The Overworked, Networked Family

Bring up work-and-family balance at a neighbor's barbecue, and the conversation immediately swerves toward tales of rushing out of meetings at breakneck speed to shuttle the kids to soccer practice or struggling to tear ourselves away for a decent vacation. Laments about time pressure are so routine that they have become a common cultural vocabulary. Everybody, it seems, is stressed out about time, and achieving "balance" has become the Holy Grail of middle-class family life.

But maybe balance is the wrong image. Instead, think transformation. Just as businesses are shifting from Industrial Age hierarchies to collaborative networks, so, too, is the American family undergoing a parallel social revolution. Parents and children are no longer on the same schedule -- unlike the way things were a generation ago. With many educated mothers and fathers working longer hours, they are linked to their kids by a web of cell phones and e-mails.