I’m not entirely sure when I became aware of the term but it has been obvious to me that “work-life balance” is a huge topic that deserves diving into.
However you decide to look at it, this cultural idea that work and life should balance each other out is, in my opinion, a myth holding us back from being better employers, from finding guilt-free joy about putting family first, and revolutionizing our mental healthcare. We’ve come far from the term’s origins but we still have a long ways to go.
The History Behind The Term
In 1890 workers were dedicating 100 hours per week to income-producing labor.
The time of factories and urban migration was leaving workers with unhealthy conditions and scheduling (think more “sleep-deprivation related limb loss” and less “back pain from an office chair” kind of conditions).
As a result, in the late 1800s the United States saw an increase in worker strikes with slow implementation of an 8-hour work day (initially for only government workers and then for factory workers with a lot of contractor loopholes involved.)
Fast forward to 1940, Congress amended the Fair Labor Standards Act, which limited the workweek to 40 hours. It’s fair to say this 40 hour work week is complicated for a few reasons. Let’s look deeper into this from a parent and woman’s point of view.