Well, if he can do it...

The term "family-friendly workplace" gets thrown around a lot. In a lot of ways it's kind of like the elusive Canadian identity: hard to define, but you know it when you see it. There are certain jobs that are inherently family-friendly. Teachers, for example, can usually take holidays at the same time as their kids and have somewhat reasonable hours. Others are not so family-friendly, like law, where a large part of your success depends on the amount of time you have to work. Too often these professions brush off any attempts to be more family-friendly by saying, "This is the job and if you don't like it, find something else.", rather than take any concrete steps to address the situation.

I can only imagine that the demands of being an adviser to an important politician or elected official are hell on a family. I mean, I've seen The West Wing. I know. Most of these people are on-call 24/7, and it's not like their jobs involve stuff like figuring out how many widgets to buy. It's more like, "If we don't bail out the auto industry is the entire country going to go into the toilet?" kind of stuff. And it's not like you can tell North Korea to hold off on testing that missile until Tuesday because your daughter has a piano recital on Monday that you'd really like to attend.

That's why this article was so encouraging. Because if the President of the United States can make concrete efforts to help his advisers be there for their children, then what excuse do other bosses have? Are there sacrifices? Sure. It's inevitable that sometimes the recital will get missed. What it does is send a clear message that no job, no matter how important, is more important than your family. Now that's change I can believe in.