How can we create a better 'normal'?
Let's discuss life + work for millennial / gen z parents and their employers.
Welcome to The New Box by me, Kate White. (Aspiring) founder of Third Space Omaha, visual designer by trade. I’m a millennial who likes to discuss all things creative and make-the-world-a-better-place-ish.
Let’s keep it real, peeps. Most of us grew up believing that career and family are like apples and oranges - they are both be delicious but don’t necessarily mix well. Typically our dads had the more “important” job, and our moms either stayed at home to deal with all the domestic stuff or had a job in order to help make ends meet.
If we knew a mom with career ambitions it was kinda weird. People would talk about how much she had to travel, or wonder if the family was “okay” since she probably wasn’t a good mom because she was so focused on her work. When she did show up to family-focused events, she was so articulate and energetic that people fell on the side of either, “wow isn’t she incredible?” or “she certainly is ambitious isn’t she…”
Note: this is, of course, a caricature of the situation from what I remember growing up in a conservative circle in a small town in the Midwest… but the movies I’ve watched (largely produced in New York or L.A., mind you) paint a similar picture. So I figure my experience can’t be too far removed from what was going on in the real world in the 80s, 90s and 00s, can it?
Anyhow, let’s fast forward to all of us being college-educated grown ups, discovering a semblance of a career path that actually interests us (to varying degrees 😬). When babies come into the picture, well…
Hm.
The work vs. family paradigm we grew up in doesn’t really fit this new world, does it? New momma thinks, “I don’t want to give up this job I worked so hard to get, nor can we handle the loss of my income… but it feels so wrong to be separate from my new baby!” New daddio is all, “I want to be there to bond with that new baby and help with midnight diapers… but my employer isn’t giving me any flexibility right now!” A rip begins to form in the work-life thing we thought we were getting ourselves into.
And that’s just the beginning.
Couples who rely on dual incomes face a new conversation surrounding who’s-doing-what inside and outside the home when kids come into the picture. Eventually, the “high maintenance” phase shifts from infancy to toddler to school age, and the complexity shifts and increases as well.
Keep in mind, many of us are trying to maintain the work-life model we were shown from youth, yet the setup our parents had throughout their intense parenting years had didn’t have the always-on factor of being able to telework, nor the convenience. And if we’re honest, our parents’ employers didn’t take into account the unique needs of women in the workplace when it came to environment or benefits because women were typically a minority. We’ve tried for a long time to fit into the parenting patterns of our mentors with this new world of work… But it just doesn’t work. The sustainable balance isn’t there. And we’ve all known it for a while.
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Okay, so two months ago I would have stopped there and moved on to talk about the future of work plus ideas to support caregivers in the workplace, but then:
Coronavirus.
Currently, caregivers of all ages and diversities are left with the unanimous feeling of WTF.
Of course we’re all struggling during this period of fear and isolation wherein many parents are expected to work and teach and parent and keep a household running, not to mention finding time to Zoom with Grandma who’s stuck alone in that longterm care place. (Cue very sad piano music. I’m serious.) Employers are scrambling, employees are trying to save face, and few of us are getting by with our sanity and/or finances in tact. Many of us know people who have tested positive, and we’re just taking life one day at a time like we’ve never done before.
Through all this strange madness, the futurist in me keeps wondering: what comes after this?
And yes, obviously many thought leaders are pondering the same thing as I’ve witnessed in article after article about Post-COVID-19 Forecasting or The Future of the Workplace. We are all curious what the new world order will be because a deadly virus that spreads asymptomatically has brought unprecedented economic damage around the globe within a matter of months. (Stopping myself from not-to-mentioning the bizarre unbelievability of the Trump years preceding COVID…) It literally feels like an alien spaceship could land on the planet and we’d be all, “Meh. I’ve got TP stockpiled and a Netflix subscrip. I’ll survive.”
There were many good ideas being floated from the parenting and entrepreneurial space prior to the pandemic that will be a great starting point for post-COVID-19 management of work and life.
With this here newsletter I’m raising my hand as a Millennial with a few ideas from the parenting / entrepreneurial / tech / design-minded corner on what the future of work should entail.
Our collective next steps will require deep consideration of the past, serious compassion for our present, and creativity like we haven’t yet seen in the corporate environment for the future.
Our next steps will require deep consideration of the past, serious compassion for our present, and creativity like we haven’t yet seen in the corporate environment for the future. I’m excited to watch (and document) as more ideas sprout and bloom over the upcoming months and years.
We’ll get through this, friends.
Let’s start dreaming about the other side of this.
Let’s figure out the new box we want to create.
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