You have a meeting starting in 5 minutes, but your child is having a tantrum in the nursery cloakroom. Situations like this leave parents struggling, feeling torn between conflicting duties.
Whether it’s illness, holidays or school closures – full-time working parents in particular constantly face the question, how do you balance work and family life? Researcher Christina Boll of the German Youth Institute and coach Katrin Fuchs spell out what really matters.
Dear parents, it’s not your fault
There are many things parents simply cannot control. There is no universal magic formula for a relaxed balance between a full-time job and family life. Nor is it a question of will or effort. The lack of work-life balance is a systemic problem.
When we talk about working hours, care work is often not sufficiently taken into account. Many women only work part-time despite wanting to do more, says Boll. The reasons range from workplace barriers to a lack of childcare and care for relatives.
“This challenge cannot be coached away,” says Fuchs. How good or bad the starting conditions are for families also depends significantly on where they live and their lifestyle: How do I live? Where do I live? Are there reliable care facilities? How much do they cost? What is the state of the infrastructure?
Parents struggling with work-life balance should not see this as a personal failure.
And whatever the circumstances, sometimes, even small steps can provide a little relief.
Strategy 1: Build a support network for emergencies
Families can work to build a network, as what many need above all is reliability. “I can only cope with special circumstances such as school holidays or children falling ill if I can rely on trustworthy people in my circle,” says Fuchs.
This doesn’t just mean relatives, but also neighbours, friends or other parents. “This is no longer a given in our society,” she says. “But if I want to juggle everything, I need a support network to catch me when things get tight.”
As many families no longer live near relatives these days, most are interested in mutual support. This can benefit everyone involved.
Strategy 2: Work flexibly – but don’t always stay in parent mode
Childcare is easier to organize if your workplace offers you flexibility. “Generally speaking, people who have the opportunity to work more autonomously are more likely to remain in full-time employment,” says Boll. Those who can tailor their working hours or do some of their work from home have a clear advantage when it comes to work-life balance.
However, if at all possible, parents should not work exclusively from home. Boll warns against losing visibility when working remotely. Anyone working in a company with a strong culture of physical presence, for instance, "quickly shoots themselves in the foot career-wise by working from home," she says.
And there is another risk parents should be aware of, Boll says. "If only the woman works from home, you quickly fall into the traditional division of labour." She is referring to assumptions such as, "You’re at home anyway, so you might as well take care of it." To understand what can and cannot be done while working from home, it's important that fathers also work from home, she says.
Strategy 3: Better ways to share everyday responsibilities
Family counsellor Katrin Fuchs often observes that couples without children live very equally. “However, the moment a child is born, they often slip into a pattern that society has laid out for us.”
New parents often invest a lot of time and money in deciding which pram is the right one, but rarely discuss what their visions of family and partnership look like. “At some point, parents then realise that not much remains of the equality they once had,” says Fuchs.
The only thing that can help is communication and making daily tasks visible. Try using a mental load list, such as the one from the Equal Care association (equalcareday.org). It lists all tasks relating to housework, childcare and caring for relatives, and distinguishes between thinking about them and actually carrying them out. Many of these tasks are often overlooked. “Couples must work towards dividing them up fairly,” says Fuchs.
Strategy 4: Recognising overload and taking countermeasures
Many families operate at the limits of what is feasible and often feel overburdened. The best remedy is to create reliable structures, perhaps by clearly dividing up the working days.
“If I know I can definitely work on Mondays and Tuesdays because my partner is on duty if the nursery calls, that helps enormously,” says Fuchs.
Without such arrangements in place, around 80% of the time, it is the mother who winds up staying at home when the child suddenly falls ill. “Work-life balance is always a matter of give and take,” says Fuchs. Otherwise, juggling a job and care work can quickly become a serious burden.
In the worst case, people are at risk of “parental burnout.” Symptoms can include sleep disorders, migraine attacks, back and shoulder pain, and exhaustion.
“Many parents report that their personality has changed, that they are less cheerful and don’t recognise themselves anymore,” says Fuchs.
By this point at the latest, parents should take urgent action to turn things around. The best way is to take stock by asking questions such as, how can we support each other? What might help us? Even a small change can sometimes make a big difference.
