“Men as well as women increasingly feel caught in the mismatch between employer expectations and the traditions of family care. Paid work and career paths remain structured for the 'unencumbered' worker, as if workers still had wives or someone at home to manage the domestic side of their lives.”

—“Integrating Work and Family Life: A Holistic Approach”
By Lotte Bailyn, Robert Drago and Thomas A. Kochan

One way or another, almost all of us have some problem juggling work and family, and in this section you can find out just how many other Americans share your predicament and what they are trying to do about it. And you’ll also have a chance to give us your feedback to our PBS broadcast of “Juggling Work and Family.”

If you’re feeling the work-family time bind, it’s not your imagination. Government data shows that family time and personal time for the average working couple has shrunk by 22 hours a week since 1970. The National Sleep Foundation says most of us are not getting the recommended eight hours of sleep and that roughly one-third are getting less than seven hours a night.

If you have been treating the tensions between the demands of work and the needs of our families as being like the weather – something you just have to endure, here is where you can find out about progressive companies and unions taking innovative steps to ease the stress on families.

But in the program transcript, you’ll also see experts explaining that the chronic tensions between work and family have become so pervasive that this is now a national problem. They argue that we need major reforms because the old way we organized work decades ago, no longer fits the needs of our radically changed workforce.

The evidence suggest that work and family issues are forcing their way into our national agenda, and the material in this section will help you consider the facts and join the debate.

First, please give us your feedback on the PBS broadcast of “Juggling Work and Family.” Then take a moment to download and read the program transcripts, meet the characters, get summaries of the stories, learn how the producers of the programs changed their views as they made this documentary, and see what the critics are saying.