The idea of "family-friendly workplaces" has been kicking around for some time and was even highlighted in last year's throne speech in Canada. There is also a section on it in a recent discussion paper in B.C. on women's economic equality. Compared to the amount and level of talk over the past 12 or so years, the actual policy response on this issue has been minimal. This in spite of the widespread assumption that work arrangements that are unresponsive to family needs have a detrimental impact on family security and stability. The assumption is backed by the usual studies showing correlations between irregular work arrangements and family instability. But (leaving aside for the moment the possibility that both are caused by dental amalgam) what if we turn the assumed direction of causation around. Maybe it's the increasingly unstable families that are contributing to the growing polarization of work times and proliferation of precarious employment. I'm not saying this is the case. It could also be possible that causation could run in both directions, or even form an alternating spiral. In _The Time Bind_, Arlie Hochschild explored the idea that for many people, work was perceived as a more hospitible environment than their home life. That doesn't go quite far enough when one reflects on the fact that the stress-laden "nuclear family" is itself largely a construct of 20th century industrialism. Where I'm headed with this ramble is someplace quite different from the reactionary preaching for a return to "traditional family values". Those preachments may indeed have a great deal of superficial appeal in an election campaign, but as a practical matter any _policy_ that could conceivably implement such a return to the past would be profoundly unpopular and ineffectual. Rather than indulge in a heap of preparatory generalizations, I just throw out a half-baked prototype of what I'm thinking about and let the chips fall where they may. Maybe what is needed is a small-scale social unit, not defined either by co-habitation or employment or occupation. Taking in the idea of a Basic Income, maybe the thing to do would be to structure a basic income scheme not on an individual or family structure but on some hitherto undefined relation between say, 8 or 10 people. Temps Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant
