Life-Role Balance

Challenges to Life-Role Balance

Changes in the nature of work, the influence of technology, demands created by dual-career parenting or single parenting, and lifelong learning requirements represent some of the challenges confronting contemporary workers. Workers today also work longer and earn less than their counterparts did several decades ago. Many workers experience heightened anxiety about the prospect of being laid off from work as record downsizing occurs throughout the world. Technological advances also displace many workers and often make it necessary to work more hours.

These are not benign challenges confronting adults. For example, in Japan the second leading cause of death, after cancer, is referred to as karoshi, which is defined as death from overwork. Overwork is not gender biased. Many women report a lack of family time as their greatest concern. Many dual-career parents experience conflict trying to find time to express their work and family commitments. The stress associated with such conflict often creates marital tension with negative outcomes for family systems. Managing decisions about life-role participation can become overwhelmingly complex in the face of such challenges.

Unfortunately, career practitioners and theorists tend to operate as if lives are lived in compartmentalized silos. Choices regarding work are conceptualized as if they occur in isolation from other domains in a person's life. This approach represents a false scenario and is ineffective practically and theoretically. It fosters life-role conflict rather than life-role integration and balance.

Acknowledging Life-Role Interactions in Career Development

When practitioners and theorists acknowledge the challenges to achieving a balanced life, they begin to approach career as it is lived. They link career development with human development and embrace the fact that there are few things more personal than a career choice. This fact raises an important point concerning life-role balance: defining a balanced life occurs at the level of the individual.

Defining what constitutes a balanced life, or a satisfying life structure, requires substantial self-awareness. Being aware of which life roles are important and [Page 1572]which are peripheral helps to prioritize time and commitments. It is essential to effective time management, which is a core skill related to achieving a balanced life.

Knowing which life roles are important in the present, however, is insufficient. Knowing which life roles will be important in the future helps guide the planning behavior of children and adolescents. Because life-role self-concepts evolve over time, adults must also maintain a high level of self-awareness pertaining to which life roles are most salient in the present and which are likely to be most salient in the future.

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