With its catnip title backed up with a thoughtful exploration of a difficult and emotional issue, the article has generated a predictably frantic round of response and recrimination online. But even for those who weren’t dying for another rehashing of the limitations (or lack of them) society and biology puts on women’s life choices, the piece offers food for thought, particularly for those thinking about the future of work and the role of remote collaboration.

Slaughter bemoans the “culture of ‘time macho’—a relentless competition to work harder, stay later, pull more all-nighters, travel around the world and bill the extra hours that the international date line affords you—remains astonishingly prevalent among professionals today.” And argues that it’s time to decouple face time and achievement in favor of more tech-enabled flexibility not just for women but for all workers. She writes:

A study by the Center for American Progress reports that nationwide, the share of all professionals—women and men—working more than 50 hours a week has increased since the late 1970s. But more time in the office does not always mean more “value added”—and it does not always add up to a more successful organization… Long hours are one thing, and realistically, they are often unavoidable. But do they really need to be spent at the office? To be sure, being in the office some of the time is beneficial. In-person meetings can be far more efficient than phone or e-mail tag; trust and collegiality are much more easily built up around the same physical table; and spontaneous conversations often generate good ideas and lasting relationships. Still, armed with e-mail, instant messaging, phones, and videoconferencing technology, we should be able to move to a culture where the office is a base of operations more than the required locus of work.

Being able to work from home—in the evening after children are put to bed, or during their sick days or snow days, and at least some of the time on weekends—can be the key, for mothers, to carrying your full load versus letting a team down at crucial moments. State-of-the-art videoconferencing facilities can dramatically reduce the need for long business trips. These technologies are making inroads, and allowing easier integration of work and family life. According to the Women’s Business Center, 61 percent of women business owners use technology to “integrate the responsibilities of work and home”; 44 percent use technology to allow employees “to work off-site or to have flexible work schedules.” Yet our work culture still remains more office-centered than it needs to be, especially in light of technological advances.

One way to change that is by changing the “default rules” that govern office work—the baseline expectations about when, where, and how work will be done. As behavioral economists well know, these baselines can make an enormous difference in the way people act. It is one thing, for instance, for an organization to allow phone-ins to a meeting on an ad hoc basis, when parenting and work schedules collide—a system that’s better than nothing, but likely to engender guilt among those calling in, and possibly resentment among those in the room. It is quite another for that organization to declare that its policy will be to schedule in-person meetings, whenever possible, during the hours of the school day—a system that might normalize call-ins for those (rarer) meetings still held in the late afternoon….

Changes in default office rules should not advantage parents over other workers; indeed, done right, they can improve relations among co-workers by raising their awareness of each other’s circumstances and instilling a sense of fairness. Two years ago, the ACLU Foundation of Massachusetts decided to replace its “parental leave” policy with a “family leave” policy that provides for as much as 12 weeks of leave not only for new parents, but also for employees who need to care for a spouse, child, or parent with a serious health condition. According to Director Carol Rose, “We wanted a policy that took into account the fact that even employees who do not have children have family obligations.”

Do you agree with Slaughter’s diagnosis that “time macho” is a problem and her prescription of tech and thoughtful flex-work policies to cure it? 

Image courtesy of Flickr user vegetarians-dominate-meat-eaters-01. 

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Potential problems are, obviously, numerous, as a first person narration of a dual remote worker marriage in Marie Claire illustrates. With sections written by both members of a telecommuting couple, the piece enumerates the many challenges of a spouse joining his or her hubby in home working. Chris Norris, the first member of the couple to go remote, describes what it was like to suddenly have his wife, Ellen Carpenter, around the house after she was laid off and started working freelance. He chooses a frankly homicidal reference:

For six months now, my wife and I, both writers, have been working at home together in our one-bedroom apartment. If the precariousness of this situation isn’t obvious, I refer you to the best film ever about shared domestic work space: The Shining. There’s Jack Nicholson’s would-be author, self-exiled in an empty hotel. Typewriter clacking, he squints into the page—limning, seeking, probing, his mind finally edging up against that drifting, vaporous thought, when … “Hi, Hon!” chirps googly-eyed Shelley Duvall. “Get a lot written today?” The ax murders that follow are excessive, I grant you, but incomprehensible? I don’t judge.

True, our two-desk living room is no Overlook Hotel — even if it is a feng-shui horror show — and Ellen respects its sanctity. But I do feel like a crucial curtain has been pulled back. In our courtship phase, when she worked at an office, she would often swing by my place after work and find me lounging on the couch in a rumpled Agnès B. shirt (just put on), an open book on the table (unread), and another finished project on the screen. “Yep,” I’d say. “This is where the magic happens.” Now she knows what the magic actually looks like.

For her part, Carpenter didn’t suffer from a loss of privacy or murderous hallucinations but from the imposition of domestic expectations on her professional time. The couple set ground rules about interrupting each other when she started working from home, she writes, agreeing that,

From 10 to 6, Monday through Friday, we’d be colleagues. But very quickly, I took on other roles as well. Because Chris was used to my only being home in the evenings (making dinner) or on the weekends (making lunch, Swiffering the floor), certain primal, gender-specific assumptions were activated. Coworker? Try personal chef, maid, cheerleader, dog walker, masseuse, and make-out partner — on call, 24/7. In my attempt to adapt to his routine, I unconsciously stepped into some kind of ’50s, June Cleaver stereotype. The first week, I offered to make lunch. The next, I volunteered to read an article he had just finished and to give him feedback prior to its submission — that is, to tell him it’s great. The week after that, I assumed laundry duties.

Slowly but surely, all this wrought a learned helplessness I still can’t quite believe. My husband was once a strong, independent man who’d return from a six-mile run with a bouquet of my beloved dahlias. Now he can’t crack open a can of Progresso.

By the end of the Marie Claire article, you’re really, really rooting for Carpenter to get another office-based job. Are things always so grim for couples that work from home together? A recent two-part interview of another remote working couple on blog How to Work From Home offers more grounds for hope. Again, the wife, coach Maria Varallo, struggles more to separate the domestic and the professional. “There are times I find it too much being mom and wife whilst being a professional all at once,” she says. But in this case, having a partner working at home seems to have affected the husband in the opposite way it did Norris. Rather than reverting to 1950s-era stereotypes, Varallo’s husband Kris, a database administrator, has actually become more aware of all the effort that goes into running a family.

“The great thing about working from home is Kris is far more sensitive to what needs doing. I especially have noticed over the years as my work has grown and become more established how the house becomes very relaxed,” Varallo says. “If I put on the washing in the morning he’ll put it out if I’m out, he is aware and I think that’s because he also works from home.”

So how do you get a situation more like Varallo’s and less like Carpenter’s? Steve Cooper, co-founder of Hitched, an online magazine for married couples, recently offered some tips to Forbes. Citing a recent letter his magazine received from a woman with a problem (e.g. husband) much like Carpenter’s as inspiration, Cooper offers these suggestions:

Define Your Workspace. Having a space of your own is extremely important, even if one of you has to work from the kitchen table. If possible, set up shop in two separate rooms on opposite sides of your home.

Create Office Hours. If you only have one room that can work comfortably as a home office, [owner of The Protocol School of Texas Diane] Gottsman says you might trade use of that room by creating work hours.

Communication. Dialogue with each other is paramount. “You have to be able to talk to each other and really be honest without becoming defensive,” says Gottsman. Have a conversation where you explain what you need, when you need it and how these ground rules need to be followed going forward.

Dealing with the Family. Your boundaries should be very, very clear. “We want to feel like what we’re doing is of value and that our spouse also values us,” says Gottsman. “It may not seem as important, but if we’re doing it, it is important.” Your family needs to know they cannot walk in to your office and interrupt.

Check out the full article for more detailed advice. Author Jenna McCarthy has also offered tips to TheMogulMom, including, “if you have the occasional need to check in with your spouse throughout the day, you can save a ton of time by setting up an IM account.” As well as, “be mysterious…. wives tend to way overshare when it comes to the minutia of their lives. Your dude doesn’t need (or want) to hear a play-by-play of your day.” Though one wonders if husbands are really immune from long-winded explanations of their professional trials and tribulations (personal experiences says no), this last tip makes sense if applied to both genders.

Has working at home with your partner changed the gender dynamics between you, i.e. is one person taking on a more or less traditional role around the house?

Image courtesy of Flickr user S. Diddy. 

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