Response #3

The process of carework in my household has an equal balance. My fiancé and I both take part in the household chores and responsibilities. As a child, my mother and father both worked fulltime careers, my father is a firefighter and my mother is a nurse. Both of them have very demanding jobs, which took a lot of time to complete. As I was the oldest of their three children, I was given much of the reasonability, of my mother and father when they were not able to be home. I would be in charge of getting my younger bother and sister up and ready for school, packing lunches, locking the door, and many other task. This thought me a lot because I saw the stress that can be caused by having such a heavy workload, and performing well in school along with participating in after school activities.

Now, I am much older and starting a life of my own with someone, I know that the best way to keep both people less stressed and happy is to share the household responsibilities. In my home I do all the cooking, but in return my fiancé will do the cleaning up after dinner. We try to keep the chores equal and do them together. We will both fold clothes, wash dishes, and what I seem to realize is these are great ways for her and I to catch up on our live with each other. We ask each other how there day went, let out frustration from work or school, and remind ourselves that we are in it together and that we are never alone.

The UK and European countries look at work and family care much different than the U.S. The UK has a great program designed to help with the care for their families and themselves. The average vacation time an employee receives from its employer is only two weeks, whereas in Europe and UK, they receive as much as 6 weeks of vacation. The program that helps employee’s joggle work and care is great in many ways; the benefits are both in favor for the employee and the employer. As the video discusses, employee’s who need to take time off from work to deal with family issues, actually are less stressed and perform their job well during this stressful time. The employer benefits because they do not lose and employee and the workload the employee performs. The employer in return does not have to spend more money to rehire a new person, or out source the work because they lost an employee. This also creates loyalty and dedication from the employee; when an employee’s employer is caring and sympathetic in situations, the employee and loyal in return. The program has great purpose and needs to be implemented here in the states.