This is one of the main conclusions of the study carried out by the Spanish Federation of Large Families (FEFN) with the support of the Ministry of Social Rights and Agenda 2030 on large families almost a year and a half later to declare the health emergency.
Work-life balance is a pending issue, which has not been overcome with the experience of teleworking during the pandemic; It is a great concern for families with children and, in particular, for large families, who demand measures that help them to be able to combine family and work. The study, based on almost 1,800 surveys carried out with large families throughout Spain, reveals the extent to which conciliation has affected parents, an issue that has had a significant emotional impact, only overcome by insecurity about the pandemic. And it is that for 60% of large families, what has influenced them most emotionally has been the uncertainty regarding the evolution of the crisis, but 53.5% of these households, that is, more than half, say that It has been “not being able to take care of family and work responsibilities well”, well ahead of the fear of contagion, which 23% of families have indicated, or the reduction in income, which has generated stress for 20.7%.
The study makes it clear that work-life balance has been a headache for large families: 40.5% of them, that is, 4 out of 10, assure that they have “felt stress due to the difficulty of combining work time with the one dedicated to family life” and, therefore, they ask for measures that allow them to adequately combine both, work and family.
Families think that the key to reconcile is in working hours, which must be adapted to the family needs of households with more children. The most valued measure is the flexible working hours, according to 47.8% of large families, followed by the “reduction in working hours with financial assistance” that can compensate for the salary reduction derived from working less (40.5% of families). Furthermore, a third of the families (31.4%) believe that intensive working hours should be promoted. According to the president of the FEFN, José Manuel Trigo, “these data show that there is a significant lack of work-life balance, because nowadays there is the possibility that parents reduce their working hours to care for the children, but in practice it cannot be done because it means losing an important part of the household income
