What Job Can Reconcile Your Professional And Home Life?

A balance for everyone

We're all different, and so are our needs and desires. Do you work too much for the time you spend with your family? Do you spend too much time with your family and not enough at work? 🚨 Newsflash: only you know and can take action to find the place where you'll be fulfilled, both personally and professionally. So, if you don't mind, let's leave the guilt and other people's opinions here from now on, which will only confuse our manes (got the ref'? 🦁). What counts is finding your own balance.

By the way, where does this need for better balance come from?

In addition to looking for concrete tools to find it, it's worth taking a step back and asking ourselves where this need comes from. Several factors are weighing in the balance.

• The ecological factor: the health crisis and climate change are leading us to rethink our relationship with time. Since it's harder than ever to project ourselves into the future, the natural reaction is to want to enjoy the things that make us happy now. No one is talking about giving up work, which can in fact be a source of happiness, simply about rethinking our priorities.
• The evolution of "work value": perhaps you've discussed this subject with older people around you? I've had the opportunity to do so, and to feel the generation gap on this issue. Listening to them, it's easy to think of ourselves as lazy. But this evolution is legitimate and can be explained. Add to this the loss of meaning, job insecurity and the impact on health, and we're rethinking the balance between work and family life.

So, is there a miracle job?

Well, since we're all different, no (the word "miracle" was a clue). However, it is true that certain statuses or professional fields tend to facilitate this balance.

• 🚶♀️ Independence: work for yourself, be autonomous and set your own pace... This status has many advantages, but the freedom it offers may not suit everyone. It's essential to learn how to manage your time and your projects, so you don't end up working nights and weekends and getting the opposite of what you wanted. If this is the right model for you, there are plenty of freelance jobs out there.
• 💻 Working from home: it's not possible all the time, but it's grown a lot since the health crisis. Like independence, it has definite advantages, but our attention must be focused on the fragile balance it offers. Remote working naturally leads to questions about life balance, with much less demarcated boundaries between professional and personal spheres. Here again, it's an interesting solution if you manage to segment things properly. Read up on why working from home is so much more tiring than in the office.
• 🗓️ Part-time work: working less means more time for yourself and your family. But part-time work means part-time pay, and you have to be able to afford it. Having said that, we can also take the opportunity to question our relationship with money and consumption... What do I really need? What makes me happy? For example, if I spend less time working, I'll have less money but more time to do things myself, which will certainly cost me less. So where does true wealth lie?

No miracles, but a few paths

There is no such thing as an ideal job, but rather a number of statutes and organizational models that can facilitate the search for this balance. On the other hand, it's a well-known fact that certain fields, such as catering or healthcare to name but a few, require you to work staggered hours (evenings, nights and weekends); that executive status predisposes you not to count your hours; and that working too far from home means "losing" many hours of commuting time. With awareness of all this and without putting too much pressure on ourselves, it's up to each of us to come to terms with our realities and try to always "strive towards" our ideal balance.

😲 And if you're in a relationship, with a man: does he also question himself? An Insee study published in 2022 questioned equality between women and men in the articulation of work and family. Well, do you know what? The employment rate for mothers in a relationship aged 25 to 49 varies from 48% to 73% (depending on the number of children and their age). But, surprise! For fathers in a relationship of the same age, the activity rate varies very little and exceeds 90%... Now that's something to talk about, isn't it?

Be sure to check out these articles too;

• Why I hate working from home
• Why are millennials so unhappy at work?
• This I why I hate my job