Why are our work places and schools still designed for the working families of the 1960s, the Donna Reeds of this world?

Our workplaces are still designed to suit Donna Reed era of the 1960s. Just like our schools and their 10-week summer vacation.

That’s one finding of the latest humdinger of a report on work life imbalance in the U.S. by the Center for American Progress, The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict, The Poor, the Professionals, and the Missing Middle.

It finds:  Work-family conflict is much higher in the United States than elsewhere in the developed world. One reason is that Americans work longer hours than workers in most other developed countries, including Japan, where there is a word, karoshi, for “death by overwork.”

The typical American middle-income family put in an average of 11 more hours a week in 2006 than it did in 1979.

It finds the debate concentrates too much on rich professional woman, who have the means to opt out, or pregnant teens or young women.

Lost in the shuffle are the “missing middle.”

Who are they? “Working families of modest means, the people who put in long hours to earn a living and make a decent life while coping with rising pressures in their workplaces while trying to raise children in solo-parent or dual-worker families.”

This group represents 53% of working families.

Why is policy so out of whack with the times?

Read what CAP says:

“Yet employers still enshrine as ideal the breadwinner who is always available because his wife takes care of the children, the sick, the elderly—as well as dinner, pets, and the dry cleaning. For most Americans, this is not real life.

“This explains why work-family conflict is so widespread. Today’s workplaces are (im)perfectly designed for the workforce…of 1960. The mismatch between the workplace and the workforce delivers negative economic consequences for individual workers at all income levels, as well as for U.S. businesses and for our economy as a whole.”

It is funny that a nation of people driven by results still rewards time servers and people who put in the hours, instead of looking at the outcomes and results.

Make sure to read the entire report at CAP.

Photo:  BlueVelvetVintage