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Bringing Home the Electronic Baby
Pauline Hodson
14
Email: paulinehodson@supanet.com
TEL 44-865-62991 FAX 44-865-64520
Pauline Hodson is a full member of
the Society of Psychoanalytical Marital
Psychotherapists
Dip. Marital
Psychotherapy (T.I.M.S.) Associate,
Tavistock Institute of Marital Studies
This paper has been delivered at conferences
in
Contents
Are Electronic Babies more Advanced than
Human Babies
Communicating with the Family and the World
There is a
challenge hidden in the publicity, excitement and enthusiasm that is created
when the technological geniuses give birth to an even better computer, an even
faster communication system, or an even smaller machine to fit into the living
room. The challenge is whether or not the integrity of the home can be
maintained. The electronic baby is born, and in many cases it has been brought
home. Can it be incorporated in a way that will enrich us all or will it
demand, in the way that babies often do, 100%
attention.
It has been
recognised over the past thirty years or so that people cope better with change
if they are prepared for it. Couples seek out childbirth classes when they are
pregnant, but how many seek help for the birth and integration into the home of
the electronic baby? However, some couples are seeking help for problems that
stem from the more flexible ways of working that are now possible because of
new technology. As more women are working, as less and less security is
possible in the work place, as greater and greater demands are made from those
in work, the stress of the information society is being seen reflected in
peoples' relationships.
The rapid and
relentless move into the technological age has helped to create a fantasy of a
society where anything is possible. Theoretically, we can work anywhere and
have access to information from all over the world. Fueling the belief that
anything is possible a whole universe can be created of whatever we desire. A
universe called virtual reality, seducing the computer operator into believing
that it is an actual reality. For some who are robust enough to embrace the
challenge of the information society this is an exhilarating time. The sky is
the limit, but where will the boundaries be in this world of limitless
possibilities, and who will draw them?
Teleworking, or
working at home, is being seen by many as an economically and environmentally
sound thing to do. A new way of working allowing for more
freedom and more flexibility. This must be true. Since the industrial
revolution men have left home early in the morning returning often eight or
nine hours later; neither he nor his family have given a passing thought to
what the other has been doing all day. During the past fifteen years or so, it
has become common-place for women also to leave the house in order to work. The
home has become a place where people have gathered after the days work has been
done. But with the move to working from home all this is changing.
This paper explores
why this quiet revolution needs to be taken seriously from the psychological
point of view. Working at home is not a new innovation; fifty years ago many
people worked at home: Doctors, Dentists, Farmers, Solicitors and others, and
today many writers and academics work at home. However, with the introduction of
technology, subtle but important differences arise.
The teleworker
works not only at home, but also from home. For example, John works from home.
Mary works at home, there is a difference. Clients come to see Mary, and she
offers them her skills as a Chiropodist in her small consulting room in the
garden. When her day is over, or when she has a short break during the day, she
walks over to the house and leaves her workplace behind. Of course she is
sometimes preoccupied with thoughts about a client, but mostly she is able to
contain her work to the consulting room. It is, however, different for John who
teleworks. He is able to relate through the various technological appliances to
the whole world. Although physically at home, the teleworker's attention could
be anywhere.
Wired to a network
that spans the world, ideas and thoughts are transmitted at the speed of light,
responses cascade from the fax machine and flit across the computer screen. The
telephone no longer has to be left in the office in order to make a coffee; it
can be carried conveniently in the pocket so that no calls need go unanswered.
No one has to know that you need to eat, drink, or defecate. Time is no longer
a barrier to communication. Always ready to receive, the faithful fax will spew
out it's messages at any time during day or night. The
answering machine will record the messages from different time zones allowing
you to reply whilst the rest of the country sleeps. E-mail collects the
messages which wait reproachfully for acknowledgment. There is no longer for
the Teleworker such a thing as a natural break. In this exciting world we now
inhabit, there is a catch. When do we say, "enough
is enough," how do we say, "I'm off duty?"
Home means
different things to different people, but whatever the culture,
there is a shared belief about homes and families. These beliefs may differ
from country to country, but we do all have expectations of partners and
children. Many of these expectations are unspoken - even unconscious. For the
most part it has been assumed that whatever the difficulties encountered when
working from home, there will be no emotional or domestic difficulties. The
human element is taken for granted and yet when the Tavistock Institute of
Human Relations made a Pan-European study of the possibility of working from
home (Holti - Tavistock Publications, 1988) Dr. Richard Holti wrote that
"the only obstacle to working from home would be the Psychological
one."
The work-place is
an institution, but so is the home an institution. Each has its own rules and
values both spoken and unspoken. Some of these rules and values are common to
us all, but many are unique to a particular office or factory or home. Most
workplaces will take care to inform its new employees of its culture, and what
isn't formally stated will become quickly apparent when some mistake or other
is made. i.e. it might be quite all right in some
offices to make private phone calls; in another, it may be stated clearly that
speaking to friends on the telephone is out of the question. Having worked in
the same place for some time, it will become clear how much leeway can be
taken. The culture will gradually be made known. It may not be obvious how the
culture developed, but the "how" of it is not terribly important unless
a sociological study is being carried out. The employee is there to fit into an
existing organisation. The ambition to change it may come later, but unless the
remit is to examine the organisation in order to do that, initially at least,
he or she will abide by the rules.
Yet when the
workplace is the home, when the distance in question is from the office not
from the family, who is to fit in with whom? After all, home is also an
institution. It also has its spoken and unspoken rules. It also has a culture.
However, it is doubtful that there are any written memos to spell these rules
out. It is unlikely that anyone has an understanding of the history of the
culture. There will, however, be an unspoken or unconscious expectation that
however large the initial disruption, the home will be able to accommodate and
absorb the intrusion and change.
This quiet
revolution has been led by technology and business. The Economics of Teleworking (Noel Hodson, 1993) is full of hard
facts. There are statistics to call on and Balance Sheets to back-up findings.
But when thinking about the affects on the family and relationships there are
no hard facts, no statistics to measure the emotional impact of the home
becoming the work place. Never-the-less, there is a need to analyse the
emotional Balance Sheet, and a necessity for all those concerned in instituting
this fundamental change to pay as much attention to the psychological needs as
to the business and technological needs.
The following two
cases illustrate some of the difficulties that can happen when it is taken for
granted that home will absorb these new working habits without any preparation
at all.
The
Fax at
For some time
Robert and Susan had been arguing about everything. They realised that life had
become more stressful since Robert had decided to work from home, but were
bewildered as they had both made the decision to take up his company's offer of
the opportunity to work from home. Robert's company was relocating its
workforce from the centre of London to an area about a hundred miles away and
some of the employees had been given the choice to move with the company or to
work from home. Robert and Susan felt flattered to be given this choice and
felt that if Robert worked from home it would give them more flexibility.
They couldn't
understand what had gone wrong, it seemed as if there was no emotional space
for them to think about what might be the problem, and they also felt
humiliated that they weren't coping. The company had made no provision for any
domestic problems to be aired; there was a computer helpline in case any of the
machines Robert had come home armed with went wrong, and an arrangement had
been made for him, and others in the same position, to spend a day a month in
the central office so that he didn't feel isolated from the company, but it
hadn't, so it seemed, crossed anyone's mind that there would be problems at
home. This belief reflected Robert and Susan's conviction that as a happy
couple and secure family they could only benefit from spending more time
together.
The incident that
convinced Robert and Susan that they needed help happened at
What emerged from
their first interview was that they were having to
deal with a major life change. The structure and routine of their lives had
been completely changed, but there were no guidelines; worse than that no one
believed, not even them, that they were having to deal
with anything difficult at all. When it was suggested that perhaps they were
both finding their new way of life a strain, there was an audible sigh of
relief.
Robert was an only
child, born to an elderly couple he learnt when he was very young to be
independent and self-sufficient, and was happy to spend time on his own. In
fact Robert's parents had taken little interest in his school work or career,
and were more likely to criticise than admire his work.
Susan came from a
very different family. Her parents had a farm. Susan was the eldest of four
children. All the children were expected to help on the farm and work together
to make it a success. Her father was very definitely the head of the family and
commanded respect and some fear from the children, but the over all picture of
her family was of a large noisy busy group of people all working together.
The different
experiences that Susan and Robert had when growing up meant that they both had
had very different expectations of what it would be like when Robert came home
to work. It became clear that they each hoped for different things when they
decided to accept the offer Robert's company had made. Susan had a picture in
her mind of the sort of family she grew up in. With Robert, in the house all
day, it would be, she hoped, like the noisy busy family of her childhood.
Robert on the other hand expected quite the opposite. He saw himself working
quietly in his office left alone to get on with his work in the way he had done
when he was living with his parents.
Susan and Robert
became disappointed. When Susan made efforts to create the situation she had
dreamed of, and tried to include Robert in family life or join in with what he
was doing Robert, reminded of his critical mother, became even more determined
to keep his work away from the family. When Robert became angry and remote it
reminded Susan of the worst aspects of her authoritarian Father.
Once Susan and
Robert realised that they were each trying to recreate old patterns of living, they
were less angry with each other and could begin to think of ways in which they
could create a shared pattern, so that Robert's new way of working could really
benefit them all.
The second case is
a young couple who sought help after their Doctor recognised Jane's symptoms of
not sleeping or eating properly and constant irritability as stress. As these
symptoms stemmed from the time Jane began working from home it was decided that
both she and here husband needed help with dealing with their new situation.
Jane and Phillip
had been very excited when Jane managed to negotiate with her employers to take
up her job as a designer for them again, but to do most of the work from home.
They had a child of two and a half and had really missed Jane's income over the
past three years.
The spoken hopes of
Jane and Phillip were that they would be able to manage to combine two things.
To provide the sort of childhood for their daughter that both of them had
enjoyed, a warm family home with a mother who was always there, whilst they
both continued their careers which they loved. They thought carefully about how
they would manage. Phillip's job would allow him some flexibility. Jane's
mother was willing to help, and they felt that if they had an au- pair and all
pulled together things would probably work out well.
Within a month it
felt as if something was wrong. Jane was exhausted; she felt as if she wasn't
doing anything adequately. Although she was working from morning until night,
she felt guilty both about her job and her daughter. Phillip and her mother
were both doing their best to help, but her daughter wasn't; she clearly hadn't
been involved at the planning stage of this new development in her family, and
she wasn't about to be cooperative. She couldn't understand why if her mother
was in the house she didn't come to her when she cried. The au-pair did her
best, but she wasn't the real thing. Jane found it very difficult to ignore
Jo's cries when she was just a room away. She also found it impossible to have
a coffee break without fulfilling some domestic need at the same time, such as
filling or emptying the washing machine, or cheering up the au-pair, or making
up for the time she wasn't with Jo by reading her a quick story. This of course
meant that her own work got pushed into the evenings and she was often to be
found at her desk late at night. She was doing two jobs for the price of one.
Once again, both
Phillip and Jane were relieved when they defined the problem. They both
realised that until Jo went to school it was going to be really hard work to
manage the sort of home life they both wanted for themselves and their
daughter, but felt it was worth trying to resolve the problems in order to
avoid an all day nursery for Jo. "It would all be
so simple," they said, "if there had been
the same advancements in human babies as there had been Technical babies,"
but it seemed the human model hadn't made any advances at all. They needed as
much attention as they ever had done.
Jane's problem was
helped by structuring a timetable. She goes to here office early in the morning
while Phillip gets Jo up, dresses her and gives her breakfast. He then leaves
for his office mid-morning and Jane allows herself to spend most of the day
"at home." She works again for three hours in the evening when Jo is
in bed. The au-pair and her mother are necessary backups, and bridge the gaps,
but they don't have to be alternative parents. This isn't a perfect solution to
Jane and Phillip's problem, but they feel that it is good enough for the time
being.
These two cases
highlight many of the issues that need to be explored when someone is
considering working at or from home.
When the home is
invaded by the wage earner, how is the invasion of time and space negotiated?
In the first case, neither Robert, Susan, nor Robert's
employer had thought it necessary to take into account the impact on the
home of Robert going home to work. The territory which for years had been
Susan's by day now had to be shared between them. Susan wanted Robert to share
the space, but she wanted him to share the space her way. Robert did not think
it was necessary to take Susan's needs into account. He moved in, defined his
territory, didn't want it invaded, and got very cross when he was reminded that
he was now at home.
When there is an
office to go to the boundaries are defined automatically, the telephone calls
and the fax's are confined to the desk. There is some
advantage to the commute in that work problems are left behind, and home can
offer a welcome relief and fresh perspective on the day's events. When the
boundaries are not automatic, a new and deliberate protocol must be negotiated
with all concerned. The fax at
Are Electronic Babies more Advanced than Human Babies
When Phillip and
Jane joked about the electronic baby being more advanced then their daughter,
they had identified one of the difficulties that we are all
having to deal with, as this technological revolution drives us all on.
Technology made it possible for Jane to work at home and be near her daughter,
she didn't have to make the choice she would have done ten years ago between
staying at home or going out to work, but she needed to be made aware that it
was very difficult for Jo to have a mother visible but unavailable. This isn't
only the case for babies; many husbands and wives reflect on their
disappointment when the person returning home to work seemed as remote as they
were when they worked away from home.
Communicating with the Family
and the World
This paper began
with a challenge to this new way of working. Can working from home be a new way
of working or is it going to be an old way of working in a different place and
with new technology? Will the home and workplace be able to be integrated or
will one try to dominate the other? There is little use in being able to
communicate with the World if we cannot hear what those nearest to us are
saying. In order for this aspect of the quiet revolution to gain the attention
it deserves, these questions need to be asked and taken into consideration.
Traditionally the home has been expected to contain all the stresses and
strains that life has to offer. It is expected that it will accommodate the
different demands that society imposes on it in each generation. But home is
only as robust and flexible as the people in it can allow it to be.
The Electronic baby
is born. We need to pay it attention and to find a way of saying "no"
occasionally to the greater and greater possibilities it offers us. We need to
help it to find its place in the family. If we don't, it will, like neglected
babies do, dominate our lives.