Crunch time: modest workplace reforms will strengthen families and the economy.

• Author: Warner, Judith
• Position: AMERICAN LIFE: AN INVESTOR'S GUIDE

Surveys consistently show that work-life conflict in the United States is epidemic. The problem is due not only to the presence of mothers in the workforce but also to the increase in conflicting demands placed on fathers. According to the Families and Work Institute, a New York-based research group, men now report more work-family conflict than women, and while the percentage of women reporting some or a lot of work-family conflict has remained more or less stable over the past few decades, the percentage of men with such conflicts rose from 35 percent in 1977 to 60 percent in 2008.

Work hours have risen, at least for those in the middle and upper-middle class. Between 1977 and 2002, dual-earner married couples with children saw their combined working hours shoot up by an average of ten hours a week, from eighty-one to ninety-one. By 2005, fully one-third of U.S. employees reported feeling chronically overworked. Today, adults employed full time in the United States work an average of forty-seven hours per week, with nearly 40 percent of full-time workers reporting that they work at least fifty hours a week.

Low-wage and hourly workers face a different set of time pressures. They routinely encounter highly unpredictable scheduling practices with last-minute work assignments, impromptu cancellations of work shifts without pay, or the chaos of being "on call," committed to working shifts for which they might or might not be needed.

All of this--combined with increasing pressures for more time-consuming and intensive parenting than was the norm for previous generations--contributes to an overwhelming sense of overload and lack of control. In November 2012, nearly three-quarters of respondents polled by the National Partnership for Women & Families said that they, their neighbors, and their friends experienced hardship in balancing high and often inflexible work demands with the equally high yet unpredictable responsibility of caring for family members at least somewhat often, and nearly 40 percent said they experienced such conflict "all the time" or "very often." University of Minnesota sociologist Erin L. Kelly and her coauthors found that approximately 70 percent of Americans now report "some interference between work and non-work."

The troublesome level of stress weighing on parents from work-family conflict is generally considered a private matter--a personal problem of the sort best addressed by yoga, relaxation exercises, or going out to coffee with friends. And yet a considerable body of research now indicates that, in fact, it should be considered a public health issue. Work-family conflict has been linked to mental and physical health problems...