Old Habits Die Slowly

I’m on a 9-hour flight back to Vancouver from Amsterdam. My 8yo and I visited my parents, brother, and friends for ten days. Although primarily meant as a vacation, my dad had asked me to share some insights about my work with what I’ll call his gentlemen club by lack of better label. At this club, about 25 to 30 retired professionals get together once every two weeks to attend a presentation, preceded by coffee and followed by lunch. This week, I would present my research on workaholism, addressing how working excessively can impact health, and answering the question of whether there are healthy ways to work hard.

In the car to the event, I asked my dad about the audience. Was this club really only open to men? I reminded him that this was unacceptable this day and age. He chuckled and said it had nothing to do with respect or esteem for women, but because the club did not want to deal with romantic relationship drama that would inevitably evolve if they’d opened up membership to women. I was stunned that they felt this was the best solution, and I decided not to bring up the possibility of same-sex relationships. Today I wasn’t going to be difficult. On about 5.5 hours of sleep, there was no energy to protest. I was just going to tell my story, have lunch, and get back to my 8yo who was playing board games with my mom.

The presentation was fascinating. Not me presenting, but presenting to a very interested and switched-on group of people who asked many spot-on questions. It was liberating to speak in my first language, which I hadn’t done professionally in twelve years. And it was fun to answer questions from a smart audience with several experts from the medical field. Many of them had been workaholics during their career, and many had worked long hours. It was a bit unsettling to them to hear that an obsessive work approach could lead to a higher risk for cardiovascular diseases.

One of my dad’s friends asked what my research meant for the real world. I acknowledged that there is often a disconnect between research and practice. It is hard to change what people’s jobs look like, how many hours they work, or how their supervisors treat them, with the results of a few studies. But I try. Since my very first publication in 2008, I have written media summaries of each published article and sent it out to large media outlets in the Netherlands. These days, SFU’s PR and media department does this for me, or connects journalists with me if they want to write a story on workaholism, stress, or work-life balance.

At lunch, my table partners asked me what I would do next, professionally. I told them that I was writing a book and had to disappoint them that it was not about workaholism. It was about juggling multiple roles. Without hesitation, one of the men stated that this was indeed a tricky matter for women. It felt like a gut punch. But I quickly recovered. Meaning, I just let the comment pass. There seemed little point in trying to convince a table of seven retired men in their seventies that many men have substantial care tasks these days. Moreover, I wondered how much bias versus truth this comment held. There are, without doubt, many men who carry their fair share of care tasks. Especially in the Netherlands, it is very common that one partner (usually a man) works four days a week, and the other partner (usually a woman) works 3 or 4 days a week[i]. Even though, in heterosexual couples, men usually work a bit more than women, they each are home with their kids at least one day per week. If you look at this juggling act more globally, however, women still carry more household and childcare tasks than men[ii]. More importantly, in a juggle situation, for instance a child falling ill, it is again mostly the woman who takes the hit and goes home from work as they have the ‘smaller’ or ‘less important’ job[iii].

Maybe this retired surgeon was right. Maybe it is true that the real juggling – being there for your kids, having happy and healthy kids, and performing well at work – falls more often on women than on men. If so, then my book was going to be most useful for women. I cringed a little, because I dislike gender issues. The truth is that there are difference between men and women, so I can’t simply pretend there are no gender issues. I decided that this comment from a senior, highly educated, citizen meant that there were many, many people that shared the same belief - namely, that only women juggle work and care tasks. I shared an example with the table about a working dad wanting to spend more time with his kids. Each time he’d leave the office at 3pm (on his part-time 8-3 schedule), his peers asked laughingly if it was ‘daddy day’ again. In such a work climate, of course a dad isn’t going to ask to work fewer hours.

It is time to put juggling men in the spotlight, and ask them how they do it. What is the response from their environment? Are are happy? We need a shift in norms and role expectations. Norms on gender roles are as sticky as black licorice. It takes heroes, pioneers, and lots of showcasing before we accept that there are different ways to organize our family and work life, and that one isn’t necessarily better or worse than the other. Even though statistics indicate that women juggle work and family more often than men, things are changing. My book includes several examples of juggling dads. They have a full time job, and either take on half, or even all of the childcare and household tasks at home. And guess what? They are doing an excellent job.

[i] CBS (2022). Emancipation monitor. https://longreads.cbs.nl/emancipatiemonitor-2022/ (in Dutch)

[ii] United Nations (2020). The World’s Women: Trends and statistics. https://www.un.org/en/desa/world%E2%80%99s-women-2020

[iii] Ranji, U., & Salganicoff, A (2014). Balancing on shaky ground: Women, work and family health. Women’s Health Policy data note. https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/issue-brief/data-note-balancing-on-shaky-ground-women-work-and-family-health/