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Flex Your Time, Not Just Your Muscles
New Options Help Dads Be More Involved
By Teri Brown
Dr. Patricia Roehling, a psychology professor for Hope College in Holland, Mich., and the author of The Career Mystique: Cracks in the American Dream (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004), believes flextime benefits both employees and their families. "Studies have shown that those who use flextime spend more evening hours with their families and less time commuting," says Dr. Roehling. "This results in higher levels of marital and family satisfaction. So, when fathers use flextime to increase their time with their families, everyone benefits – the father who uses flextime, his children and his wife."
Dr. Roehling believes flextime allows men and women to share parenting more equally, and when men spend more time in the caretaker role with their children, they develop a deeper relationship with their children and they enhance their marital relationship. "Flextime is a benefit that all employees appear to appreciate, even those without children in the homes," she says. "There are also considerable benefits to the employer when they provide their employee with flextime. The use of flextime is associated with greater loyalty toward one's employer, greater job satisfaction and commitment, lower levels of absenteeism, tardiness, sick time and overtime, reduced turnover following childbirth, lower work- and family-role strain and interference, and lower levels of general distress. Flextime benefits the employer as well as the employee and his family."
This is one reason why corporate America has become increasingly friendly to the idea of flextime – clear benefits with little or no cost to the company.
Brette McWhorter Sember, a retired attorney and author of Your Practical Pregnancy Planner
