What kind of a society would support this at all levels -- on the community, business, and government levels...These are the questions we must be asking each other and ourselves as we move into the 21st century. And these are the questions the ThirdPath Institute is dedicated to working in dialogue with other organizations to answer.

Following is an excerpt of a chapter written by Jessica DeGroot and Joyce Fine for the book, The American Woman 2003-2004: Daughters of a Revolution, edited by Cynthia B. Costello, Anne J. Stone, and Vanessa Wight, New York: Palgrave. The chapter is an overview of what good public policy geared towards supporting work life balance issues might look like.

Making Integrated Solutions an Option for Everyone
Today's reality is that seventy percent of American women age 25-to-34 with children are in the labor force. At the same time, if current trends continue, approximately 80 percent of women in this age group will have one or more children by the time they reach age 44. This presents an opportunity for a new work-life template to enable contemporary and future generations of women and men to live integrated, satisfying lives. We recommend that individuals, businesses, and government take several steps to achieve this goal.

The first step is to let go of the outdated concepts and patterns of behavior around the ideal worker, the ideal mother, and the ideal father. If men's and women's careers and jobs continue to have markedly different trajectories once families have children, we will continue to hold ideals and expectations that are unrealistic given the demands of this new world and its new ways of working.

The second step is to make such solutions equally accessible to people of all financial and educational levels. Families that cannot financially afford to cut back their work hours, or that fear for their job security if they request flexibility, must be assisted through responsive, well-crafted public policies. These policies should enable all families to reduce work obligations in order to create time to meet responsibilities at home.

Those with limited means should have the right to work reduced work hours at different times in their work lives in order to care for children or seriously ill family members. In order to do so, they will need access to financial support as well as continued health insurance and other important benefits when they are working less than full time.

One initiative that would ease the burden for parents of young children-especially economically disadvantaged parents-is high-quality, universal preschool for three and four-year-olds. There is ample evidence that children in this age group are socially ready to be with their peers and that they benefit from steady interaction with them.

The third step is to hold all the different stakeholders - including individuals and families, employers, unions, and government - responsible for their part in the change process. Starting at the individual and family level, young mothers and fathers will need to learn how to adopt a new approach to parenting, in which each is actively involved in the primary care of their children. At the employment level, organizations will need to eliminate outdated work practices and expectations, adopting in their place new norms that allow employees to work and have time for their lives outside of work. Unions must do their part in making flexibility an important component in their bargaining agenda. Finally, legislators must develop policies to support changes that allow for integrated lifestyles.

Through a combined effort, we can move beyond outdated work-life paradigms to create a new world in which workers, workplaces, families, and communities are more in sync with each other. Attaining this goal will benefit all of us. Workers, both women and men, will benefit from more integrated lives with more time for themselves, their families, and their communities. Workplaces will benefit from the retention of women workers and the higher productivity that results from more satisfied employees. And children will benefit from the attention of both parents rather than one. The combination of these changes will have ramifications for generations to come, for it is likely that children who grow up in shared parenting arrangements will continue similar solutions when they become adults and start families of their own.

(The authors would like to thank Lotte Bailyn, Bob Drago, Anita Garey, Joan Williams and Randy Albelda for their pioneering work which has contributed to our ability to imagine, assemble and articulate these ideas.)