BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids Work/Life Balancing Act Only for Moms?

Hi all,

I am an accountant who spends alot of time working, and sometimes it is really hard to balance work with personal life. So, I thought I would try to find some literature with helpful hints on the topic. Guess what? Probably 99% of the articles I found only addressed the needs of working mothers. What, society doesn't think women without children have issues balancing work and personal life? It is just "assumed" that only women with children need work/life balance. That is so unfair to those of us who choose not to have children! We need work/life balance just as much as the next person. Every human needs a certain amount of work/life balance. All work and no play makes Jack/Jane a dull boy/girl. Any other women on the board experience this? Or know of any articles/books that doesn't cater to the working mother?

CF_GAL You bring up an interesting point. EVERYONE needs work/life balance (men too)... but most people only think of it in terms of women with children. And working married women with children don't have a life - they have 3 jobs (their day job, their mom job, and their spouse job)!!
Too many employers still expect people to work 60+ hours per week for no extra pay. I guess they have forgotten that "all work and no play makes Johnny a dull (1/2 dead) boy".
When my employer hinted that I should stay at work later, I informed them that I have a second job which starts immediately after this one - wife & spouse, and that I value that role more than my day job. If I was forced to choose, I would choose my spouse. They backed off.
As for articles on work/life balance... can't think of any of the top of my head, but I'll do some searching later today and let you know if I find anything.

What can I say, the world is biased towards women, first because most people seem to think that only women need work/life balance. And secondly because, supposedly, only MARRIED women WITH CHILDREN need help balancing. All the rest do not...

Well, what about those with disabled siblings or parents? What about people who, themselves, have some sort of disability they have to cater to every day?

Here's an article from the Mayo clinic on work life balance. It seems to be fairly generic... geared to anyone.
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I was thinking the exact same thing a couple of days ago, CF_Gal! I was giving advice to a few people on how to prep food (especially lunches to bring to work) when your schedule is crazy and you've got zero time available. At least half a dozen people later asked me how old my kids were. Since when do parents have the monopoly on busy?

I think you read my mind. I am a CPA. I was just thinking about this topic the other day and about how frustrating it is. I have a subscription to Redbook and there is a section they run every month called "How she does it". Without fail, every single month it is a freaking MOM. I always skip that section because I couldn't care less about how she balances her life with her dang kids. I have thought about writing a letter to the editor about showing some diversity and featuring some women who don't have children because we also have busy lives. I get sick and tired of people assuming that if a women doesn't have kids than she must not have a busy life. She must have all the time in the world. We childfree women must be sitting around doing nothing. How in the world could we be busy if we don't have kids. UGH!!!! Makes me madder than a hornet.

Another thing that peeves me is the assumption that the childfree don't know anything about children because after all "we are not a MOM". Like all the sudden you become an expert MOM as soon as you give birth, then you are part of the expert on children club. When I hear those words...."you wouldn't know, you are not a mom"....the fur stands up on my back. This statement is insulting. UGH!!

I find this very interesting. I always have been annoyed at the fact that nobody ever asks MEN how they manage to balance a career and a family; a working man's family status is much less noteworthy than a working woman's, etc etc.... to be honest I had never thought about this aspect. But this week I've left work ealier than usual 2 days out of 5 to go take care of other things... I think you're totally onto something here. We all have a right to our lives outside of work, and whether we dedicate that time to parenting or something else is really none of our employer's business. Either way we have to balance it. Thanks for the insight!

I have to say, I think that is the first time I have ever heard anyone say that the world is biased towards women ... While I don't agree with that statement, I think you have a really good point there. I think that the workplace tends to be more flexible with mothers than with childfree women. In some cases I think that is more than fair, but in other cases it can aggravate me. However, I've never really had a problem - when my grandma was sick, my work was really good about letting me be more flexible so I could get her to the doctor ...

On the other hand, the majority of my company's employees are women, and all of my bosses are women.

Wow....I certainly see that I'm not alone here. Although, it stinks that society works this way. Really urks me!

Thanks for the article jmb! It gave some good tips! There were also links to some other interesting articles.

I know what you mean ... I babysat almost every weekend for about 10 years. One family had 3 kids who never got disciplined at all. When I babysat them for an entire summer, I tried to get these kids to follow the rules or not eat so much junk. Their mom was calling me all the time yelling at me "someday you'll be a mom, but you're not one now, so let my kids do whatever they want!" Everything I did that summer was wrong, and it came back several times to the fact that I wasn't a mother, so I had no say in what her children did. (Then why did she hire me? Plus, I'd been with them for 7 years by that point, so it's not like I was doing anything different.)

I couldn't even tell the kids to turn the lights off. They left EVERY SINGLE LIGHT in the house on every single day - it was MY responsibility to turn them off. I said no, they have to do it, and I got yelled at. The reason? Something about they need to be children, turning off the lights interferes with their time to be children. No joke.

I wasn't trying to raise her kids, I was trying to give them some kind of responsibility. I certainly wasn't changing rules, instilling new rules, or going against anything their parents said. I was trying to get them to follow rules that were already in place, rules that were never enforced. And because I enforced their own rules, I was told that I'm not a mom, I can't raise her children.