UNIT A - Blog 4

I think some characteristics of a good family life are staying in communication with your family, being there for the family, responsibility, loyalty, compassion and honesty. Balancing a career and family life is being able to take care of your family while also having a career. Everyone should be able to go to their job and work their required shift and afterwards go home and be with their family. It's understandable that this can become quite difficult because many jobs are demanding and it can become difficult to make time for appointments or to leave work because a child is sick and alot of jobs have consequences if you go home sick whether it's legit or not. I think a decent company will understand that their employees have a family life as well and will try and accommodate their employees to the best of their abilities. I think what makes this work and family life balance hard to achieve are the job requirements. Companies that aren't flexible make a persons work life stressful and often unbearable if they aren't allowed to leave to help out a family member. Overtime at jobs can also cause a stress on this balance because they require longer hours than usual and the parent might come home late and miss out on certain family interactions. I also think that if companies don't offer flexible shifts this might make it difficult for a mother or father to deal with their children's school schedules if they can't come in later or earlier on certain days and this can make it hard to deal with the balance as well.

Changes in traditional gender roles can make work and family issues more complex because if a man has to start cooking because the woman is working too late this might start drama or an argument because this isn't something he's used to doing. Also for a single parent balancing work and family is probably more difficult than the usual two parent household because they have to find time to work and find a daycare or babysitter to take care of their child or children which can cost quite a bit and may not be in their budget. With two parent households there is sometimes one parent that either doesn't work or gets home sooner than the other parent so there's always someone there with the family but with single parents all they have are themselves to help provide for the family and this can become challenging. My mother raised me on her own and I remember times where she was in over her head but she managed to always come out on top but it wasn't always easy.

Employers can become more sensitive to their employees needs by offering flex schedules so they can vary the hours they work to help accommodate them for appointments they need to make or whatever else they need to take care of. They can also offer discounts to maybe daycare programs or cell phone companies etc to possibly help out a family so they can afford more things for their home life. My job offers discounts for Verizon, dell, apple and much more and this helps me save 17% on my cell phone bill each month which is very helpful since I don't make alot of money. I also think companies should offer counseling or a number that they can call if they need to talk to someone about personal issues. I also think vacation time should be increased per paycheck or employees should have free days or passes that will allow someone to call out sick without being penalized. At my job we get an occurrence each time we call out sick and when we reach seven occurrences we get written up and once we get eight we can get fired so by allowing a free pass we wouldn't get an occurrence and this can help people out who are prone to being sick or who need to go home when a child falls ill. I also think FMLA is a wonderful idea because this helps out people who have a reoccurring sickness or who might have a family member who falls ill and needs someone to stay home and take care of them.

Having the support of family members and/or neighbors might make balancing priorities easier because if you have children one of the family members of neighbors can watch them for you until you get home from work which can save you alot of money by avoiding day care costs. Also if family members are willing to help around the house with chores and cooking then this will alleviate some of the stress off of the working parent since they have to start cooking immediately when they get home or bring home fast food which also costs money.