Men also juggle career, children
By Dana Knight
Indianapolis Star
Gonzalo Hernandez works long, pressure-packed days at the Mexican restaurant he manages.
Mpozi Mshale Tolbert • The Indianapolis Star
Then he rushes off to pick up his 8-year-old daughter, Lexes, from her after-school program. He rocks 2-month-old Adair. Cleans up the dinner table. Helps with homework. Plays games, and then gets 4-year-old Allan and 2-year-old Lindsay ready for bed.
Restaurant manager Gonzalo Hernandez picks up daughter Lexes, 8, from school in Indianapolis. Hernandez, like many other working dads, has found that a perfect work-life balance is hard to come by.
As a working dad, that perfect work-life balance often eludes him.
"Sometimes, it gets a little tough when the kids get sick or there are extra things to do," said Hernandez, 27, manager of Qdoba Mexican Grill in Indianapolis. "If I had more time, I would definitely spend it with my wife and kids."
Often forgotten in the research and self-help resources for working moms are those men who shoulder just as much of the family-plus-career responsibility. Like their female counterparts, they are trying to juggle it all.
Dads today spend 50 percent more time with their children — 2.7 hours a day — than they did 25 years ago, but they are working just as much, according to a 2004 study by the Families and Work Institute.
When asked the No. 1 element essential to a balanced life, 84 percent of men said it is spending time with family, according to a Best Life magazine poll.
And in a surprising workplace survey by the Society for Human Resource Management in 2004, men ranked the need to balance work and home life higher than did their women colleagues.
"Men don't want to be stick figures in their kids' lives," said Jeff Csatari, executive editor of Best Life magazine. "They want to be very involved in their kids' lives, far more than their fathers were. All of this is adding to the time-crunch burden."
Time to do all they want to with work and family often is a seemingly unreachable goal.
"I'm not always satisfied with how I'm doing either one," said Max Beasley, a social-studies teacher at Indianapolis' Arlington High School and father of two sons, ages 17 and 9. "I feel like I am doing the best I can. I figure we try to learn and grow and leave it at that."
Beasley likes the flexibility a teacher's schedule allows so he can pick up his 9-year-old from school. He starts his day in the classroom at 5:30 a.m. so he can leave when school lets out at 2:45 p.m.
Some major corporations are expanding their support to fathers. IBM Corp. offers free handouts on such topics as becoming a dad and what infants need from fathers. Ernst & Young has regular "dad group" meetings.
Indianapolis law firm Barnes & Thornburg has upgraded its systems so dads can access work-related materials at home. The firm also has equipped workers with laptops and other technology so they can build their careers around their lives.
Eli Lilly & Co., often lauded for accommodating working mothers, offers just as much to its fathers, such as flextime, flex weeks, part-time hours, job sharing and telecommuting, as well as paid leave for new fathers.
Greg Willman, co-owner of Qdoba restaurants and the 42-year-old father of a 2-year-old boy and newborn twin boys, will assign employees to outlets that are close to their children's schools.
Other fathers work around their children. Like Steve Hanson, 36, a salesman whose office is in his home. When Hanson has to travel, he schedules appointments around 11-month-old Brooke. He might wait for her 9 a.m. nap — and work while she sleeps — then take her to daycare, rather than having her go at 7 a.m. with his wife.
And some days, he just closes the door to his office and lets her play in his papers and books while he checks e-mails and makes contacts.
"She's pretty good at playing, and I can actually take phone calls in the office," he said. "I know she's still with me, and that's nice."
