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Men and Women both have different difficulties in maintaining balance between the work and family life, like women have the pressure from public opinion that women are supposed to take more cares about family, and men should have successful career to earn more money which means they are fine if they overlook the family.

Growth and maturity brings with itself some unique challenges to people in any given society. First of all when one has matured, the society expects them to change their ways of life that is to leave and stop behaving childishly and adopt to the life of an adult. This means also that such people are expected to bear some responsibility that comes with maturity and adulthood. Some of these responsibilities include things like taking care of oneself like being able to pay ones bills and be independent from their parents and/or guardians. In essence, they are simply expected to reduce the dependency rate upon their parents or the people who had been supporting them in their childhood. Any good parenting system should lead one into becoming this type upon maturity. These adulthood responsibilities are essential as they prepare one into what is more important, the parenthood. By the time one is reached to the parenthood: having children and taking care of them, it is thought that they have had quite an experience of life and they are able to handle every responsibility that falls within that particular bracket.

This time normally comes when one is working or they are engaged in some activity from which they reap or derive their livelihoods. Most people at this age will be found in the formal employments and at first on the face of it appears such a nice thing maintaining a good job as a family man or woman. However at the same time research has revealed that these same people who superficially appear to be doing so well and living on top of their worlds, some of them are known to be going through a myriad of challenges and difficulties in trying to balance between work and family demands. Many of them have confessed that it is strenuously demanding and sometimes even almost unbearable to manage the pressures from work and the family.

Introduction.

Men and women are known to be going through different kinds of difficulties and challenges and owing to the nature of the societal structuring of their chores and duties more especially when it comes to the family set up. However, it is my assertion that it is only women who go through any form of struggling and challenges in trying to balance these demands of both work and family. Men are included in the list merely on empathy basis and their struggling is very little if any.

My assertion thus is fortified by the arguments an going to prong in this paper based on the wide variety of materials read for this study. Firstly, one of the reasons is that it is so far only the female gender that has ever complained of being involved in this kind of struggle to keep a balance between the work and family lifestyles. Men are not known to have complained at all. This being the case, it is likely to carry with it two interpretations; that is either the male gender does not struggle at all or maybe they have their own ways of dealing with such situations upon their occurrence. Secondly, the other reason is that the society we live in is structured in such a manner that seems to place a more responsibility on the woman and not the man of the family. More so the local home chores. The direct effect of this is that the woman will always be busy with the house chores and she will be worried more than the man on a few issues about the family. This can best explain why the woman will be the one to complain and thus struggle to keep the balance and not the man. Thirdly the number of women who are known to have resigned from their jobs solely to get more time spend with their families, especially their children is very high compared to that of men. Fourthly, the struggle is mostly fanned by the feminist notion that women can have it all. That is, they can have good and top position jobs and at the same time maintain a very stable family. They are misled by the cliché that what a man can do a woman can do it better. Now this cliché is not there or any of the same kind among men meaning that this male gender is not affected at all. Lastly, even if they have any kind of pressure it comes from the work place and not from the family. This is to suggest that men will not suffer double jeopardy kind of a situation that is being pressured from work and from family like the women suffer.

Concession

This being the case however in my opinion, a person will be forgiven in arguing to the opposite. This is because of the fact that men also forming part and parcel of the family will always attach some degree of care to their families and are known always to be ready to do whatever they can to see to it that their families are success. This according to Lyness (2005) seems to be the reason why most men will always be feeling some kind of unease whenever things in their families are all not going ok. Well, mostly men are blamed to be don’t cares especially on family matters (Utarro 1995, p. 10). However studies research have established that averagely a man will be concerned about what transpires in their family sometimes even more than the women. The only difference is that what mostly troubles the man is the future of the family and the children especially as opposed to women who are known to most cases be focused on the short term things of the family. A woman will for instance spend her time worrying about the day’s meals and what will be put where in terms of home or house arrangement. On the other hand men will spend their time thinking about things like taking the family for a holiday to some good and nice place, probably outside the country the man will also spend his time thinking about how to meet the house bills such as the electricity and the water bills while the mother is busy thinking about how to acquire foe her daughter or son the latest fashion designer shoes or any kind of clothing.

Now based on these cases, because what men majorly focus on is long time and they often have ample time to think over it and prepare in advance, they mostly will appear like either they are not concerned about the family and also that they don’t at all care about the families. Women on the other side of it will be seen as being more concerned because they actually focus on short term and often recurrent over short period of time and as such requiring immediate attention. This therefore presents them as if they are either the only ones concerned or the most concerned with carrying and meeting the family needs which in essence and as I have argued above is not always the case. Men as well are concerned about their families and regardless of the nature of the concern, they will have to make some adjustments in both their careers and lifestyle so that they can fit well in their jobs and the family roles. This therefore means that all the genders meet challenge at work place only that now those challenges are of different kinds and not similar for the two genders.

In fact according to Lewis and Campbell (2007) men worry more about their families and are known to be the most troubled about their families at the work places even more than women. This can be explained by the fact that all weight of the family is placed on the man in most societies. It is the man who should work hard to sustain his family well and the failure of the family is directly attributable to the man of the house. As such they are likely to go into depression while in the work places if the family is not doing well. According to Riddell, Sheila and Tet (2012) men are known to have resigned from their top positions so that they can give more attention to their families. This is a perfect prove that men and not just women also endure work family related pressure. And it wraps it all that both men and women actually experience difficulties in maintaining the balance between work and family life.

Body Argument.

It is only women who are known to be struggling with how to balance between work and family life. This means that even if men were involved in the same kind of struggle, theirs is not made as public as that of women. The only people who are known to be hears complaining of this is the women. Well this can be due to the fact that women are known to be soft and that any slight amount of strain will make them to shout. Sarah and Blithe (2012) gives out an appeal to the women to accept the fact that they are not like their men counterparts in so many areas and to stop behaving like they are in sort of a competition with the men. This seems to suggest that the many complaints they have as women are as result of problems they have created for themselves. Thus they can solve that or address the complaints by simply accepting their natural position and being comfortable there.

Again, the society we live in is structured in such a manner that seems to place a lion’s share of family responsibilities on the woman and not the man. This means that the woman will be expected to carry out or ensure that they are carried out most of the home chores. It is the responsibility of the woman for example to ensure that food is prepared and that the house is really kept in the right order and not eh man. This type of set up is more prevalent in the African countries Utarro (1995). Based on this the woman will be kept on toes even at the work place to ensure that the house chores are done well and that there is food and the kind of food to be on the table every day. Many argue that it is the duty of man to put the food in the house but the duty of the wife to put the food on the table. This is known to ware out women in the job places and for sure it present a sure struggle for them to keep a balance between the pressure in the work place and in the family life too.

The number of women who are known to have resigned from their jobs solely to get more time spend with their families, especially their children is very high compared to that of men. This shows that it is actually the women who face the challenge of balancing the most. Slaughter (2012) give a list of women who are known to have resigned from very senior government positions in the United States simply because they could not balance between the work and family pressure. To these women the desire to bring up good and well behaved children and to have the pleasure of spending precious time with their families outweighed their desire to keep the top position jobs and thus they resigned. Slaughter (2012) has done a description of how the feminist notion that women are strong and can have it all has resulted into to the struggling of a huge number of women who die still holding to the hope that things will become better next year, yes, maybe when my son is out of adolescence things will straighten up and I will spend more time in the office than I have in these years. She tries to advice the women they must not die holding on to this merely because they want to appear strong. According to her they should simply choose to pursue one venture at a time and what they choose to do in terms of their career pursuits should not negatively affect their family roles like that of raising their children and being close to them.

The struggle is mostly fanned by the feminist notion that women can have it all. That is, they can have good and top position jobs and at the same time maintain a very stable family. In fact it has been said in a cliché that what a man can do, a woman can do better. Misled by this women end up piling a lot of things in their in-trays which simply becomes unbearable. This they do forgetting the fact that nature and society has structured itself in such a way that both men and women are meant to occupy some specific positions in the society which includes the family as well. Men on the other hand do not harbor this kind of notion or any other of a similar kind within themselves. Thus they will not be found engaged in any kind of fruitless and meaningless struggling like women. Due to that kind of a notion, women will be found doing things from which it can be clearly deduced that they are in sort of a competition with their male counterparts. This apparent completion is informed by the desire to present the women as this kind of a gender that is malt-gifted and can handle so many things at a time. This is not always the case and according to Slaughter (2012) women should simply and honorably give up the struggle and a try to focus on one thing. To her, they should choose either their careers to pursue or simply stick to their family role which are quite of essence. She does not however advocate for women to completely give up working and become things like housewives. What she advocates for is that instead of struggling with balancing the roles of the family and the work, they should adopt and get engaged in those kind of jobs that will definitely allow them time to be with their families and at the same time they are giving a maximum output at their work places as per their potential.

Men even if they have any kind of pressure it comes from the work place and not from the family. This simply means that men unlike their female counterparts will rarely suffer the double jeopardy of life by being subjected to pressure at the work place and at the job as well. One reason for this is because men are known to assume things a lot Dormant (2012). A man will not spend much of their time thinking about an issue for long. They simply and easily brush off anything that comes their way especially that which has an implied effect of leading them to be stressed. This to some extent also explains why it is men who will be found most in the bars and other social gatherings more often than women. They go to these places so that they can have a time to relieve themselves of the stresses of work and family. This means that they have already assumed the role they should be playing as the family heads and left those roles at the care of the woman of the house. This situation being as unfair as it is means that again it is the woman to be burdened with all the work of the house meaning she has to really strike a balance now between work and family since being the responsible woman the most women are she can just let her household collapse at her watch. This therefore supports the theory that this kind of difficulty between finding a balance between the family and work life is only borne by women.

Conclusion.

Thus the above points as enumerated being true. It can be said that it is actually the women only who suffer from the challenge and the difficulty of trying to balance between work and the family life styles. Men do not at all suffer that as the arguments pronged above suggest.

Sources Cited.

Blithe, Sarah (2012). Gender Equality and Work-Life Balance. Print. Slaughter, Anne-Marie. Why Women Still Can’t Have It All. July/August 2012. <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/>. Web 29 March 2016

Conceptual Value for Gender Equality". Gender, Work & Organization 20.4 (2012): 364-381. Web.

Lewis, J., and M. Campbell. "UK Work/Family Balance Policies And Gender Equality, 1997-2005". Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 14.1 (2007): 4-30. Web.

Lyness, K. S. "The Relationships of National Gender Equality and Organizational Support with Work-Family Balance: A Study of European Managers". Human Relations 58.1 (2005): 33-60. Web

Richard Dormant. “Why Men Still Can't Have It All” http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have- it-all/309020/ September 2013 Web. 27 Mar 2016

Riddell, Sheila, and Lyn Tet. "Gender Balance in Teaching Debate becomes a verse: Tensions between Gender Theory and Equality Policy". International Journal of Inclusive Education 14.5 (2010): 463-477. Web.

Samuels, Suzanne Uttaro. Fetal Rights, Women's Rights. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. Print.