A Critical Analysis of Work Life Balance

The tremendous recent growth in attention to the dilemma of “work-life balance” in academic, political, professional, and popular literature can give it the appearance of a new area of concern, or, at worst, a passing fad. However, this can be misleading. The work-life balance paradigm is a social construct established over time and developed in the Western context, but the conflation of managing paid work with other areas of life, particularly family, has been the focus of much research. decades (see e.g. Rapoport and Rapoport , 1965). Research on this topic always reflects social, economic and workplace developments and concerns, changing in response to new trends.