Modern Dads and the Conflict of Work and Kids

Alright. Dads are doing a lot better. In 1965 they spend 2.5 hours a week with their kids. In 2011 they spend 7.3. A three hundred percent increase, but mothers still blow them away. A whopping 13.5 hours. Twice of the dads. And here is the kicker, dads feel worse about that 7.3 than their fathers did with their 2.5. In other words dads just cant get a break while their wives feel pretty good about the time spent with their children and their own dads didn't break a sweat about their provider little kid time status.

I get it. I feel like I never spend enough time with my kids and I work at  home. Of course you can be at home and not be at home. But still I feel like I do not see my kids but  near enough and with one son getting toward college I wonder...did I do enough? Was I a good dad? Who doesn't have these thoughts right? And you have to envy those old dads who just went off to work and plowed ahead and maybe they missed their kids but I'm not so sure. If you don't open the box then maybe you never know what you are missing.

But we do. As a dad you are always rushing home to that kid function. Missed kid activities are painful and you wonder about those traveling dads. I knew a guy who traveled every week and I asked him about missing his kids. He said if he thought about it it would kill him. So there is that. But for most of us "around" dads you still feel like you are not doing enough. More activities. More bonding moments. And then they grow up anyway.

It breaks your heart.

Rocket Man...the American Dream shouldn't be this hard
 

Corralling the Yahoos

Ok the new CEO of Yahoo Marissa Mayer is pulling in the troops. No more sleeping in. No more late night movies and working in your underwear. She wants them back in station to interface, cross pollinate, bond, and solve the problems of Yahoo in person. I get it in a way. You do learn more by bumping into people and yakking and passing ideas. But you also tend to goof off a lot too. Which is the inverse of her logic.

The truth is power is not static. Our CEOS are mini despots. Our companies are dictatorships. Ask anyone who works for a company if they are free. They are not. One wrong word, wrong tweet, wrong anything and it is game over. You are fired. There is no recourse in the Corporate world. The implied and stated fact is that you are replaceable and you may be replaced anyway by a robot or your job outsourced or eliminated. So you better tow the line.

And the first order of business is to get everyone back in the office where they can be watched. It galls CEOs to think that people are at home beyond their reach. They are getting paid for being at home? Yes they are. And are they really working?  Yes they are. In fact people work harder at home than at the office because the office is a prison day and part of it is spent killing time. The work is shoved into bursts between surfing and gabbing with co workers or lunch.

But at home one tends to have less of these distractions. There is the home environment but the home office generally solves the problem. So the theory that bringing the Yahoos back will solve multiple problems is probably fallacious. If only because the yahoos have tasted the good life and now they will be the slugs who are under the thumb of management. They will not be able to capitalize on their own work rhythms and will have to re orientate to the nine to five.

Like slaves before the Civil War who have been North they will not reconcile themselves to their bondage. They will have to be sold South. Or fired.

Rocket Man...the Catcher in the Rye of the Great Recession