The idea of “Work-Life Balance” arose in the 1980s when women in the workforce called attention to the perennial issue of uneven playing fields for men and women in the workplace and at home. In 2025, there is still rampant gender disparity for women who feel the stultifying effects of the “Free Time Gender Gap.“ Since women are primary caregivers at home, household managers, and chief-cook-and-bottle-washers in 2025, responsibilities simply pile atop the never-ending demands of full-time employment for women. From the Gender Equity Policy Institute study “Free-Time Gender Gap“ (October 2024), here are some key findings:
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Women spend twice as much time as men, on average, on childcare and household work. All groups experience a free-time gender gap, with women having 13% less free time than men, on average.
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Mothers spend 2.1X as much time as fathers on the essential and unpaid work of taking care of home and family.
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Young women (18-24) experience one of the largest free-time gender gaps, having 20% less free time than men their age.
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Working women spend 2X as many hours per week as working men on childcare and household work combined.
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Married women without children spend 2.4X as much time as their male counterparts on household work.
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Among Latinos, mothers spend 3.4X as much time as fathers taking care of children and doing household work.
“Work-Life Balance” became a rallying cry for women who could never hope to enjoy equitable “free time.” When compared with their male counterparts, women recognized the injustice embedded in employment recruitment, retention, and promotion systems that cater to men’s more abundant discretionary “free time.” Gender disparity aside, humans suffer the effects of a misconstrued idea of “Work-Life Balance” as “Separation” of “Work” from “Life.” It makes us think of ourselves as separate super-beings, one who is completely consumed by another meaning frame for 40 or 50 or 60 or more hours per week, like Superman, until we drop down to mild-mannered Clark Kent’s life and become “normal” again. What we need to do is ditch the phonebooth, and integrate the glasses AND the red cape into our wardrobe.
“Life-Work Balance”: Punching in and out 9 to 5, or any variation of perceived “separation of work and life” as an understanding of “balance” is problematic both in framework and substance. “Work-Life Balance” is a misnomer, or a fallacy, especially if it is understood as a relationship between two opposing entities, rather than one intertwined reality. Work is folded into Life, and can be seen as “Life-Work Balance,” if we understand that Work is another facet of Life. Living fully takes its cue from how well we understand ourselves in the context of our job and our vocation, how fully we live as human beings. We need to reframe the concept, learn from Nature how to balance, and then pursue an integration to benefit the whole – whole persons and whole ecosystems, work, home and biosphere.
Framework: “Balance” shouldn’t be understood as separation of work and life, as though they are polarities to be weighed in balance. For women and men, the pipe-dream of drawing boundaries around work and life disintegrated in the COVID era when work-from-home conference videos featured kids bouncing off the walls, laundry piles being folded while meeting and taking notes, and half-dressed moon-shots that were both comical and embarrassing for those “caught” on camera. Employees could still expect after-hours calls, and vacation-be-damned “essential” team meetings and check-ins. And employers, fearing lazy, lounging, virtual employees, binge-watching Netflix and suffering constant kid-care interruptions, tightened the screws. “Balance” became capitulation, usually tipped in favor of the boss/owner/exec. But as we’re discovering, the framework itself doesn’t work, i.e., the idea that somehow from X time to Y time each day (and beyond if it’s an FTE), an employee ceases to be a full human being, and yields one’s humanity to corporate. “Balance” as “Separation” is simply bogus.
Substance: “Balance” is really about flow and integration, a beautiful complementarity, not a pretend barrier between who we are as employees and who we are as fuller human beings. We work-rest, and play-work. We brainstorm and enjoy, laugh and innovate. Cardio workout aficionadas who practice “interval” training understand the benefits of integrating periods of rest in the midst of more strenuous exercise. The same holds true for human-merely-being. Our jobs, careers, missions, and vocations are folded into one reality – us. We’re gorgeous in our multifaceted aesthetic. To pretend we are somehow “separate” in our work personas and our “normal life” personas is illusory and potentially unhealthy.
Executive Functions: Every day, whether at work, at home, or encountering life generally, we exercise “high-level” attention, our “executive functions,” which require complementary brain region cooperation and interconnecting perception, acuity, goal-setting, and creativity. These executive functions help us grapple with our environment, interpret and wrestle with complex ideas, germinate creative solutions, and regulate our behavioral responses. Without our executive functions, job performance, home life, and life “performance” become impaired. Cognitive fatigue and decreased executive function means we are not only out of sync with who/what is around us and within us, we fail to manage stress and co-create solutions for healthier interaction, overall well-being, and resiliency.
Stress: Managing stress is part of every context, whether we are on the clock or not. The key is switching our many hats when necessary, dressing for the occasion, work, life, and everything involved, and responding accordingly when the need arises. Fluidity is key here. And fluidity takes practice, learning to morph into one phase of attention, to another, and to another with grace, poise, and wisdom. Abrupt shifting is usually not recommended. How do we manage the flow?
Coping: Some flourish with key “turn it off” moments in the day, and need to honor their personal cadence for releasing their work addictions. Sleep routines might be one of those moments, paying attention to circadian rhythms and the need for deep rest. Resting is a soft skills deficit that plagues many high-performing workers. They are “on” even when they’re “off.” They cannot settle, cannot relax, even at home, even on vacation. Even with loved ones.
Relationships-building may be another key moment for putting the phone on silent and resisting the urge to check messages and social media. Some cannot rest without a hard stop of on-call availability, and this is true of personal relationships and home responsibilities as well. Unless one lives alone in a cave, learning to navigate transitions between essential moments of attention is a necessary soft skill in our posthuman context. Some flow quite effortlessly with phone calls and texts that call for immediate attention, as long as the practice isn’t abused. Need a check-in for whether your attention to work is all-consuming? Ask your friends, creature-kin, and significant others. Do they feel they have your full attention when you are spending time with them? The key, once again, is knowing when to shift attention, and how to flow gracefully from a highly specified work-focus to a generalized vocation-focus.
Nature-based Solutions: Taking life in measured steps, living “half-fast,” and learning restoration and stress management are key to sustaining energy and balance as full human beings. Nature can help us learn the art of flow through “Attention Restoration,” and – like interval training – weaving direct attention with involuntary attention and rest. Nature immersion is just one way to hone our ability to focus and pay attention in an integrated way, whether we are working, playing, or resting. By sharpening our ability to flow from direct or focused attention to involuntary (vs. voluntary or focused) attention, Nature helps us let go, breathe, and notice sensory attractors one by one before we perceive them in the aggregate. How?
A walk outside attunes our senses to welcome spontaneity – birdsong, chipmunk and squirrel chitter, the rustling of leaves, shade and sun shifts, color, natural fragrances, and stark or inviting textures that capture our attention. Involuntary attention means we are aware of our surroundings, with heightened sensory perception, without preparing to react. Because we can simply be present with our full sensorium, “attention restoration” occurs. Attention restoration is an opportunity to recharge our over-stimulated, hyperactive minds, and is found to be beneficial to those struggling with ADHD or recovering from Social Media Dependence.
Managing stress in every life setting, including work, is also crucial for catalyzing flow capacity in Life-Work rhythms. Nature’s benefits are well-documented and broad in scope. Reduced heart rate, blood pressure, stress cortisol, and mental fatigue, and increased capacity for respiration, balance, focus, resiliency, support for the central nervous and immune systems, especially phytoncides for natural killer (NK) cells, are among the positive effects.
We need Balance, yes. Nature shows us the art of Integral Balance through biodiversity and interdependence. By slowing our pace, paying attention, and living more fully in each moment, we can imitate Nature. If we see Life-Work Balance as integration and flow, rather than keeping one from tainting the other, we might go beyond drawing lines around life and work. We might doodle a masterpiece.
