September 2018
Brad new 2013
Reflections on Work & Life
The New Normal
Brad Harrington, Executive Director
Well, school is now in full-gear and the official start of fall is just a few days away. Welcome back to the more hectic pace that comes with the end of summer. For me, in addition to my Capstone class for seniors beginning, September also marks the beginning of my 19th year at Boston College. When I arrived after a 20-year career in high-tech, my wife was an at-home mom. We had three kids - daughters five and two and a son, 5 weeks old. I had waited a bit long (okay, more than a bit) to start a family and in spite of being on the other side of 40, our crew was very young.  Read more on LinkedIn.
BCCWF in the News
In the news, BCCWF New Dad research has been mentioned in Parents.com , Forbes , and Parent Map Magazine .

Executive Director Brad Harrington was named a “Top 50” Overall Contributor to Work and Family Research at the 2018 Work-Family Researchers Network Conference held June 21-23 in Washington, D.C. This award was based on an overall assessment of eight modalities of excellence, identified by E. Jeffrey Hill and colleagues at Brigham Young University.

Welcome to the BCCWF Team!
September is a busy month at the Center for Work & Family! We are thrilled to welcome Tina McHugh as our new Senior Research Associate. She will be responsible for conducting primary research among member companies, and will be involved in upcoming benchmarking studies and other projects. We also welcome Daniela Mira, our new MSW intern from the Boston College School of Social Work. We are excited that returning student interns Julianna Marandola and Audrey Ballard will both be spending their senior year with us, working on research and fulfilling member requests.
BCCWF 2018 Fall Happenings
Boston is the center for our Fall 2018 activities! We are busy planning our BC Workforce Roundtable Fall Meeting, which will be held October 24-26 at the Hotel Commonwealth and at Roundtable Member Loomis Sayles' Downtown Boston office. The BCWFA Fall Meeting is scheduled for November 29, from 9-11am. See our events page for details. We will also be commencing a new study on extended parental leave. For information, contact cwf@bc.edu.
A survey within the Harvard’s Project Implicit study, showed that both males and females were unconsciously gender-biased and considered men more apt for career pursuits, while women were thought of as better homemakers. And though unconscious bias itself isn’t particularly bad, the implications can be dire.

Approximately 1 in 5 adults in the US experience mental health challenges every year. More than half of individuals in middle‐ and high‐income countries will experience at least one psychological disorder in their lives. And depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide.

The share of women in the United States labor force has leveled off since the 1990s, after steadily climbing for half a century. Today, the share of women age 25 to 54 who work is about the same as it was in 1995, even though in the intervening decades, women have been earning more college degrees than men, entering jobs previously closed to them and delaying marriage and childbirth.

A decked-out trailer was set up in Chicago’s Millennium Park on Sept. 5 as an orchestra practiced its set list in the nearby Jay Pritzker Pavilion. The vehicle, called the Check Your Blind Spots mobile experience, was part of a diversity and inclusion-centric concert series organized by the group Chicago United.

Caring for aging parents is a journey many of us will take in our lives. Some will plan ahead, while others will unexpectedly become caregivers and learn as they go. Many will encounter common challenges: parents who need but refuse help, a fragmented health care system, the staggering cost of care and the daunting task of somehow finding time to juggle it all. But of all the difficulties family caregivers face, one of the biggest sources of stress is trying to get on the same page with our siblings.

More than a decade after the introduction of the first smartphone, we are now awash in always-on technologies—email, IM, social media, Slack, Yammer, and so on. All that connectivity means we are constantly sharing our ideas, knowledge, thinking, and answers. Surely that “wisdom of the crowd” is good for problem solving at work, right?