Families and Work Institute (FWI)

ESTABLISHED: 1989
EMPLOYEES: 18
MEMBERS: None
PAC: None

Contact Information:
ADDRESS: 330 7th Ave., 14th Fl. New York, NY 10001
PHONE: (212) 465-2044
FAX: (212) 465-8637
E-MAIL: afarber@familiesandwork.org
URL: http://www.familiesandworkinst.org
PRESIDENT: Ellen Galinsky

WHAT IS ITS MISSION?

According to the organization, "The Families and Work Institute is a nonprofit organization that addresses the changing nature of work and family life. We are committed to finding research-based strategies that foster mutually supportive connections among workplaces, families, and communities. We: identify emerging worklife issues, considering the entire life cycle, from prenatal and child care to elder care, and all levels of employees, from managers to assembly-line workers at all types of organizations; benchmark solutions to work-life problems across all sectors of society—business, education, community, and government—and serve as a broker to build connections among these sectors; and evaluate the impact of solutions on employees, their families, their communities, and on the productivity of employers."

As American women have entered the workforce in increasing numbers, families have sought new ways to deal with issues such as child care and career mobility. Single-parent families, too, are increasingly faced with the challenges of managing work and family. Employers have started to consider issues such as child care leave, flexible time, and alternative working conditions such as telecommuting. Through its research, consulting, and information sharing activities, the Families and Work Institute (FWI) tracks the implications of family and work trends in the United States and offers strategies for dealing with these trends.

HOW IS IT STRUCTURED?

The FWI headquarters are located in New York City. A 12-member board of directors works with FWI staff to advise, create recommendations, and set policy. Board members serve three-year renewable terms; a smaller nominating committee selects individuals for board or executive positions, including the president of the organization. The president serves for an indefinite term at the discretion of the board.

Because FWI staff numbers are small, employees rotate among administrative and program coordination responsibilities. Staff members have backgrounds in consulting and research, in areas including business, public policy, early childhood development, and psychology. The organization has no affiliates or members, but FWI staff frequently hire or collaborate with outside resources, such as polling firms and universities, to carry out large-scale research.

PRIMARY FUNCTIONS

FWI is primarily a research organization that is concerned with work and family issues like early childhood development and the family-friendly employer. It makes its research reports available to the general public, corporations, and government in order to provide tangible facts that will shape debates around family and work issues.

FWI also works to educate the public on how to improve the family and workplace through conferences, workshops, and other projects. An annual FWI conference is open to all and draws attendees from all over the United States. The organization also holds workshops aimed at helping employers and employees deal with work and family issues. Workshops have addressed general topics like evaluating and developing family policy, but FWI also works directly with companies to address their particular concerns.

PROGRAMS

In keeping with the organization's mission, FWI programs seek to improve the understanding of the relationship between families and workplaces. FWI research targets a variety of issues, and through its educational programs informs the public of the results and their significance.

One of FWI's main research and education programs is the Fatherhood Project, which was founded by Dr. James Levine in 1981 and became part of FWI in 1989. This project is an ongoing effort to study and strengthen the role of the father in the family—particularly a father's contribution to raising children. The Fatherhood Project carries out its goals through training, workshops, consultation, and media presentation. For example, the project aired a PBS program in 1998 called Fatherhood USA, which examined the stereotypes and issues around fatherhood and suggested ways to strengthen a father's role. As part of the federal government's Head Start program to improve the lives of underprivileged children, the Fatherhood Project trains professionals to get fathers more involved in the lives of their children.

The Community Mobilization Forum is an FWI program created to gather the input of working citizens. The forum is a process designed to help communities discuss issues and improve circumstances that relate to families and community life. The Community Mobilization Forum provides process tools such as assessing the problem being addressed, getting appropriate people involved, maintaining momentum, measuring results, and financing the process. An FWI Web site bulletin board facilitates additional discussion about the forum among a wide audience.

BUDGET INFORMATION

FWI is a national nonprofit organization. Funding for FWI research comes from U.S. foundations and corporations. For fiscal year 1997, FWI had a total of $4,108,828 in revenue; this included grant supported research ($3,526,209), client supported research ($223,502), publications and information services ($200,899), contributions ($169,500), interest income ($40,176), and other income ($16,954). Expenses for fiscal year 1997 totaled $4,020,175 and included: Program Services including Community Life ($2,231,416), Families ($408,591), and Work Life ($712,591); Information Services ($96,800); and Support Services including administration ($493,732) and fund raising ($77,045). In a separate expense breakout, largest expenses went toward salaries (__BODY__,090,154) and consultants (__BODY__,834,224).

HISTORY

FWI was founded in 1989, when two researchers in the fields of families and work issues—Dana Friedman and Ellen Galinsky—saw a need for more information on related issues. Combining diverse backgrounds from both academia and the business world, the women created what started out as both a consulting and research organization. Friedman served as president until 1996, when Galinsky took over.

While FWI provided corporate consulting at first, it gradually moved away from this service to concentrate on independent research. By 1996 FWI had completely left the consulting arena. FWI first gained national recognition in 1991 with the release of their first study, a corporate guide to work and families. The study, which was unlike anything previously published, rated corporations on what they offered families and employees. Not only did it provide recognition for the organization, but it's ratings and information about various U.S. corporations laid out benchmark data for future studies. The organization went on to study issues that connected work and family life, such as child care, elder care, fatherhood, and community programs. By the late 1990s FWI had published 40 such studies.

FWI played a part in the early 1990s in gaining legal rights for working families. Data from a 1992 FWI study was used in congressional debates to shape the Family and Medical Leave Act—a piece of legislation that was later passed and which required employers to offer 12 weeks of unpaid leave to qualified employees to care for family members in situations such as the birth of a child or the illness of an elder relative. The study assessed programs in several states that were already offering mandatory leave to employees.

During the late 1990s the organization continued to monitor social issues that affected work and families, including the changing aspects of the workforce. In 1997 the organization published The 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce, which compiled the results of interviews with almost 3,000 employees. Among the findings of the study was that work benefits which facilitate better family life have not improved substantially. Also, people are spending more time working, men are taking on more of traditional women's roles at home, and workers have more opportunities for autonomy and less for advancement.

CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES

While FWI is strictly a research organization and does not advocate for particular issues, the organization's research does affect political change. Many areas of interest to FWI are also a source of great social concern and political debate. For example, FWI has carried out research that looks at a father's role in the family and how that role is affected by work. The need for single parents, male and female, to work and therefore spend less time with their children has been linked to a number of social ills including drug abuse and dropping out of school.

Another area of interest to FWI is women in the workplace who also have families. As more women enter the workforce, Americans have had to reevaluate traditional family roles. According to data cited in a Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service article (May 16, 1995), 57.5 million women were working in 1995. More than half of these women provided at least half of their total household income. Studies done in the late 1980s and 1990s indicated that women also have a psychological attachment to their careers—a 1989 survey of 745 Detroit women who worked, found that these women, when they stopped working to care for their children, were 30 percent more distressed than their counterparts who returned to work. Overall, FWI research showed that work, for women and men, goes beyond income considerations and that psychological and other value considerations do come into play.

Case Study: Family Medical Leave—Working Parents Dilemma

Prior to 1993 no policy existed in the United States that required employers to grant time off after the birth of a child or for other family medical events. An employer could legally punish parents who did not return to work immediately after having a baby, regardless of the impact on the family or on newborn care. While maternity leave might be provided, no provisions were legally available for the father in a household.

FWI was interested in this issue because it affected both work and family life. The organization studied the effect of leave on employee productivity in the 1992 study Parental Leave and Productivity: Current Research, which looked at the cost of replacing the employee versus granting the leave and summarized manager experiences with leaves. Earlier FWI studies—The Family-Friendly Employer: Examples from Europe (1992) and The Implementation of Flexible Time and Leave Policies: Observations from Employers (1990)—provided an overview of innovative leave and flexible work policies in European countries, and possible applications in the United States of America.

Studies like these were cited and used heavily by Congress in an attempt to pass Family Medical Leave legislation that would allow employees to take time off for family medical situations. These initiatives were twice vetoed by President Bush. As the next U.S. president, Bill Clinton signed into law the Family Medical Leave Act (H.R. 1 ENR) which requires companies over a certain size to provide 12 weeks of unpaid leave to employees with a new baby in the family. The law gives employees the ability to take time off from work to deal with a myriad of details such as care of a newborn and other family adjustments.

Public Impact

The passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act gave families new legal rights in dealing with medical issues. Eligible employees (usually those who had worked for an employer for at least 12 months) were now entitled to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for situations that could include the birth of a baby or the adoption of a child. Qualified employees were now also eligible for unpaid leave to deal with any personal and serious medical situations or illnesses that prevented them from carrying out their jobs. Upon returning from the leave, employees were entitled to be reinstated in their previous job or given an equivalent position.

SUCCESSES AND FAILURES

While FWI has provided research that has influenced government policy, the fact that their research has not been received or used in college business curricula is a disappointment to the organization. FWI feels that their work is particularly relevant in a business education setting, where future business leaders learn how to run an effective company. According to the organization, FWI lacks the resources to forge and maintain an effective relationship with business educators.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Telecommuting, a trend that gathered momentum in the late 1990s, has the potential to redefine the relationship between families and work. According to an article in the Jerusalem Post (December 25, 1996), telecommuting grew at a rate of 10 to 15 percent per year between 1992 and 1996. The same article cited research from the New York market research firm Link Resources, which indicated that more than a third of American households had a least one person who worked from home. Many of these telecommuters are self-employed (45 percent, according to a survey by Find/SVP) and telecommuters who work for a company often foot much of the bill to set up an office at home. Telecommuting will impact many areas that FWI studies, including family relations, child care, and employer policy.

GROUP RESOURCES

The FWI Web site at http://www.familiesandworkinst.org. includes press releases, announcements of new publications, a place to order all publications, and a discussion forum at http://www.familiesandworkinst.org/forums/index.html. For more information on FWI programs or research, call (212) 465-2044 or write to 330 7th Ave., New York, NY, 10001.

GROUP PUBLICATIONS

FWI offers about two dozen reports of research findings that address family and work issues. Publications include College and University Reference Guide to Work-Family Programs, Working Fathers: New Strategies for Combining Work and Family, Women: The New Providers: Whirlpool Foundation Study, Part One, and The Role of Child Care Centers in the Lives of Parents. Child Care Aware: A Guide to Promoting Professional Development in Family Child Care, (Amy Laura Dombro, 1995) is a guidebook for communities in implementing effective childcare and is based on interviews and experiences of Child Care Aware staff in the United States. Another FWI publication, The Study of Children in Family Child Care and Relative Care: Highlights of Findings (Ellen Galinsky, Caroline Howes, Susan Kontos, and Marybeth Shinn, 1994) looks at what elements in child care programs are important, and how the addition of these elements affect children. The 1996 publication Rethinking the Brain: New Insights into Early Development summarizes the results of a FWI Brain Research Convention and the implications of current early development research. Publications may be ordered at the FWI web site http://www.familiesandworkinst.org, by faxing (212) 465-8637, or by mailing requests and payment to 330 7th Ave., New York, NY 10001.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boyd, Leslie. "Family: Giving Children a Good Start." Gannett News Service, 28 August 1996.

Chen, Edwin. "Parties Vying to Be a Woman's Best Friend." Los Angeles Times, 2 March 1998.

Dillner, Becky. "Single-Parenting Success." Gannett News Service, 27 January 1995.

Donahue, Tim. "Men Can Be Devoted Dads, Have Successful Careers, Too." Gannett News Service, 18 June 1995.

Frandsen, Jon. "Conservatives Say Emphasis on Day-Care Punishes Parents Who Stay at Home." Gannett News Service, 11 February 1998.

Franke-Folstad, Kim. "When Praising Families Don't Forget Single Parents." Rocky Mountain News, 24 February 1997.

Fyock, Catherine D. "Unretirement: A Golden Opportunity." Human Resources Forum, 1 February 1998.

Hochman, Nancy K. S. "Dr. James Kevine: Developing Child Care as a Man's Issue." New York Times, 28 December 1997.

Lewin,Tamar. "For Centers, Balancing Quality and Cost of Care." New York Times, 27 April 1998.

——. "Men Assuming Bigger Share at Home, New Survey Shows." New York Times, 15 April 1998.

Lynch, Michael, and Katherine Post. "What Glass Ceiling?" The Public Interest, 1 June 1996.

Rubenstein, Carin. "Superdad Needs a Reality Check." New York Times, 16 April 1998.

Simons, Janet. "Kid-Friendly Advocate For Child-Care Reform Out To Make It Everyone's Cause." Rocky Mountain News, 2 February 1998.

"The Workplace Turns to Telecommuting to Drive Productivity; Survey Reveals a Gap in Employer Responsibility, Leaving Opportunity for Corporate Leadership." Business Wire, 5 April 1998.

Whitmire, Richard. "Fatherless America: What Can Be Done?" Gannett News Service, 25 January 1995.