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Feminists argue for gender equity in daily tasks as a solution to the disproportionate burdens that mothers, wives, and daughters carry in families (Allen, Walker, & McCann, 2013), but they also warn that even with gender equity, many contemporary families would still have too many hassles to manage on their own (Coontz, 2015). In contrast, those ascribing to structural-functionalist views suggest that families function best when women focus on children and home management and men focus on breadwinning (Popenoe, 2009). Rare among scholars but quite prevalent in popular culture are self-help perspectives that frame the link between everyday hassles and family well-being as a private matter that individuals can solve by using time more efficiently. Still others emphasize government- or employer-subsidized child- and eldercare services as mechanisms for outsourcing many of the everyday hassles associated with caregiving while also acknowledging that government and workplace policies may actually amplify sources of hassles if ineffectively administered (Bogenschneider, 2000, 2014).

We argue that contemporary American families need better opportunities both at home and in the workplace to meet family members’ diverse needs without inadvertently creating additional stressors for individuals already living in chronically stressful situations (Perry-Jenkins et al., 2013; Roy et al, 2004). We support Moen’s (2003) conclusion that we must “re-imagine and reconfigure work hours, workweeks, and occupational career paths in ways that address the widening gaps between the time needs and goals of workers and their families at all stages of the life course on the one hand and the time available to them on the other” (p. 7). For example, some families may want to devote more time to paid work outside the home and therefore need ways to simplify aspects of their daily home lives and outsource everyday tasks to readily available, high-quality substitutes. As Valcour and Batt (2003) note, for parents who want to focus more of their time on family obligations, flexibility in the workplace is of paramount importance. They quoted a mother of three children (including 4-year-old twins) who has been married to a business administrator for 15 years:

I was lucky to work out a job sharing arrangement because there was another woman in my department who did the same thing as me and was also struggling after she had her second baby. So we went to the human resource person and she was supportive but said the company doesn’t have this in place. So we did the research and went to the president of the division and we went through a couple of struggles, but eventually they accepted it. I’m so glad it worked out, because it has been great for me and my family. (p. 320)

As this woman’s experience illustrates, workplace policies that enable family members to care for the needs of their members without jeopardizing their financial security or jobs are likely to be particularly beneficial for families caring for young children or sick or aging family members.

Although the needs and desires of family members in diverse family forms are likely to change over the life course, they exist in a sociohistorical context that has seen little development in family-responsive workplace policies (Perry-Jenkins et al., 2013). For example, the everyday hassles that today’s families encounter are situated in a society that is still predicated on a breadwinner-husband–homemaker-wife script in which the breadwinner is assured an adequate wage for family provision and a full-time, linear rise up the occupational ladder, and the homemaker manages the everyday non-work aspects of her husband’s life as well as the daily hassles of managing a home and family (Coontz, 2000; Moen, 2003). This outdated script contrasts starkly with the contemporary reality that the majority of American families (e.g., single-parent and dual-earner families) experience as they work in an economy where family-wage jobs are reserved for the highly educated, secure manufacturing jobs are few, job growth is limited to low-wage 24/7 service-sector positions with little security or hope for advancement, and income gains are disproportionately situated among more advantaged individuals (Autor & Dorn, 2013). Further, relative to high-wage workers, low-wage workers are less likely to be employed at firms large enough to entitle them to health insurance and family leave, and also less likely to be able to afford the insurance premiums and 12 weeks of unpaid leave (Perry-Jenkins et al., 2013). In addition, existing government and workplace policies have been slow to recognize that working family members have legitimate family demands on their time that may require greater flexibility in the workplace. As long as the culture of the workplace equates work commitment with overwork and fails to recognize the legitimacy of family caregiving as an employee right, those seeking a reasonable balance between work and family life are likely to be penalized (Jacobs & Gerson, 2005). This point is documented by a father of two children (ages 8 and 14) who is employed as a manufacturing production supervisor and married to a part-time educational coordinator:

I wish there were more flexibility, especially in our production environment. I’ve worked all my life around a rotating-work schedule, but this year alone I lost three excellent employees. They had each become single parents for one reason or another, and there’s no way you can get child care in off hours and weekends. It just breaks my heart. Traditionally production has been a male-oriented thing, where one partner stays home with the children and the other one works crazy schedules…. the world is changing and the schedule is not. (quoted in Valcour & Batt, 2003, p. 310)

The mismatch between the work environments that family members inhabit and the needs of contemporary families creates a context in which everyday hassles emerge and multiply (Perry-Jenkins et al., 2013). The policies most effective at improving family well-being take a holistic approach by integrating service delivery, prevention programs, universal high-quality services, and programs that are flexible to families’ needs (Hengstebeck, Helms, & Crosby, 2016).

Valcour and Batt (2003) suggest that employers first adopt and promote a family-responsive attitude toward employees and then demonstrate support for this attitude through company policy. A primary objective of this approach is to reduce the often unspoken costs to employees who choose nonstandard work arrangements or take advantage of family-friendly policies (Jacobs & Gerson, 2005). Such an attitude recognizes that all employees, regardless of whether they have spouses, partners, children, or other kin at home, are members of families and experience everyday hassles and demands from personal involvements outside the workplace (Perry-Jenkins et al., 2013). Valcour and Batt (2003) note that family-responsive employers must offer employees the following: (a) a broad range of work-life programs that provide employees with control over their working time and support in meeting their family and personal needs; (b) adequate pay, benefits, and employment security; (c) work designed to provide employees with discretion and control in meeting work and life demands; and (d) a workplace culture, transmitted formally by organizational policies and informally by supervisors and coworkers, that values and supports the work-life integration of all employees (Thompson & Prottas, 2005; Valcour & Batt, 2003, pp. 312–313). Jacobs and Gerson (2005) further emphasize that family responsive reforms must uphold both two essential principles: (1) gender equality in opportunity structures and (2) support for employees regardless of socioeconomic location.

Moen (2003) argues that it is not enough for corporations to list such policies on the books. Employers must make continuous efforts to enforce these policies to cultivate a corporate climate that is truly responsive to the needs of families. Moen also suggests that employers and government officials need to keep better records of the variations (and the reasons for them) in employees’ work-hour and career-path arrangements in order to track the implications of these variations for employees and corporations. The information gained through such tracking may help to convince employers and policymakers of the heterogeneity in employees’ experiences both at work and at home and thus persuade them to change outdated workplace policies based on the breadwinner-homemaker template. Finally, and perhaps most important for families’ experiences of everyday hassles and stress, employers and policymakers must view employees’ vulnerabilities and family circumstances as key human resource, workforce, and labor issues. For family members struggling in uncertain economic times and working in low-wage jobs with inflexible work schedules, everyday hassles such as minor car accidents, sick children, and parent–teacher conferences scheduled during work hours can add strains that they may find hard to manage. Policies that focus on the risks, vulnerabilities, and family lives of workers are likely to attenuate the transfer of stress from everyday hassles to family relationships.