{"id":2320,"date":"2007-11-12T19:39:50","date_gmt":"2007-11-12T19:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/?p=2320"},"modified":"2007-11-12T19:39:51","modified_gmt":"2007-11-12T19:39:51","slug":"life-versus-work-a-question-of-balance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/?p=2320","title":{"rendered":"Life versus work &#8211; a question of balance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A piece in the <i>Sunday Times<\/i> by <a href = \"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/comment\/columnists\/minette_marrin\/article2848086.ece\">Minette Marrin<\/a> about flexible work for mothers<\/a>, and the reaction of non-parent co-workers goes over some old ground, and draws a predictable range of angry responses. She writes: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;In my own experience, women social workers and women doctors who work flexibly become much less satisfactory to me as a customer; they must be even more unsatisfactory to their employers&#8230;.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Except of course those &#8220;customers&#8221; may also be parents, or have other needs for flexibility in their own lives.<br \/>\nAnd she concludes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;However good it sounds in theory, in the nasty detail of practice, flexible working all too often imposes a burden on businesses, on standards, on services, on clients and on the economy.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Or, if you turn that around, &#8220;business&#8221;, &#8220;the economy&#8221; are putting burden on people&#8217;s lives.<\/p>\n<p>So what is the economy for? Is it some great monster to feed itself, or is it there to serve its community? What if everyone &#8211; not just parents &#8211; had the option of flexible working, if it were encouraged even?<\/p>\n<p>Sure we might have a smaller economy &#8211; but in this rushed world, it would be a time-richer society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A piece in the Sunday Times by Minette Marrin about flexible work for mothers, and the reaction of non-parent co-workers goes over some old ground, and draws a predictable range of angry responses. She writes: &#8220;In my own experience, women social workers and women doctors who work flexibly become much less satisfactory to me as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","author-natalieben"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}