A Difficult Balancing Job

Child-care centers that close too early. Fast-food breakfasts on the way to preschool. Discipline dished out over the phone from the office . . . quietly, so the boss doesn’t hear.

These are the scenes from a working parent’s life and the bad news is that half of Orange County residents feel they keep them from successfully balancing family and job.

The good news is they’re doing a heck of a lot better than workers in the rest of the country.

A Times Orange County Poll recently asked 600 workers how well they balanced their paid-work responsibilities with their family lives. Half said they were highly successful, compared with 37% of Americans in a national poll.

Further, nearly half in Orange County rated their employers as very “family friendly” for offering flexible hours and other accommodations for employees with children. And most say their colleagues are tolerant when a co-worker has to miss work for family reasons.

Why are Orange County’s employed parents faring better than the norm?

Credit the area’s solid business and economic base and the comfortable income level of its residents, experts say. There are a wealth of stores, businesses and services catering to the needs of workers and their families, they said.

“You’re going to get better services where you get more choices,” said Jane Kappahn, a former Irvine child-care planning council member who now works for a work-life benefit company in Northern California. “And one of those services is child care.”

Not only are there a variety of choices for child care, but experts say Orange County also provides a wealth of other services, from restaurants frequented by parents who don’t have time or energy to cook, to family-centered recreational activities.

The relatively recent growth of Orange County might also explain the family-friendliness of the area, they said. As houses have gone up, the businesses and child-care services catering to evolving family needs have moved into the neighborhoods, they said.

In addition, many large corporations with family-friendly policies are located in Orange County. Further, many residents have lived in the area long enough so that there are grandparents and other extended family members to help out with child care.

“There’s probably no single answer. It could be a complex matrix effect operating here, compared to other counties elsewhere,” said Allen W. Gottfried, psychology professor at Cal State Fullerton and leader of a study that has tracked the development of more than 100 children and their families over the last 18 years.

His research team observed that families used not any one type of child care but devised combinations and made personal adjustments “to make it all work.”

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Still, while Orange County’s jobholders might be faring better than average, the 49% success rate means many are floundering. Four out of 10 said they were only somewhat successful at the balancing act, and one of 10 said they were unsuccessful.

Two incomes did not guarantee success, either. Dual-career families were slightly less likely to give themselves top marks at balancing, with more than half saying they were only somewhat successful.

The Times poll, conducted by Mark Baldassare and Associates, surveyed 600 adult jobholders from Orange County over five days in September. The margin of sampling error was 4 percentage points for the overall group, higher for subgroups.

Parents interviewed for the poll spoke repeatedly of being continually rushed.

“I envisioned not experiencing any problems,” said newly employed kindergarten teacher Sarah Stiles, 27, mother of 14-month-old Taylor Peacock.

“I thought it would go smooth, that if you needed day care, you found it with no problem, that everything would be built around what I needed,” she said.

Stiles, who works in Hawthorne, takes Taylor to a family day-care center near her Huntington Beach home. But she must drop him off earlier than the proprietor generally likes, in order to arrive at school in time. Rushing home after school is equally hectic, she said.

“Those 25 miles, that’s a lot of freeway, potentially a lot of problems,” she said. “The time issue, it’s tough.”

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Several working parents said they feel a good deal of guilt because of the time they spend away from their children. They try to make sure they spend “quality time” with their young, even though it is difficult to do so without quantity time.

“I always make time for my daughter. She always comes first,” said Michael Surbaugh of Santa Ana, single father of 4-year-old Halle. Surbaugh is working two part-time jobs, as a data researcher and a process server, while looking for work as a paralegal, and often takes his daughter with him on his rounds.

“My job is flexible,” he said. “And not too many parents can take their kids with them.”

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Asked to separately rate their success on the job and at home, 63% of Orange County’s workers gave high marks to family life and 59% gave themselves top grades to their work lives, higher than the national averages (53% and 46%, respectively).

Among working parents, though, there was a distinct gender gap in those categories. While men with children saw themselves equally successful at work and at home (68% for each category), women were much happier with their family lives (75%) than their work lives (58%).

That’s not surprising, said several authorities, because women--and men--still see the woman as primarily responsible for running the household.

“Every study I’ve seen says that even when the mother is working outside the home, a lot of the responsibilities for running the home are still hers,” said Kelly Hogrefe, with the Orange County Child Care and Development Planning Council.

Likewise, working mothers were less likely to miss a family occasion or holiday than employed fathers, the poll found. Further, 42% of employed mothers said they would take a pay cut to spend more time with their families, compared with 35% of employed fathers. Dual-career families were most likely (46%) to opt for a pay cut.

“There is definitely a trend in that direction,” said Madeline Fried of the Alliance of Work-Life Professionals. “The quality of life is really important. If you’re in the middle class or upper middle class and you can still afford a decent quality of life with a pay cut, I think we’ll continue to see this.”

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Leslie Marsh, 33, of Cypress, a hotel front desk supervisor, gave birth to her first child, Emily Elizabeth, last month. She plans to cut her full-time hours back to part-time when her maternity leave ends. Any impact her reduced hours have on her career, she said, will “take second place to my family.”

While many poll participants said their employers have family-friendly policies, experts noted that those who take advantage of flexible hours--generally working mothers--can harm their careers.

“The people are often seen as less committed, with less high potential,” said Lotte Bailyn, professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

In addition, she said, co-workers may resent colleagues who leave midday to watch a child’s class play or unexpectedly miss work because of a sick child.

Bailyn recommends that companies organize employees into work groups that collectively decide how a particular task or project can be accomplished.

“The conversation is how they will get the work done, not on the individual,” she said. The end result can be accomplished with a variety of work methods and schedules, Bailyn said. “They work it out together and in a way it covers many of these [resentment] issues.”

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The Times Orange County Poll found that more than half of the area’s workers felt their colleagues are tolerant when employees with children need special accommodations. An additional 31% said colleagues were somewhat tolerant, while 9% felt they were not understanding at all.

But Harvard economist Juliet Schor looked skeptically at the 31% in the middle.

“No one wants to say bad things about the people they work with,” she said. She said a better interpretation is that 40% of co-workers are not very tolerant.

Ellen Bravo, co-director of 9to5, National Assn. of Working Women, said she encourages companies to frame their policies as “work-life,” so that they encompass not only employees’ children, but also elder care, education and other issues.

“Where they have that attitude, the support [among co-workers] is much greater,” Bravo said.

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Mary Collins of Huntington Beach knows that taking care of an elderly parent can be even more stressful than balancing work and children.

Collins, who works for an automobile financing company, often must take days off to take care of her ailing mother, who lives in a nursing home and uses a wheelchair.

“It’s not easy to get her to a doctor, and it’s a 60-mile trip, round trip, from where I work, so I can’t make it to a doctor’s appointment with her and work that day too.

“So I use sick days to take care of her, like I would for children,” she said. “Right now I am lucky that I have an understanding supervisor, one who has gone through the same thing. . . .

“You can’t plan when you’re going to have a crisis,” she said. “Dealing with this is just as stressful as trying to get home to children.”

In fact, when she does go home to her husband and their two sons, ages 17 and 21, “it’s a relief,” Collins said. “My home life is something I really enjoy.”

It’s a pipe dream to expect that every employed parent can find the elusive equilibrium between work and family, experts said. But the percentage of parents who say they have hit the right balance--even in better-than-average Orange County--needs to improve, said Fried of the Alliance of Work-Life Professionals.

“A good goal,” she said, “would be at least 85%.”

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Also contributing to this report was Times staff writer E. Scott Reckard.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Family-Work a Delicate Balance

Most Orange County workers think they are highly successful in their family and work lives, but are less positive about the balance they are striking between work and family. Women with children feel more successful about their families; men with children feel more optimistic about their jobs. Locals are considerably more likely to feel highly successful in all three areas than their counterparts nationwide:

* How successful do you feel in your family life/work life/balancing your paid work and your family life?

*--*

Family Work life life Balancing Highly successful 63% 59% 49% Somewhat successful 27 32 39 Not successful 8 8 10 Don’t know 2 1 2

*--*

% saying “highly successful”

*--*

Men Women w/child w/child Family life 68% 75% Work life 68 58 Balancing 49 47

*--*

*--*

U.S. O.C. Family life 53% 63% Work life 46 59 Balancing 37 49

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Sacrificing for Work

Half of workers say they have put job before family, with men more likely to have done so than women. Men are also less likely to say they would take a pay cut to spend more time at home:

* In your present job, have you ever missed a family occasion or holiday because of your responsibilities to the job?

% saying “yes”:

Total: 48%

Men w/child: 60

Women w/child: 41

* Would you take a pay cut at your job if it allowed you to have significantly more time to spend with your family?

*--*

Men Women Dual-career Total w/child w/child households Yes 34% 35% 42% 46% No 59 60 47 46 Already did 2 1 8 3 Don’t know 5 4 3 5

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Making Allowances for Families

The Orange County workplace gets good marks for adapting to families, with nearly half reporting their bosses are very agreeable to flexible hours for parents and most saying co-workers are very tolerant of arrangements that sometimes need to be made for family reasons:

* Overall, how would you rate your employer in terms of being “family friendly,” that is, offering flexible hours for employees with children? (asked of employees only)

Very: 47%

Somewhat: 31

Not: 18

Don’t know: 4

* Overall, how would you rate your co-workers in terms of being tolerant when employees with children miss work or need special accommodations for family reasons? (asked of employees only)

Very: 55%

Somewhat: 31

Not: 9

Don’t know: 5

Source: Times Orange County Poll, National Opinion Research Center

How The Poll Was Conducted

The Times Orange County Poll was conducted by Mark Baldassare & Associates on Sept. 3-7, on three weekday nights and two weekend days. Random telephone interviews of 600 adult jobholders from Orange County took place in English and Spanish. The sample reflects the demographic composition of employed residents of Orange County households. The margin of sampling error overall is plus or minus 4 percentage points. For subgroups, such as part-time employees or blue-collar employees, the margin of sampling error is larger. All participants were guaranteed anonymity; some agreed to be re-interviewed for news stories.

Tracking This Series

Here is an at-a-glance summary of this week’s three-part Times Orange County Poll:

Sunday

Orange County is a great place to work, if you have a high-paying, cutting-edge job and can afford the benefits of its new economy.

Today

Half of Orange County residents are having trouble balancing the demands of work and home, which is better than the rest of the country.

Tuesday

Orange County’s reputation may be anti-union, but people are generally positive about organized labor and believe companies care more about profits than workers.