Do farm kids have a good work-life balance?
By Mindy Ward
It woke me out of a dead sleep, the garage door opening at 5:30 a.m. No one goes out that early, I thought. I rolled over and went back to sleep. I was wrong.
I was visiting my daughter in Ohio. She typically heads to work by 7 a.m. When I finally made it downstairs, my son-in-law greeted me.
“Did Elisa leave early?” I asked. “Yeah, someone called off work, so she went in to cover for her,” he responded. And then he opened the back door and headed to Columbus for a meeting.
Just the night before, all three of us were talking — OK, I was doing most of it — about how they work a lot of hours and don’t seem to enjoy their time off, let alone take any. “There is such a thing as work-life balance,” I said. “You all need to find it.”
Alone that morning, I thought, “Why didn’t they listen?” I think it boils down to their upbringing.
Different view of work
As my son-in-law says, those raised rural learn “to play hurt.” It doesn’t matter if the cold, winter wind is biting your face — you feed. It doesn’t matter if you have mono — you enter the show ring (true story of my girl). And it doesn’t matter if you have a broken ankle — you find a boot and get in the tractor.
Now as adults, they use the same mentality at their jobs. It doesn’t matter if it is snowing — you make a sales call. It doesn’t matter if it’s not your start time — you go in early. It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel well — you do your job.
But for the most part, the “real world" does not work that way. My concern is we teach solid work ethic to our children, then they engage in a world where others, well, are not raised with the same values.
People call off “sick” for the day, only to post to Instagram about an evening spent in a restaurant with margaritas. A few snowflakes fly, and it’s a personal day for “safety reasons.” Having a foot in a cast requires management to reserve them a spot nearest the office door. There just seems to be less commitment to work.
In an Inc. article titled "This Is Why Millennials Care so Much About Work-Life Balance," the author shared that, “For many millennials, success is having control over how and when they work and accumulating various life experiences.”
The article stated that 16.8% look for a job that offers good work-life balance, 11% for flexibility and only 13% for upward mobility. He ends with, “To effectively engage and retain millennials, create more work-life harmony.”