My word: Can work and family co-exist?

The idea of work-family or work-life conflict usually appears to be a modern thing – something that occurred on the onset of industrialisation – when workers had to leave their families to spend endless hours toiling in industries.

The idea also seems to imply that it’s mostly women who have this conflict – because they were ‘never meant to be in the workplace in the first place’. They were meant to be at home, tending to the very families that were responsible for the conflict.

But work-family or work-life conflict has always been a part of humanity. Every mother knows that they don’t need an actual workplace to have this conflict. You can have this conflict very well, right in your home and just as soon as she brings a baby into the world.

The minute she has to hand over the sleeping baby in her arms so that she can visit the washroom. The moment she has to let her awakened baby cry a little so she can finish warming up the bath water. Work isn’t actually what you think. And life – well, life is supposed to be enjoying what you’ve worked for. But isn’t work just a part of life?

Perhaps if we understood and accepted this, then there wouldn’t be such a thing as a work-life conflict. As women, especially, we have burdened ourselves with the notion that this conflict is something we must accept if we want to have successful and fulfilling careers ‘just like the men do’.

And yet this conflict of the lack of balance in work and life is not gender specific. The Center for American Progress found that 90 percent of working mothers and 95 percent of working fathers report work-family conflict. If women understood that their counterparts also experience this, then perhaps they would feel less guilty when seeking time away to restore some balance.

Last week, we featured a woman who juggles her roles as a doctor and a mother. She introduced us to the idea of work-life synergy (not balance) which combines the power of a fulfilling career and a meaningful life. This week, we speak to a journalist who experiences the same conflict but manages it in her own special way.

As Eve, we have dedicated the entire month to honouring the mothers working in essential services and the nannies who step in for them when they leave their families behind in this period. Visit www.evewoman.co.ke or follow the hashtag #MomsontheFrontline for more stories of mothers working on the frontline of the pandemic