填空题
.The Overworked, Networked Family
A. Bring up work-and-family balance at a neighbor's barbecue, and the conversation immediately turns toward tales of rushing out of meetings at breakneck speed to shuttle the kids to soccer practice or struggling to tear ourselves away for a decent vacation. Complaints about time pressure are so common that they have become a common cultural vocabulary. Everybody, it seems, is stressed out about time, and achieving "balance" has become the Holy Grail of middle-class family life.
B. But maybe balance is the wrong image. Instead, think transformation. Just as businesses are shifting from Industrial Age to networks, so, too, is the American family undergoing a parallel social revolution. Parents and children are no longer on the same schedule—unlike the way things were a generation ago. With many educated mothers and fathers working longer hours, they are linked to their kids by a web of cell phones and e-mails. At the same time, kids are taking the initiative to pursue more activities and are using information technologies to nurture their own electronic networks of relationships, from friends at school to cousins in distant cities. The networked economy is leading to far different standards and expectations of what it means to be a parent and a child. It's not simple enough for the young to get an education. Instead, the goal is to raise children to be creative and adaptable, able both to compete successfully and to collaborate with their peers from all over the world. "We have an economy whose functioning depends for the first time on the strengthening of human capability, " says Richard Florida, professor of public policy at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.
C. How can the typical overworked white-collar American—bombarded by e-mails, troubled with late-night meetings, and confronted with unexpected business trips—at the same time manage at high speed and cope with the new challenges at home? Gradually, a new body of shared rules-of-thumb (经验做法) is emerging, passed along at playgrounds and in offices. Among them: trans-form technology from an oppressor into a liberator.
D. Others have mastered the art of interweaving work obligations and home life in a way that was not possible before, answering an e-mail from work one minute and helping with homework the next. And the younger members of the family—already far more sophisticated at multitasking and networking than their parents—are getting a chance to see what approaches work and what falls flat.
E. Historically, the organization of the family has mirrored, to some degree, the organization of the workplace. Take the classic middle-class family of the 1950s and 1960s, the "Golden Age" economy of strong productivity growth gains in real wages. With a secure corporate job, Dad could afford to work not much more than 40 hours a week and Morn could stay at home to raise the children. The family of that era did many things together. The classic example is eating dinner every evening at the kitchen table. The kids also followed their parents when Mom and Dad visited friends. In essence, a family acted like a single unit, with a hierarchy(等级制度) that mirrored the top-down management of factories or large industrial organizations of the day.
F. Fast-forward to the 2000s. Today, both Morn and Dad are more likely to have careers. The combined workweek of a husband and wife in their prime working years with children is 68 hours, up from 59 hours in 1979, according to calculations by the Economic Policy Institute. The better educated the couple, the more hours they put in. At the same time, their jobs have changed. The rote(生搬硬套) work is either being done by computers or is in the process of being outsourced to foreign countries. Instead, what's left are the more complicated and creative tasks that can't be easily reduced to a set of instructions.
G. At home, standards for a healthy, emotionally rich family life are a lot higher than they used to be. Schedules during "leisure hours" are filled with music lessons and play dates for the kids, exercise classes for Morn, and occasional golf times for Dad. Parents are aware that colleges and universities look more favorably on high school students with a demonstrated ability to do many things well, not unlike the skills they will need in the workplace.
H. To achieve these goals, families are learning to turn technology to their advantage. Many time-pressed workers now realize that technology creates greater possibilities for busy families to stay in touch and, at the same time, increase family time. When Ruder went to the work on Saturdays and Sundays, he doesn't long for "the good old days". "Because of technology, I probably spend more time working on the weekend now, but it's easier on me because I can work at home, then take a run, and go out to brunch with friends, " he says.
I. But just as excessive e-mails and conference calls fill up time on the job, there's temptation to use the technology to stuff too much in at home as well. Other busy people have found that it's important to maintain fairly strict boundaries between work and home. It's important to note that there's no one-size-fit-all solution for the problem of reconciling long hours at work with a healthy family life. What's more, individuals can accomplish only so much acting on their own. Schools and other major community institutions still behave as though the 40-hour workweek were the rule rather than the exception. And corporations are still loading new responsibilities and commitments onto managers and professionals, without taking away any of the old ones. Nevertheless, what's fascinating about the current focus on managing work and family time is that it's rooted in an abundance of possibilities. Through trial and error, with many troubles along the way, the networked family is starting to figure out how to take advantage of the many opportunities available today. And that's progress.