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Last April, Lenore Skenazy wrote a column in the now-defunct New York Sun about how she let her 9-year-old take the subway alone. More »
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Lisa Belkin is perhaps the nation's foremost chronicler of highly ambitious females and coiner of the phrase "opting out" has decided to opt out of her weekly "Life's Work" column (see what I did there? I kid). Anyway, Belkin's last column discussing the work/life balance among women and after nine years of covering this topic, she comes to the conclusion that there are "no answers — just endless and penetrating questions." But she also notes that in this time of economic peril, those questions might change entirely. More »
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In honor of Father's Day this weekend, there is a slew of articles about modern fatherhood, most notably the the cover story of the New York Times Magazine coming out this Sunday about "equal parenting." Lisa Belkin, who has covered the life and work beat for the styles section for a decade now, interviews several couples who "work equal hours, spend equal time with their children, take equal responsibility for their home." Belkin continues, "Neither would be the keeper of the mental to-do lists," but these couples are definitely keepers of physical to-do lists. Jessica DeGroot, who is the founder of an organization called ThirdPath which attempts to negotiate the work/life balance, keeps an extremely detailed scheduled outlining the shared familial tasks. "[Jeff] Lutzner’s (DeGroot's husband's) schedule is blue, DeGroot’s is pink, child care from nearby grandparents is purple and time at school is gray." And while equality is certainly a goal for most parental relationships, I got a whiff of micromanaging about Belkin's article. More »
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My brother is only 16, but he is very wise. Recently, upon hearing a grown-up-type person bitch up her job, he replied, "Well, it's called 'work' for a reason." At this moment I said a little prayer of thanks that my parents had imparted to the kid that, in life, you have to work hard, and working hard isn't always sexy. This sort of sentiment, however, is absent among many of the Gen Y-ers currently entering the workforce, claims Lisa Belkin in today's New York Times. The kids nowadays are all worried about "passion" and "life mapping," and less concerned with, oh, putting in the hours and being the best damn alphabetizer/stapler/photocopy-er they can be. Says Daniel Pink, (whose book The Adventures of Johnny Burko is supposed to teach young adults that hard work is a good thing): "This generation has been spoon-fed self-esteem cereal for the past 22 years. They've been told it's all about them — what they want, what they are passionate about, what they find fulfilling. That's not a bad message, but it's also not a complete message." More »
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I hated my last full-time job for a variety of reasons — because it consisted entirely of unchallenging grunt work, because the higher-ups encouraged a culture of snitching, and because almost everyone there was actively looking for a new job — but what actually made me quit was my deep and undying hatred of one of my coworkers, whom I'll call Angela. As the most senior of the junior staffers, she was ostensibly my superior. Every morning she would arrive at the office and immediately change into a pair of Orvis slippers, while ritualistically rubbing her hands together with anti-bacterial gel. Soon after I started the job, and on the eve of a three day weekend, I asked Angela what she was doing for the mini-break. "I'm handing out hot dogs at a homeless shelter," she informed me. "I began volunteering there when I first started this job and I was low man on the totem pole. I needed to have someplace to go where I was in charge of everything." More »
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