The Stress of Balancing Work and Family

Americans know from their own lives the stress of balancing work and family obligations. Extensive rhetoric from the media and academic worlds is difficult to disentangle, sometimes pointing to seemingly different conclusions regarding the state of work and family balance, the time parents are spending with their children, and the impacts such conflicts have on individual and family health.

The New America Foundation’s Next Social Contract Initiative and Workforce and Family Program seek to cut through the rhetoric with an analysis of the research through their paper, “The Stress of Balancing Work and Family: Impacts on Parent and Child Health.” At this event, Kelleen Kaye and David Gray discussed where the research leads us in examining the stress of work and family conflict.

Kelleen Kaye is an analyst and policy expert on family structure and family relationships as they relate to child, youth, and parental well-being. Video of the event is available at right, while an MP3 audio recording can be downloaded below.

The Next Social Contract Initiative aims to reinvent American social policy for the twenty-first century. Through a program of research and public education, the initiative will explore the origins of our modern social contract, articulate the guiding principles for constructing a new contract, and advance a set of promising policy reforms.

Participants

• Kelleen Kaye
  Research Director, National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy
  Fellow, Workforce and Family Program, New America Foundation
• David Gray
  Director, Workforce and Family Program
  New America Foundation