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a Department of Sociology, State University of New York at Albany
Correspondence: Karyn Loscocco, PhD, Department of Sociology, Social Science 340, SUNY–Albany, Albany, NY 12222. E-mail: Kal74{at}csc.albany.edu.
The work–family conflict faced by people in the middle stages of life, when role demands are at their peak, is hardly news. In fact, work–family conflict has gone from a "side bar issue" to a "front page phenomenon" (Googins 1991
). While the private and public spheres offer mostly inadequate solutions, and individuals mostly muddle through, researchers and social analysts are sounding an alarm. It is time to discuss solutions as far-reaching and revolutionary as the changes that have brought us to this critical point. I propose that a more fully age-integrated society, in which people intersperse education, work, and leisure over the life course, could be such a solution. The age-integrated model of society (Riley 1994) is an "ideal type" that provides a comprehensive framework for possible change; it is one that integrates current thinking from family and gender scholars, organizational scholars, corporate consultants, and analysts of work and the economy.
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The Crux of Work–Family Conflict: Social Change and Structural Lag |
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). Even mothers of young children, that last bastion of female reserve, have a labor force participation rate of 63%, five times higher than it was in 1950 (Cherlin 1998). Thus, the majority of working men have lost the advantages of having someone managing their personal lives, and they are losing that advantage sooner after their children arrive than in decades past.
Of course, women in the labor force have never enjoyed such an arrangement. Experts estimate that by the year 2000 there will be more women than men in the labor pool from which employers draw new entrants into the workforce (Stautberg 1987). The vast majority of women currently in the labor force are in their childbearing years, and 80 to 90% of these women are expected to have children during their working lives (Galinsky, Friedman, and Hernandez 1991; Stautberg 1987). Increases in births outside of marriage and steady divorce rates of about 50% mean that there are far more single parents in the labor force than ever before. One recent study found that 23% of mothers in the workforce were single parents (Galinsky and Bond 1996). Thus, a very small and ever shrinking percentage of the labor force benefits from the unpaid work of a full-time homemaker. At the same time, caregiving for elders is something that people are increasingly likely to take on at multiple times over the life course (Marks 1996; Moen, Robinson, and Fields 1994).
Yet, social institutions have not adapted to these tremendous changes in the ways that people live their work and family lives. There is a "structural lag" in the relationship between the two dynamisms that are played out in every society: the dynamism of changing lives has been outstripping the dynamism of structural change (Riley, 1987). More people from all walks of life experience work–family conflict as they wait for social structures to recognize that they are not free to devote themselves to work for several consecutive decades. Now that the responsibilities for work and family are not divided neatly along gender lines in most families, workers increasingly experience role overload; they simply have too much to do. One study of working people found almost "universal exhaustion" (Googins 1991, p. 302). Others document a sense of freneticism in the families that they studied "up close" (Helgesen 1998; Hochschild 1997). Working parents also experience role strain, because work and family compete and conflict (e.g., Greenhaus 1988; Kanter 1977).
Because work institutions have largely continued to operate without paying attention to employees' personal lives, individuals and families shoulder the burden of keeping their family lives from intruding too much upon work. Work, of course, continues to spill over into family lives. Yet, now most families do not have a wife at home to buffer work's impact. In an exhaustive review of research done in the 1980s, Menaghan and Parcel 1990 found well-documented evidence of role strain in dual earner households at all socioeconomic levels. Although some studies suggest that work–family conflict is experienced similarly by men and women (Frone, Russell, and Cooper 1992; Keith and Schafer 1980), there is also evidence that women continue to bear primary responsibility for home and family and the brunt of work–family conflict (Duxbury, Higgins, and Lee 1994; Pleck 1985; Simon 1992; Thoits 1986).
Leisure is perhaps the greatest casualty of the work–family crunch, especially among women. People attend to the pressing, immediate needs of jobs and children, relegating their social and personal lives to the "back burner" (Barnett and Rivers 1996, p. 93). With so many people weighed down by work–family conflict, communities suffer as well. People have more limited time and energy for volunteer work. Nor can they as easily nurture the friendships and neighborly relations that have often been key sources of social support (Googins 1991).
Families are expected to solve the dilemmas of trying to raise children, have fulfilling personal lives, maintain their schools and communities, and devote themselves to work—while government and corporations mostly take a hands-off approach. Existing solutions are largely piecemeal, and do little to alter the dominance of work institutions over individual lives. Nor do they challenge the traditional model of the life course; instead, they assume a standard sequence of education, work and family, and then leisure. Finally, they do not acknowledge the kinds of fundamental changes in social structure that are needed if work–family balance is to go from a much-touted ideal to a much-needed reality. We are at a juncture that may be every bit as significant as the shift to the separate work and family spheres of industrial society (Googins 1991; Rifkin 1995; Siegel 1990). Although, short-term solutions are vital, it is also time to consider the larger social changes that would be required to provide lasting benefits to individuals and to society (Moen 1992).
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Age Integration as a Potential Solution |
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). The solution they proposed was to move toward greater age integration by diminishing age barriers and bringing people of different ages together. No longer would age determine what roles an individual holds; instead, opportunities in all structures—education, work, family, leisure—would be open to people of every age, within the limits of biology (Best 1980; Riley and Riley 1994). Though the impetus for the age-integration perspective came from the study of older people who were enjoying unprecedented long and healthy lives, Riley and colleagues have long emphasized the interconnections among different age strata (e.g., Riley, Foner, and Waring 1988). Thus, they have argued that age integration would enhance the quality of life not just for older people but for people of all ages.
The Promise of Age Integration
Ideally, a society in which people intersperse education, work, and leisure over the course of their lives is one in which role strain and role overload at midlife can be dramatically lessened. With work spread out over the entire course of a lifetime, the most intense period of many jobs and careers would not have to come at the height of family responsibilities. People would be free to choose the optimal time for their intense periods of commitment to new employers or new careers. One group of researchers recently suggested that women would do best to have their children early and postpone their careers until their youngest child was about 13, because their analyses showed much less work–family conflict at that point (Higgins and Duxbury 1994). Others contend that establishing oneself at work first, and having children much later in life, may be the best work–family strategy (Sekaran and Hall 1989). As child rearing has become increasingly removed from biological capacity, the latter choice can be taken more seriously. In the next wave, young women will be able to freeze their eggs and fertilize them later in life. These and other patterns that de-couple work and family would be normative in a more age-integrated society.
Nor would education and training be crowded into the earliest stages of life, but instead be accepted as a possibility throughout life. In fact, continuous learning may be required by current and predicted future turbulence in the labor market. As Kuttner 1997 argues, the labor market has become a product market where employers buy labor only for as long as they need it. To fit this new reality, future careers would be a series of mini-learning stages, and career stages would be measured by the nature of the job rather than the chronological age of the job's incumbent (Hall and Mirvis 1995). Hall 1989 suggests that organizations that do away with age-based promotion systems will be at an advantage, as people live longer and desire continued employment.
The age-integration model could also address the paradox that whereas women experience the most work–family conflict, they have benefited in noneconomic ways from their mass movement into the paid labor force. Researchers have shown that multiple roles are actually beneficial to well-being (Baruch, Barnett, and Rivers 1983; Moen, McClain, and Williams 1989; Thoits 1986). Such findings support Marks 1977 contention that commitment and energy are not scarce resources, but expandable ones. Furthermore, studies have documented that paid work provides physical and mental health benefits for women (e.g., Baruch et al. 1983). Still, as Moen 1992 points out, employment is good for women only under certain social conditions; it leads to role strain and role overload particularly when children are young. Research suggests that spending moderate amounts of time on paid work, marital, and parental roles buffers the distress caused by caring for elderly parents, but too much time in these multiple roles exacerbates the distress (Voydanoff and Donnelly 1999). In a society in which roles were spread out, and reduced work schedules were more normative, people could reduce work when their family demands were greatest. There is every reason to believe that people could have multifaceted lives in a more age-integrated society. In fact, the age integrated model frees people to add more roles to their lives once work plays a smaller part.
A widespread revamping of the life course could address the problems of all kinds of workers, rather than focusing on the relatively privileged, as is currently the case. As one example, in a society in which people were no longer expected to get their education and then "hit the career ground running," poor teenage mothers might not be as quickly relegated to a life of trying to play "catch up." With more people taking education, leisure or family breaks from full-time work, there would also be a more equitable distribution of work. Currently, fewer and fewer people are working, but they are working longer and longer hours (Bluestone and Rose 1997; Schor 1991). Books titled The End of Work (Rifkin 1995), The Jobless Economy (Dunkerley 1996), and When Work Disappears (Wilson 1996) warn of a future in which there will be even less work available. An age integrated society could provide more societal balance in work hours and help alleviate the very real, but often overlooked, work–family conflict felt by those who cannot find enough work to make ends meet.
It could also help meet the demands of the growing numbers of older people who seek employment. People are living longer and healthier, and nearly one third of the average adult life is now spent in retirement. The concept of growing old in a context that does not include paid work is new (Googins 1991). There has been an increase in self-employment and part-time work among older people (Fuchs 1982; McKie 1992) and a reversal of men's tendency to retire earlier and earlier (Burkhauser and Quinn 1997), suggesting that many have rejected this concept.
The age-integration perspective can further public policy initiatives by urging employers and government to consider work–family issues as part of a larger set of life course issues, rather than an isolated phenomenon of relatively short duration. When we take into account people of all ages, our solutions will be less piecemeal, and they are apt to foster intergenerational cooperation instead of competition (Riley 1994). For example, if programs to let people cut back when they have heavy family responsibilities were to free-up paid jobs for older people, this could simultaneously solve the work–family strain of midlife and help to ease the social security crisis. Also, if people in the middle stages of life were less consumed by work responsibilities, they would be able to help older relatives in need of assistance.
Finally, integration of education and leisure throughout longer work lives would address the dominance of work institutions over family ones. Integrating major role activities throughout the labor force requires scaling back on the time and energy given to work. Thus, unlike many popular work–family programs, the rephased life course would free people from the current demands of work, rather than simply help them to accommodate to those demands (Gonyea and Googins 1996). This has become increasingly urgent. Hochschild 1997 study of a family-friendly company she called Amerco showed that, as the workplace takes up more time, family time becomes increasingly rationalized, commodified, and compressed. A vicious cycle drains family life of its former "haven" qualities and perpetuates the imbalance, as people increasingly turn to work to escape the pressures and "nothingness" of their sped-up, commodified home lives. Hochschild argues that, in a curious twist, many now view work as more of a haven. A study of women in the heart of the suburban Midwest uncovered a similar disturbing hectic pace of home life (Helgesen 1998). Goldscheider and Waite 1991 warn that interactions within families are vitally important, and unless more attention is given to the home, society will end up with "no families."
Making the Age-Integrated Model Work
To benefit from the new possibilities afforded by age integration, new policies would be needed that support these possibilities.
First, outmoded definitions and measures of commitment to work would have to change. "Face time," or hours worked, is an odd measure of loyalty or productivity, yet companies continue to use it as a proxy, forcing many people to work far more hours than they would like (Clarkenberg 1998). The whole concept of the current 9-to-5, 40 hours of work, conducted in a central location, is a vestige of an industrial economy with separate spheres for men and women. Once we recognize that centralized work places, fixed work schedules, and time-based definitions of work commitment are socially constructed products of an earlier era (Bailyn 1993; Harriman 1982; Hinrichs, Roche, and Sirianni 1991), it pushes us to think about the benefits of flexplace, flextime, and shorter work schedules in this very different postindustrial period. Bailyn 1993 proposes that the concept of the "family wage," so integral to the gendered separate spheres model of industrial work, be replaced with the notion of the "family workweek." Such a change would facilitate the creation of flexible policies that let individuals and couples arrange a reasonable work–family arrangement. Harriman 1982 contends that companies could organize their work differently without compromising efficiency. While some consumers have surely experienced the inefficiencies of part-timers and job sharers, and the loss in quality that can result from tired employees on compressed work weeks, these is no a priori reason that more systematic and creative planning could not solve such problems.
Many of the most popular solutions to work–family conflict today offer snapshot fixes in keeping with the notion of discrete life stages. An age-integrated perspective suggests policies that recognize the diverse needs of people at all phases of their lives. With a more integrated approach to leisure, an employee might work for a year at 20% pay in trade for 10 weeks off (Harriman 1982). Employees might be able to accumulate hours over the course of their work lives, which they could use to cut back on work or take a leave, without jeopardizing their job or their family's standard of living. Denmark and Belgium are already experimenting with such programs (Moss 1996). Even workers on reduced time schedules could bank leave over the course of several fiscal years (Harriman 1982).
Changes in the nature of work and advances in communication technologies could be used to move back toward a more home-based work center, in which work is a part of the natural rhythm of day-to-day life (Siegel 1990). This might not be the ideal for all people all of the time. People certainly vary in how much separation between work and family they desire. Still, for many people, personal computers, the Internet, faxes, phone message systems, and conference calls provide enormous flexibility. These can be temporary or more permanent solutions to the dual desire to have a productive work career and to enjoy family life.
Organizations would have to become more comfortable with such arrangements, which seems to be the trend. In fact, a survey by Olsten Corp. Companies reported that almost one third of U.S. companies encourage their employees to telecommute. Among companies with telecommuting options, 86% experienced increased productivity (Staffing Industry Report, 1995, cited in Celente 1997). It would certainly be easier for people across the socioeconomic spectrum to do more of their work from home if companies and tax policies subsidized the expense. While most professionals can easily afford the equipment required, the clerical worker who is a single mother may not have that luxury. Still, she could fit in some crucial work from home to give her greater flexibility to balance work and parenting responsibilities.
Scheduling flexibility, or flextime, is the most widely adopted work–family policy in place today. Though variation in supervisor support, program specifics, and individual needs may account for the inconsistent reports on the benefits of flextime reported by Glass and Estes 1997, there is reason enough to expand such policies both within and across organizations. For example, one study of nurses uncovered many tangible benefits of flexibility, including less work–family conflict and fewer mental and physical health problems (Thomas and Ganster 1995). A study of public sector employees found that those using flextime reported more work–family balance and higher job satisfaction (Ezra and Deckman 1996). Among a sample of 178 employers with company-sponsored child care, 53% saw a decline in absenteeism and 39% reported lower rates of lateness (Burud, Aschbacher, and McCroskey 1984).
It is also important for companies to extend options for flexible and reduced work schedules to lower level employees. Although upper level white-collar workers are the usual beneficiaries of such policies, the same benefits would likely accrue to lower level employees and their companies. In fact, when Steelcase manufacturing company extended part-time schedules and job-sharing benefits to hourly employees, they reaped a turnover rate of just 3% (Dynerman and Hayes 1991). Of course, companies must go beyond putting "family friendly" policies in place; company culture must also recognize and support the work–family conflict faced by many employees. Supervisor support of employees' nonwork demands has been associated with reduced work–family conflict, employee distress and absenteeism, and with greater job satisfaction and employee well-being (Frone et al. 1997; Kossek and Nichol 1992; Thomas and Ganster 1995).
Creative programs and policies based on different sets of values would also help realize the full potential of a more age-integrated society. As one example, Betty Friedan 1991 has suggested a voucher system in which every person who cares for children or elders at home would get compensation, perhaps in the form of a tax rebate. The person would get equal credit in the wage earning partner's pension and Social Security benefits, which would be retained in the event of a divorce. If both parents worked and shared child or elder care, they could use the voucher to pay for help. This would certainly be a marked improvement over current law, which discriminates against families that take care of their own children (Siegel 1990).
Rifkin 1995 notion of a revitalized third sector—a volunteer or social economy—could be a key component of an age-integrated society. Throughout their lives, people might receive a "social wage" in return for community service work. One possibility would be that people would receive a tax credit for every hour that they volunteer. People at all ages who are in periods of lesser time commitment to work—working part time or pursuing education, for example—could do more volunteering. Some might even take community service sabbaticals.
Individual change also plays a role in the ease with which we could move to a more age-integrated society. As others have argued (e.g., Kofodimos 1993; Schwartz 1992), people have to be willing to ask tough questions and implement the answers in their quest for more balanced lives. More of us have to realize that it is fairly impossible to "have it all"—at least not all at once. The message of the age-integrated model is that it may well be possible to "have it all" over the course of one's life—and the "all" may be a lot more enjoyable when it is spread out. Although institutions continue to lag behind, individuals can continue to nudge society in the right direction by using the opportunities that they do have for reducing work–family conflict.
Ideally, jobs would be improved as part of a revision of the pattern of the life course. Many people want to retire because their jobs are too stressful, or not challenging enough, or require too much time. There is surely a segment of people who would be hard pressed to imagine giving up their justly deserved period of leisure at the end of years of productive labor (Riley 1998). In fact, some people keep themselves going through the midlife crunch by focusing on the retirement light at the end of the work tunnel. The growing numbers of the working poor never have the chance to enjoy a leisurely retirement. Yet, better part-time jobs and enriched jobs, reasonable work demands, and supportive work environments would make it easier for people to continue working into the later decades of their life. The key to a viable rephased life course is a different notion of career. If the work career were no longer one long, uninterrupted obligation, then workers would have periods of leisure that might revitalize them and contribute to their greater work productivity.
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Overcoming the Obstacles |
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Standard of Living
The first obstacle is the almost certain lowered average standard of living that would result in a society that distributed work more evenly across the life span and therefore across the socioeconomic spectrum. To overcome it, the notion of standard of living would have to shift from its almost purely material definition to one that encompassed a broader range of less tangible "goods," such as time, well-being, and balance. No longer would work identity have preeminence as a measure of self-worth.
This may appear to be a daunting obstacle. Those who benefit from deeply embedded race, class, and gender inequalities are unlikely to "give up" some of their work so that others can have more. This trend toward bifurcation—people are either overworked or struggling to find enough work—has apparently been exacerbated by recent economic developments (Bluestone and Rose 1997; Schor 1991). Still, Rifkin 1995 suggests that continued loss of jobs across industrial sectors and at all levels of the prestige hierarchy may force a shift in thinking about the importance of paid work. In addition, there is some evidence that people are beginning to think more carefully about how much money (and therefore work) they need.
For instance, recent analyses of data from the National Study of Families and Households show that 34% of women and 44% of men would prefer to work fewer hours than they do. Furthermore, while both husband and wife have some type of part-time schedule in only 1 in 50 couples, a much greater number (1 in 6) would like such a situation (Clarkenberg 1998). The untapped potential for widespread change in how much we work is revealed in two additional findings. First, Clarkenberg finds only modest effects of life stage on work preferences. While having young children does lead women to feel they are working too much, there are no preference differences between those with older children and those with no children. Second, men who work long hours are highly likely to say that they would like to work less, and this finding holds irrespective of the amount of time their wives work. Even when their wives are full-time homemakers or work part time, and are therefore free to take care of household responsibilities, these men want to do less paid work.
Hochschild 1997(pp. 253–254) reports a particularly interesting example of changing work values from ELI, a computer company in Portland, Oregon, where employees voted to "spread the pain" when the company hit hard times, reducing their hours (and pay) so that no one would be laid off. Much to the CEO's surprise, employees did not want to go back to the full-time schedules they were offered when the company recovered.
The "voluntary simplicity" movement touts just such a shift to reducing standard of living and thereby improving quality of life. The movement has certainly been receiving a lot of media attention, and though there are not a lot of hard data, trend-trackers predict that a return to simplicity will be widespread in the next century (e.g., Celente 1997). Schor 1991 reports the results of a Merck Family Fund national poll that lends support to this prediction. Close to 60% of respondents said that they would like to simplify their lives, and two thirds said they want more balance in their lives. Schor argues that "down shifters"—those who are working and spending less—are in the vanguard of what could become a major social trend. Schor's national survey of 800 adults showed that nearly one fifth had made a voluntary lifestyle change that lowered their income, and 85% of them were happy about the change they made. Interestingly, another 12% had made such a change involuntarily, but even 25% of them reported that the change was a "blessing in disguise."
The Dominance of Work Institutions
The second, closely related sticking point is the long-standing dominance of work institutions over all others in our society. To realize the potential of an age-integrated society, current structures and supporting norms that allow the dominance of work institutions would have to be altered. Companies would have to accept that many peoples lives have changed, making traditional work arrangements obsolete. The United States has been notoriously slow to address this, as the long journey to a minimal Family and Medical Leave Act demonstrates.
Still, there are many promising developments. The current and projected surge in small business growth may help to move society in the direction of greater balance. Small business owners are probably more eager to join their employees in a partnership that places as much value on flexibility as it does on income. One survey showed that whereas only half of small businesses provide paid sick leave, they are more flexible about unpaid, informal leaves (USSBA 1987).
Perhaps, fledgling firms or organizations faced with difficult times will help serve as the catalyst that opens some employees' eyes to alternative ways of defining standard of living. If they cannot match the salaries that highly qualified applicants are offered elsewhere, they might counter with a reduced work schedule using the other offers as base pay.
Furthermore, management and organizational analysts argue that companies make the kinds of changes that help employees when they see a direct benefit to the company. As Ferber and O'Farrell 1991 point out, the really innovative programs to reduce work–family conflict come from industries that have the greatest difficulty recruiting labor. Company leaders may well be motivated by the mounting evidence that employees think carefully about companies' work–family policies as they choose their jobs (Gonyea and Googins 1996; Honeycutt and Rosen 1997; Ransom, Aschbacher, and Burud 1989). Research also shows that people who are dissatisfied with workplace flexibility (Rothausen 1994) or desirous of greater work schedule autonomy (Coakley and Karren, cited in Thompson, Beauvais, and Lyness 1999) are more apt to plan to leave their companies.
In addition, executives may respond to pressure from groups working for greater work–family balance. For example, Working Mother magazine keeps a list of the "100 best companies" for their readers. Warner-Lambert made the list in 1999, after an absence of 6 years. When the editor-in-chief of the magazine asked the CEO of Warner-Lambert if he had made a conscious effort to get his company back on their list, he replied, "We are very cognizant of surveys like this. As a company you want to position yourself as being an ideal employer so that you can attract the best people. That clearly makes you a leader." He went on to suggest that the old attitude that employers can simply replace the people who don't conform to their stringent work norms is a costly one. "Turnover is incredibly expensive. Not just in terms of hiring costs, either... What about the mistakes that happen because of the loss of experience? What about customers—they like to relate to the same person. And experienced workers are just more productive." (Culbreth 1999).
If carefully designed future studies document the likely economic benefits of a work institution that is fully integrated with other social institutions, companies will make the necessary shifts. In the short term, employers simply need to hear more about the growing body of research evidence that work–family policies have economic benefits for employers.
Gender Norms
The third obstacle is the persistence of gender norms that define work–family conflict as a "women's issue" and emphasize men's good provider role. Research continues to confirm that women are more likely to trade off income and prestige for part-time work, job sharing, home-based and less lucrative businesses, and jobs with "family friendly" work hours (Henson 1996; Loscocco 1997; McKie 1992; Rosenfeld & Birkelund, 1995), which perpetuates a modified separate spheres model and, therefore, gender inequality. Of course, women at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, who are disproportionately women of color, bear the greatest brunt of inequitable gender norms. According to Ferber and O'Farrell 1991, when low-income mothers leave work to care for dependents it has long-term negative consequences for income.
Until men share equally in the work and enjoyment of family life, the similar life paths for men and women proposed by the age integrated model will not materialize. As Cherlin 1998 put it, "mothers can't win unless fathers change too" (p. 41). Yet even in those sectors of Western Europe where liberal pro-family policies are motivated partly by a strong commitment to gender equality (Moen and Firebaugh 1994), men have yet to commit themselves equally to work–family balance (Haas 1992; Moen 1989). As long as power and prestige continue to accrue to those who follow the traditional career paths, many men will, quite reasonably, see little incentive for change. Moreover, until men receive company and social support for scaling back work, they will have little realistic opportunity for change.
Forced by their circumstances, and with less to lose in terms of gender identity, women have been in the vanguard, charting alternative life patterns that integrate and recycle their major social roles (Helgesen 1998; Lopata, Barnewolt, and Miller 1985). Yet, if women are the ones choosing flexible and reduced work schedules, getting reeducated, and trading time for money, they will have less power in society and in their relationships (Avioli and Kaplan 1992; England and Kilbourne 1990). This concern surely underlies the protest launched at Schwartz 1989 proposal that corporate women be offered the option of slower, more flexible careers (the media-dubbed "Mommy track"). Without extending the flexible track to men, and more importantly, without changing the ways we evaluate careers and career requirements, women would be disadvantaged by a system that asked them to make such a choice.
Similarly, while an age-integrated life course provides more freedom for the timing of child rearing, women will be hurt if they are the ones who postpone their careers or their child rearing in an attempt to reduce work–family conflict. In fact, the notion of a nonsequential life course raises the specter of women moving from one period of reduced work to another, as they are channeled, and channel themselves, into caring for children, communities, and elders.
Yet, as more men are forced off the lockstep education-work-leisure pathway by downsizing and continued technological change, alternative career paths and nonmaterial values may well become more normative for everybody. The movement to voluntary simplicity might also lead to greater gender equality, as men join women in questioning the relative role of work in their lives. There is also evidence that men are taking on a greater share of family responsibility (Presser 1989), which ultimately may lead them to search with women for more accommodating workplaces. In fact, there is growing concern about work–family balance among men (Thomas and Ganster 1995), and recent studies document men's higher levels of work-to-family and strain-based family-to-work conflict (Eagle et al. 1998) and their substantial trade-offs between work and family (Milkie and Peltola 1999). One study showed that even among a sample of male executives, who might be expected to subscribe fully to traditional gender norms, family-friendly work policies were associated with lower work–family conflict (Judge, Boudreau, and Bretz 1994).
In addition, we have only to look back a few decades to see the potential for fundamental change in gender norms. There has been a "gender revolution" in women's work roles, as more and more work roles have opened up for women and social norms as well as structures have changed in response. If women and men join in a social movement that pushes for the changes in gender norms that would promote greater work–family balance, social structures are apt to respond to the collective pressure (Riley and Loscocco 1994). The rapid changes in student norms and lifestyles in the 1960s demonstrated vividly how quickly basic social values can be altered through collective action (Foner 1994).
In the short term, social policy should shift away from a primary focus on the care of children, which is still seen as a women's issue by so many people, including those in a position to effect change. In fact, increased longevity means that the time during which people are raising young children is now a small proportion of the entire life course (Riley 1992). Also, more people are choosing not to raise children at all. Instead, the issues could be framed in terms of "caring responsibilities that could extend to a whole range of relationships and even to oneself" (Moss 1996, p. 31). If discussion turns to employee-friendly policies that promote self-enrichment or allow more vacation time for a reduced salary, perhaps more men will listen carefully (Harriman 1982) and begin to press for change.
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). The family could take on its child care responsibilities with renewed vigor if education, work and leisure were interspersed over the life course. The next step, would be to move from the abstract promise of greater age integration to concrete proposals. There is tremendous need for carefully designed research that can answer questions about the promise and pitfalls of the kinds of solutions to work–family conflict consistent with the age-integrated model of society. Tough, creative policy work would have to be done, and specific policies should take into account the gender, race, and class inequalities of the current U.S. society. The changes needed are so profound that the whole proposition of moving toward greater age integration may seem too daunting. The multifaceted changes required of movement to an age-integrated society lend themselves to criticism. It is easy to zero in on a particular facet and show why it would not work or what other challenges it might pose.
The more difficult, but ultimately more fruitful, tack is to see specific sticking points as problems to be solved, rather than as reasons to preserve the status quo. There are already forces moving us toward age integration (Moen 1992; Riley 1998). Foner 1994 points out that even when there are obstacles to change, it happens when the interests of those pushing for change override the forces of resistance. Analysts from a wide range of disciplines and with diverse credentials and concerns have offered up a wealth of ideas to minimize the work–family "crunch." As Weick (1994) has argued, social change is slow; yet, when we set our sights on "small wins," there is every reason to be optimistic. Because the obstacles to an age-integrated society are interrelated, a small change that addresses any one of them is apt to exert pressure on another. In the final analysis, the challenge of moving toward fuller age integration seems to pale in comparison with the possibility of stronger families, a more balanced distribution of work, and fuller, more enriched lives.
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