B2 – Upper Intermediate
We could only have enough time for everything. Overscheduling and overtiredness can affect the wealthy and the poor alike. If you’re an average citizen, you’d call this your normal ‘lifestyle,’ but if you’re a scholar, you’d label it as ‘time poverty.’
Do you ever notice how we never seem to have enough time for everything? For those people with children, they have even less – and the problem of ‘time poverty’ has never been more highlighted.
To learn more about the challenges of ‘time poverty,’ read the full text.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220201-the-time-poverty-that-robs-parents-of-success
Discussion Questions:
- What causes time poverty for parents?
- How does time poverty affect you?
- Do you generally have enough stamina before or after work to do something enjoyable? How do you make the most of your free time?
- How do you believe people with children can bridge the gap between having children and pursuing their work objectives?
- How do you strike a balance between your professional and personal life if you are also a parent?
- What can companies and government do to ensure people with children have good work-life balance?
2 replies on “‘Time Poverty’ Robs Parents of Success”
It is a fact that people who work more hours are more likely to be promoted in companies. Not only because they produce more output, but also because they are seen as more “committed”.
Sometimes, committed to the point they forget their families, friends or any social interaction not seen as synergetic with their professional aims. Not only they dedicate the time at work to their professional goals but also the time out of work.
From a company’s perspective, that might seem a logical way of proceeding. It is very hard to demonstrate that working less, makes people more creative and, as a consequence, probably more efficient, so it is easier for companies to think – as Mr. Elon Musk once said – that by working 80 hours per week, you produce double the output than if you work 40 hours a week. The economical Law of Diminishing Returns seems not to operate for Mr. Musk and a lot of other company leaders that rely on people “committed” to their work – which at the end can be translated as committed to themselves –, working all the hours they are awake, than on people with a balanced life, keener to dedicate part of their time to others.
However, psychologist Daniel Kahneman has proved that any salary increase over approximately annual net salary of seventy thousand dollar, will not produce higher happiness to people, furthermore when such salary increase comes with sleep deprivation, stress and time poverty.
And it has also been largely demonstrated that children need their parents, both of them, by their side.
The main concern, however, is not that people with OCD are managing our companies and organizations. The biggest problem is how those people shape society by doing so, and how the society they build is more a more unequal and unfair to poor people, making of equal opportunities an unreachable goal.
The fact that to economically thrive we have to concentrate in our professional life, is also at the base of the alarming decrease of birth rate, with all the “western” countries and most of the “eastern” ones not reaching the replacement level of fertility. Poverty has never been an obstacle for people to have children, at the contrary time poverty is.
Many couples in “western” economies feel they have to chose between having time for themselves and for the couple and having time for their children, and a lot of them chose not to have children, to have time for themselves.
Solutions are not ease to find, but it is clear than more and more people prefer to disconnect from this type of society, live the time left to them in this world and never, never have children.
You never fail to impress us with your writing skills. Keep up the great work!
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Until your next entry!