By Hua Wang (Chicago)

Dubbed the ‘opt out revolution’ by the New York Times, the phrase refers to the mass exodus of highly educated professional women from the workforce when they become mothers. These women presumably made a conscious choice to forgo earnings for the luxury of raising their children themselves. Is the opt-out revolution a proven phenomenon, or is it just media hype?

Women Are Not Abandoning the Workplace: The Facts

According to 2007 Census Bureau data, only about 26 percent of mothers with a college degree stay home, while more than 40 percent of mothers lacking high school diplomas are at home. College-educated women are more successful in combining work and family than other groups in part because they tend to have the resources to pay for child care and other help.

Research has shown that thehappiest couples are upper-middle-class, two-career couples. They report three times the marital contentment of the next happiest group — working- and middle-class families who favor a traditional division of labor and have only one breadwinner.

Better educated women are more likely to be in the labor force than less educated women. Raising children while building a serious career is hard for women, and when presented with the choice, many women opt for the latter. Half of Germany’s female scientists, for example, reportedly do not have children.

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By Gigi DeVault (Munich)

Have you seen Up in the Air? The camera cuts to the interior of a hotel bar. We see two women sitting over drinks. Worldly, successful, confident, Alex Goran has scooped up the pieces of the broken young Turk-ette, Natalie Keener, who has just received a “Dear Jane” text message from her boyfriend. Keener ticks off the desirable attributes of her dream husband. In turn, Goran advises the young woman: “You know, honestly by the time you’re 34, all the physical requirements just go out the window…Please let him earn more money than I do. You might not understand that now but believe me, you will one day—otherwise that’s a recipe for disaster.”

Suppose we take Mrs. Goran’s recipe for disaster and change out some of the ingredients: The basic recipe we want is intended to create the greatest measure of couple happiness. Starting at the top of the happiness scale, the couples who report the most happiness are upper-middle-class, two-career couples.

In fact, sociologist Paul Amato of Penn State reports that these couples are three times more contented in their marriages than couples in the group who rank next highest on the marital happiness scale—couples in working-class and middle-class families who hold to a traditional division of labor with only one breadwinner. This more than just a nod to 1950s aspirations—a chicken in every pot being stirred by a happy homemaker. What makes these mixes leaven, suggests Amato, is that these dual-career couples have egalitarian attitudes related to child care, household chores, and shared decision-making. But, according to the Penn State professors, an otherwise good recipe for marital happiness can be ruined when the wife adds too many working hours. Marital stability is shaken when the wife in egalitarian, dual-income families works outside the home more than 45 hours per week.

Yet, both men and women are working longer hours outside the home. About 66% of married couples had a spouse at home in 1970. Today, that number is closer to 40%. In 1970, the combined average number of hours worked by couples in a week was 52.4, compared to 63 hours a week in 2009. The new economy binds job security—terminology that has changed radically in the last few years—to longer working hours. Dual-income families are the norm for families in the United States (and readers of The Glass Hammer). A happy home environment means you’re better positioned to achieve more at work, shatter glass ceilings, and claim your seat at the table. Here are a few tips for making it work at home, so you can work better in the office.

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By Kate McClaskey (New York City)

Being family friendly means more than just offering services to new parents. It means taking investment steps towards providing financial incentives for new parents to return to work – and stay there.

According to the May 2004 Current Population Survey, 27.5 percent of wage and salary workers had flexible work schedules. Too many companies do not realize the benefits of having such an option. A recent study from the Cranfield School of Management in the United Kingdom found that employees with flexible schedules tend to work more intensely and have higher job satisfaction than their coworkers with more rigid hours. Those with more flexible hours also had lower stress levels and greater company loyalty.

The average unpaid maternity and paternity leave in the United States is anywhere from eight to 12 weeks. Comparatively, Swedish mothers and fathers can receive 76 weeks between them, and in the UK mothers can receive 39 weeks paid leave and fathers can receive four weeks paid leave. This is important because according to a study published in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, mothers with more paid time off tend to have less health risks than mothers who don’t.

While smaller companies may not be able to afford to establish and administer family friendly policies, larger ones should realize that the benefits of adopting such practices can outweigh the costs because they can potentially reduce absenteeism, lower turnover, improve employee health and increase productivity.

An ever-increasing number of companies are finding that new moms and dads are demanding more such as longer maternity/paternity leave and flexibility after having or adopting a new child. As the corporate world changes, so does the importance of a family friendly work place. It takes more than just more time to keep moms and dads engaged and content in their new role as employee and parent.

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By Elizabeth Harrin (London)

What does your boss think about giving you gadgets for work? And what do you think about carrying around a smart phone or BlackBerry? While it might feel like technology means you are chained to the office – even when you aren’t actually there – new research shows that gadgets actually have a positive impact on happiness and work/life balance.

A new study from BCS, the UK’s Chartered Institute for IT, shows that access to information technology has a ‘statistically significant, positive impact on life satisfaction’. The report is based on an analysis of the World Values Survey, and contains responses from over 35,000 people around the world. The research, carried out by Trajectory Partnership, suggests that there is a personal and social benefit which results from access to technology, a result they call the ‘information dividend’ and you probably benefit from it.

“Put simply, people with IT access are more satisfied with life even when taking account of income,” says Michael Willmott, the social scientist who authored the report and co-founder of The Future Foundation. “Our analysis suggests that IT has an enabling and empowering role in people’s lives by increasing their sense of freedom and control, which has a positive impact on wellbeing or happiness.”

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By Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

Those who’ve been immersed in the world of investment banking for years know all too well that it’s an incredibly difficult, demanding, and time-consuming career path that requires making sacrifices on a very personal level. As if that’s not asking enough of one person, some troubling information has come to light thanks to new research by two of the world’s most esteemed economists, Claudia Goldin, the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University and director of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Development of the American Economy program, and Lawrence Katz, the Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics at Harvard and a research associate at the NBER.

The study, entitled “Harvard and Beyond,” surveyed 6,500 former Harvard and Radcliff students who graduated between the years 1969 and 1992 and essentially, the economists found that women pay an incredibly high price to be in the finance industry, which is now considered a profession more demanding than medicine or law.

On first read, the report almost sounds as though financial services is one industry hell-bent on not letting women have it all. In the survey, Goldin and Katz found that female investment bankers, for example, who made up for the work they missed after taking time off to have a child, still saw the largest pay decreases.

It also indicates that female investment bankers who took a year and a half off made 41 percent less than their counterparts.

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