Generation Xers Break From The Boomers In Work-Life Balance

Most of us, I think, plan to parent differently than our parents did to some degree. And sometimes that can whip itself into something that really seems generational in nature versus just simple family dynamics.

For example, the GenXers, people my age, pretty much parent differently than our own parents, the baby boomers did.

Balancing parenting with careers is one of the major ways those generational differences assert themselves, according to this blog by Tammy Erickson from the Harvard Business Review. For Boomers, successful parenting meant having successful children, that everything you did was with an eye toward giving your children a leg up in the chase for success and status.

For us, though, we’re less willing to work extra hours or do extensive travel to climb the corporate ladder, and instead prioritise time with our kids above all else. We try much harder to incorporate our parenting life with our work life, which means taking a Blackberry to the playground, for example.

I’m sure some people would use this to continue the tired stereotype that GenXers are just lazy slackers, and I give the writer lots of credit for not doing so.

As a card carrying Xer, I think it’s a couple of things: one, this is not my first recession. I graduated from college into a big one in the early 1990s, and watched my dad go through two downsizings at the company he’d given much of his work life to, at some cost to our family. Most of my friends experienced the same. By this time in our lives, many of us have been laid off once or twice already ourselves. When companies are not loyal to us, we’ll be damned if we’re going to sacrifice our children’s happiness to be loyal to them.

Secondly, I think it’s the feminists in the 1960s and 1970s who really dug into the world of work and made it possible for women my age to take those pauses to raise kid, here the career takes a back burner either by staying home, going part time, or just not killing yourself with long hours and crammed schedules. If you’ve clawed your way up from the typing pool ala Peggy in Mad Men, you’re not giving it all up even if you want to. When you’ve been treated as equal to a male employee since your first day, you feel a lot more comfortable saying “Time out.”

What do you think? How do you balance work and family differently than your parents did? And why do you think that is?