularly asking our spouse to evaluate it constructively, acts as a check against permitting other things in our life to become more important.  If we have historically allowed work or hobbies or even children to take precedence over our marriage, being accountable to keep one's spouse feeling like a "high nine" minimizes the chance of backsliding into our old way of doing things. 

Think In Terms Of Presence, Not Presents

Many people work an incredible number of hours so they can give their families the best of everything - the best house, the best food, the best clothes, the best toys, the best education, the best car and so on.  Meanwhile, though, they neglect to offer the best of themselves.  In addressing this topic with the wife of a man who worked feverishly so he could buy luxuries for his family, Billy Graham in Answers to Life's Problems, writes:

"It is surprisingly easy for some men (and women) to fall into your husband's trap, without ever really thinking about or realizing how illogical it is.  For example, if you were to ask most of them why they work so diligently to give their families financial security, they would say it is because they love them.  But they fail to see that never spending time with their children and spouse (as well as working themselves into an early grave) is the most unloving thing they can do.

            "Your husband needs to readjust his priorities.  Yes, he has a responsibility to provide financially for his family.  But he also has a God-given responsibility to provide for the emotional and spiritual welfare of his family - and he cannot do that if he is totally preoccupied with money and things..."

It is one thing to work extra hours to buy necessities, it's quite another to voluntarily choose additional work time for indulgence sake.  When faced with the option to work more than is required, never forget that your family needs you presence more than they need your presents.

Provide Both Quality and Quantity Time

All too often, we parents permit ourselves to work excessively under the assumption - the dangerously fallacious assumption - that the quantity of time left for our kids does not matter so long as there is quality in the time we actually spend with them.  Let me again defer to James Dobson's Raising Children for the best analogy I've ever heard illustrating the folly in such reasoning:

"Let's suppose you are very hungry, having eaten nothing all day.  You select the best restaurant in the city and ask the waiter for the finest steak in his menu.  He replies that the filet mignon is the house favorite, and you order it charcoal-broiled, medium rare.  The waiter returns twenty minutes later with the fare and sets it before you.  There in the center of a large plate is a lonely piece of meat, one inch square, flanked by a single piece of potato.

            "You complain vigorously to the waiter, 'Is this what you call a steak dinner?'

            "He then replies, 'Sir, how can you criticize us before you taste that meat?  I have brought you one square inch of the finest steak money can buy.  It is cooked to perfection, salted with care, and served while hot.  In fact, I doubt you could get a better piece of meat anywhere in the city.  I'll admit that the serving is small, but after all, sir, everyone knows that it isn't the quantity that matters; it's the quality that counts in steak dinners.'

            "'Nonsense!' you reply, and I certainly agree.  You see, the subtlety of this simple phrase is that it puts two necessary virtues in opposition to one another and invites us to choose between them.  If quantity and quality are worthwhile ingredients in our family relationships, then why not give our kids both?  It is insufficient to toss our 'hungry' children an occasional bite of steak, even if it is prime, corn-fed filet mignon.

            "Without meaning any disrespect...my concern is that the quantity-versus-quality cliché has become, perhaps, a rationalization for giving our kids neither!  This phrase has been bandied about by over-committed and harassed parents who feel guilty about the lack of time they spend with their children.  Their boys and girls are parked in child care centers during the day and with baby-sitters at night, leaving little time for traditional parenting activities.  And to handle the discomfort of neglecting their children, Mom and Dad cling to a catch phrase that makes it seem so healthy and proper. 'Well, you know, it's not the quantity of time that matters, it's the quality of your togetherness that counts.'  I maintain that this convenient generalization simply will not hold water."

To guard against falling into this trap, it is useful to set aside some non-negotiable time to be with your family everyday.  Make it your personal policy to be with your kids for, say, two or three hours each work day.  And rigidly stand by it.  Consider this time when nothing else can be scheduled.  Creating such a policy for yourself will have the effect of constraining your work life to meet your home schedule, rather than the more typical converse.  For certain, there will be those days when, because work takes you out of town or because there's a deadline fast approaching, you must make an exception, but these days should be rare. 

Relatedly, because meal time is so integral to family bonding and growth, make it your goal to average two meals per work day with your family.  Again, during some weeks this will be impossible, but most of the time, the goal is attainable.

Lastly, do not work on the Sabbath.  This, of course, is not simply a personal policy option that creates more home time, it is a Biblical guideline. It is a practice by which we honor the Lord and our family simultaneously.  But what if your boss requires Sabbath work?  Consider standing firm. Tell him no. It simply is not within the realm of possibilities because God has proscribed it.  And if he threatens your job?  The law protects you - somewhat.  As long as accommodating your religious needs does not impose more than a minimal cost on your employer, under law he cannot take any adverse action against you.

If Necessary, Cut Back On Work Responsibilities

Making more time for family means compromising time somewhere else in life.  We've been saying in this chapter that if work is consuming the majority of your waking hours, this is the logical place to compromise.

"But, time out here!" some will protest.  "Cutting my work hours means either cutting my responsibilities, working faster during the time I do have at work, or reducing the quality of my work.  I'm already working as fast as I can and, if I consider my work as something to honor God, I can't sacrifice quality.  That leaves cutting responsibilities and if I do that, my career will stagnate."

Those who have control over the amount of work they perform (and there are now many white collar and blue collar folks in this position) will eventually face some hard choices.  Once we vow to shift our priorities, we may find that the only way we can be faithful to that vow is to simplify our work lives, to back off some of the projects, to forego the promotion, and indeed to subordinate our career aspirations to family needs.  The Lord calls us to put our pride and ambition and greed on a shelf.  He candidly forewarns us that "A greedy man brings trouble to his family" (Prov. 15:27).  Putting family first, therefore, entails confronting our carnal desires and willfully making whatever career sacrifices are necessary.

Ask God for Help

Never forget that the Lord is your ally in this endeavor and that he wants you to succeed.  While you're on your knees making that vow we discussed earlier, ask the Lord to guide your thoughts, your words and your actions.  Ask Him to help you overcome your sinful nature so that you can see clearly to make the right choices.  Return to this prayer regularly and He will shepherd you to a victorious new lifestyle.

This Comes With a Price and a Promise

That Sunday morning, Mark, as always, sat in the fourth pew with his family.  As he waited for the service to begin, he perused the bulletin to see what this week's message would be.  From the sermon's title, "Coming Home," Mark thought the congregation would be treated yet again to an invitation to turn their lives over to Christ.  As the sermon unfolded, though, Pastor Thompson's preaching instead targeted Mark's current trial.

Whether it was the Pastor's eloquence on the value of family, his citation of divorce statistics, or his anecdotes about people whose families had disintegrated because career was their idol, something resonated with Mark.  He knew it was time to make a choice, God's choice.

Later that day, Mark took his family to the park for a picnic and while saying grace, vowed to the Lord and to his family that no matter what, his priorities would change.

If there is one thing that Christian employees need to consider daily, it is the extent to which work time displaces family time.  It's often laborious to ponder and even more exacting to address - perhaps the most difficult element of applying Christianity in the workplace - but failure to remain vigilant in this area can have dire consequences.

Without a doubt, making family a higher priority than work entails sacrifice.  You'll have to make some career adjustments.  You may have to get off the fast-track, work less overtime, or even find another job.  You'll have to overcome pride, ambition, and greed to resist the lure of power and money.  In all likelihood, you'll probably earn less income than you would otherwise.  The Christian approach to this issue comes at a price.

But it also comes with a promise - the promise of a richer life.  Those who are willing to align their definition of success with God's definition will be blessed with a happier, more stable marriage.  They will enjoy a closer relationship with their children and will have more time to train them up.  In their later days, they will reflect on innumerable fond memories and have few regrets.  Indeed, they will count themselves among the richest people in the world.

From: Christianity 9 to 5: Living Your Faith at Work, © Beacon Hill Press, 1997. Used by permission.

Michael Zigarelli, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Management at Messiah College and the editor of the Christianity9to5.org.