National Work and Family Month

Well I have returned from my restful weekend and as usual, I am now swamped! A few days away always leads to a week or two of playing catch-up. But, we had a wonderful weekend of eating, drinking, girl-talk, massages, swimming, sight-seeing and general fun!

As I worked to get back into the swing of things today, I found a note I'd written about National Work and Family Month. Apparently back in 2003, Congress passed a resolution to make October a month that we recognize what companies are doing to promote work and family balance. The Alliance for Work-Life Progress (AWLP) was involved in this effort and provides a nice outline of the resolution here.

While I think it is good that the government has made some recognition of the fact that managing work and family is tough, couldn't they do more than pass a meaningless resolution? What benefit does this resolution provide for working families? While the AWLP provides some useful suggestions of what a company can do to honor this resolution, I don't think many companies really do much of anything (unless they can garner some publicity from it).

Shouldn't we expect our government to provide a bit more support to working families? As I've mentioned before, we lag severely behind most other industrialized countries in benefits provided to working parents. Wouldn't efforts to support quality childcare and flexible working options do us more good than a resolution to "recognize" work and family challenges? If they really recognize the struggle, shouldn't Congress do something to help?