IN AUSTRALIA, they call it Eight Hour Day. Labor Day is a celebration of their hard-won right to work a sane and sensible number of hours.
Here in the United States, at the end of summer, we also celebrate Labor Day. But in this country the history of workers' rights takes into account our right to make our own contracts, to work as many hours as we choose. You won't find us celebrating eight-hour days.We are, after all, the sons and daughters of immigrants. We've been raised to work hard. We believe work is honorable. And more work is even more honorable.Don't do it, caution Tom and Camille Collett Delong. Don't succumb to the seduction of work.
Is this an odd message to be hearing in MBA school? No, say the Delongs, it's message that's long overdue.
Professor Tom Delong and his wife, who is a family therapist, teach a class called "Balance in Private and Professional Life" at Brigham Young University's Marriott School of Management. They've given similar courses at Harvard and MIT graduate schools and, on a consulting basis, to corporations across the country.
"Our key point is this: We tend to move to the arenas of our lives where we can measure success," says Delong. "It's easy to measure success at work." In relationships - with friends, spouses, children - rewards are less tangible.We are all tempted, say the Delongs, by those easy and obvious rewards.
One of their former students, Paul Hansen, now works in marketing for Ford Motor Co. In addition to a paycheck, he says, there are other reasons to work.
"You get recognition," he says. "Promotions. Pay increases.
"When you come home, you change diapers, do the dishes, clean the toilet."
At the office everyone looks their best, he adds. No one is covered in chocolate or chicken pox.
"Work lets me travel to foreign countries, eat in nice restaurants," says Hansen. "The professionalism of corporate life can be intoxicating if you are not careful."
The Delongs help young men and women be careful, define their own values and stay true to them throughout their corporate lives.
They ask students to make a "genogram," a chart of their psychological genealogy. Students interview all their living relatives and search for clues about those who are gone. The Delongs ask, says Camille, "How did your relatives view success? How did they view roles of men and women? What role did humor play in their lives? Were they addicted to alcohol? Yard work? Chocolate cake?
"You tend to re-create your family patterns in all parts of your life," she explains. "At work. In intimate relationships.
"These patterns keep us from living balanced lives. From making our own decisions.
"Not all of our students are married or have children," she adds. "But they all need to make time for a private life, a support group, intimacy.
"There is no right way to balance your life," she says. "We teach people to look at their own style. We do cover the basics of child development and highlight the importance of fathers at every stage in a child's life."
But when students ask him, as they do every quarter, "What's the least amount of time I have to spend with my children to have them be healthy?" Tom Delong answers, "What do you think?"
Camille Delong says, "We ask them, `Why are you having children if you don't want to spend time with them?
" `What are your priorities?' "
This is a question people all over the country are asking themselves, says Paul Hansen. People who have never heard of Camille and Tom Delong, people who just woke up one morning, speeding along on the fast track, are now trying to figure out where they are headed.
Not just married people. "I know single people who would give anything fora meaningful relationship, but they don't have time to meet anyone," he says.
Not just working mothers. "I have these conversations with male friends all the time. I bet I have two of these conversations a week - I mean very in-depth, concerned kinds of talks."She doesn't like to be the one to say so, says Meredith Vieira, but she can't have it all. She feels terribly guilty, she says, because other women might have been looking to her to do more.
In an interview with Working Woman magazine, the former "60 Minutes" reporter talked about how she felt when the show's producers refused to let her extend her two-year part-time contract.
She could still work for them, they told her. But if she wanted to keep on being a reporter, she'd have to go back on full time. She gave up "60 Minutes."
She brought her baby to the final negotiations, she says, because she wanted the men who were deciding on her career to see what she was giving it up for.
"I had been so driven for so long that I was scared - and this sounds awful - that if I was alone in the room with those big guys from `60 Minutes,' which is a dream job for someone like me, that I might agree to anything. I needed to keep looking down at this little person and keep reminding myself that my life is different now and that there is something else that matters more than my job."