Stephen Lunn reports: WOMEN who return to work part-time after having children have more difficulty juggling career and family than mothers in full-time jobs.
“It is a double whammy for part-time working women – their jobs aren’t the best career option and more is expected of them on the home front,” said Barbara Pocock, head of the Centre for Work + Life at the University of South Australia.
Professor Pocock conducted in March the first national survey of work-life outcomes, called Work, Life and Time, polling 1435 male and female Australians.
The results, to be released yesterday, “confirm that long work hours have a negative effect both on the individual in terms of health and in the broader context of friendships and community involvement”.
No surprise in any of this really. Entrepreneurial Mothers have known for a long time that “part-time” does not address the issues that it is sort out to do. Which is why many of us set up the way we want to work, and usually that means doing our own thing. Whilst it may add more pressure initially, that pressure can still be controlled as it is you that is driving it… unless of course you have an “overnight success” and control is lost, but that doesn’t really happen; does it?
