Good News If True

The Guardian reports that young people are ditching “overtime and excess work stress” in favour of “family and fun.” Good news if true.

When Molly, 35, was growing up, she remembers the message of “work hard and you’ll get rewarded” being drilled into her by parents and schoolteachers. As a result, she spent her early career putting in the hours. But when she had a child and sought a flexible work pattern at her professional services job, the company denied her request. “I was replaceable,” she says. “I was very much a cog in the machine.”

I always enjoy hearing about the epiphany. I collect epiphanies: the memorable moment, perhaps with one foot in the commuter carriage and the other still on the platform, when a person snaps and says “no more” and “there are other worlds than these.”

This said, I’m always amazed that it takes such an existential shock as having a child or getting ill to discover that “work hard and you’ll get rewarded” is bollocks.

The most “rewarded” in our society have not worked hard for it: they’ve usually inherited their wealth in some way or were born into the sort of privilege that results in playing the game on easy mode, or else they’ve done something clever and/or immoral. There are exceptions, of course, and the media is all too happy to spotlight them to prop up the myth of meritocracy.

Meanwhile, people who work hard are usually hospital porters or cleaners or the hardhats who maintain railway lines at night. They bust a gut and aren’t rewarded for it beyond the essential basics that will keep them coming back to work. Some of them die at work.

These twin observations–that the rewarded do not work hard and the hard-working are not rewarded–are as plain as day. You shouldn’t need a baby or a tumour to come along to shock you into sense. Then again, we get the “work hard and you’ll get rewarded” message on all sides, don’t we? From parents and teachers and colleagues and bosses and the television. It’s insidious and it’s everywhere. It’s called the Protestant Work Ethic and it’s a scam.

Molly is one of many in her generation readjusting their work-life balance to focus less on their job. Research published this month from King’s College London based on surveys from 24 countries found that just 14% of UK millennials (people born from the early 80s to mid 90s) believe work should always come first, compared with 41% in 2009.

So maybe it is true. Good news indeed.

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