Switzerland (and almost any land) is Better for Working Parents

Do working parents have it better abroad than in the United States?

Most experiences of working parents abroad appear to say yes.

About a month ago, The Frau wrote this piece for the Wall Street Journal Expat section: Working in Switzerland—What’s an Expat Woman to Expect?

Now back in the U.S. and witnessing the realities of
working American parents, The Frau is ever grateful that her
daughter was born abroad.

In case you want the short answer—an American woman can expect better work-life balance and extremely more supportive policies when working in Switzerland, despite a sometimes backwards mindset that a woman’s place is still in the home.

Stories of working parental woes are all over the American press lately.

Last week, a powerful New York Times opinion piece from writer Pamela Druckerman, The Perpetual Panic of American Parenthood, agrees that American parents have it best working elsewhere. The subhead: “Make our country great, by making it a bit more like the rest of the world,” pretty much sums up The Frau's feelings exactly.

Says Ms. Druckerman on leaving the U.S. for Paris, “I gradually understood why European mothers aren’t in perpetual panic about their work-life balance, and don’t write books about how executive moms should just try harder: Their governments are helping them, and doing it competently."

Another great quote from her piece was from writer Ms. Partanen, who, in her book, The Nordic Theory of Everything, says, “While Nordic citizens often don’t realize how good they have it, Americans seem not to realize how terribly they are being treated.”

That’s what really confounds The Frau. The great majority of Americans she talks to have no idea how bad they have it. No idea. They think the stress of trying to work and parent with no legalized parental leave, no legalized vacation time, and no legalized sick time is their fault.

Blaming the individual for what’s wrong instead of looking beyond to greater causes is sadly an American thing. We're very individual and we like to blame the individual too. We need to stop.

Even when moms have access to parental leave in the U.S., they face hassles to get it. On the cover of the Chicago Tribune’s Life+Style section last Sunday was an article about how insurance paperwork issues interfere when new mothers just want to nurture their babies.

Yes, the American system is broken. And The Frau plans to keep writing about it (global outlook included) until it is fixed.

Busy in America

Grüezi, people. It’s been awhile.

The Frau has been busy. Yes. And she can’t help it. Because that’s what you are in America. Busy. Busy. Busy. If you’re not busy in America then you’re not worthy.

The Frau’s mother, who is retired, is also always “busy.” Small Child M, The Frau’s preschooler, has recently declared that she is also “busy.”

Heaven help a culture where preschoolers and retirees are always busy, but that is America for you, yodelers.  If The Frau, prime in her working adult years, wasn’t also busy, how would that look? “Busy” is a requirement for American citizenship.

So if you must know, The Frau has been busy for a very good reason: she has incorporated. Yes. Another fact of American life: the American government loves corporations more than citizens, so to be treated fairly as a writer or other independent professional in America who is even semi-successful, you must become a corporation. At least, that’s what The Frau’s accountant seems to say.

So welcome to Cross Border Content Inc, The Frau’s company. It still doesn’t have a website and it really has nothing to do with this blog, but it sure justifies The Frau’s American busy-ness, oder?

Now. If you can tell, thanks to a certain country, The Frau is slowly forgetting how to relax. So if someone over in Europe could please remind her what they did this month, she’d like to live vicariously through them. Newspaper and coffee at a café, all day? Hiking on a pristine mountain path? Swimming in a pristine 50-meter pool? Leave a comment: Busy and incorporated minds want to know.

Does living in Switzerland ruin you for American life?

The Frau sometimes feels like Switzerland has ruined her now American life. For her, repatriation has been hard. Some of it is because she built a big part of her career in Switzerland and so she's still working with a lot of these people and she misses being there. Some of it is because she misses mountains and lakes and trains that take her easily to them. And some of it is just because repatriation is hard. And because the U.S. hasn't exactly done much to improve itself since she was away. If anything, the situation here has gotten much worse for the average person. 

Hotel Giessbach on Lake Brienz

Look, Switzerland isn’t perfect. No country is. But there are so many things that Switzerland does right that the U.S. does not. And these are things that became important to The Frau over the last decade.  Things like work-life balance, public transportation, and easy access to the great outdoors.

  

The Frau wrote about how Switzerland ruined her for American life yesterday on vox.com. The outpouring from readers has been crazy. She still can’t keep up with her inbox. Some wrote to her with stories of their struggles with work-life balance in the U.S. and some of these stories are heartbreaking. Others wanted to know exactly how they can get away to Switzerland too.

But The Frau wants to be clear: Switzerland isn’t always a box of chocolates either. Read her book and you'll find that side of things too. It’s a closed culture, so it can very hard to make friends. The language situation is beyond complicated. And it's hard to be a foreigner anywhere--and Switzerland makes it especially hard for some.

It takes a lot of soul-searching to find the best country for each person. The Frau is on that journey now. In the end, The Frau thinks that the country that is right for you is the one that has the most common with the things you value.

What do you think?

Enjoying life. A foreign concept.

An American friend recently returned from a six-day trip to Belgium and France (because only an American would fly a total of 10,000 miles for less than a week’s vacation) and came back amazed.

“Now I get it,” she said.

“Get what?”

An American with a newspaper, a coffee, and a
relaxed outlook, oh my!

“How hard it must be for you to be back.”

When asked to clarify she said, “I mean, people over there, they actually take time to relax and enjoy life!”

What a concept. Too bad most Americans find this concept foreign.

Nothing demonstrates this concept more than Starbucks. In the U.S., Starbucks has a drive-through. What does this say about our culture?

The Frau refuses to go to a Starbucks drive-through even though she loves Starbucks coffeehouses because they are pretty much the only place she can go to eat or drink in her American town that doesn’t try to rush her out the door the minute she puts her fork down.

Needless to say, The Frau is dreaming of her old Swiss haunts, like her vacation rental in Locarno. (Pictured above)

Expats: The Most Confused People on Earth

Expat Thanksgiving is already over. It was last weekend.

The Frau sometimes misses the United States. She misses family. Especially on Thanksgiving Day. And it’s hard to raise a child when you are 5,000 miles from home even when you have friends that masquerade as aunts and uncles, other expats you eat turkey with the weekend before.

And there are other American things the Frau misses, things that are so hard to come by in Switzerland like affordable housing, non-smoking outdoor space, English, and cheap Chinese food.

In these moments, the Frau could move home again. But a moment later, the Frau thinks, wait! If she’s in Chicago, she won’t be able to grocery shop in another country on a whim. Or bike over a border. Or hike in the woods without driving to a forest preserve first.

And then her friends in the U.S. add to her angst, e-mailing her things like, “I have to fly back on Christmas Day because I have to work on the 26^th”

Work on December 26^th? What kind of heartless company makes people work on the 26^th? Oh yeah, an American one.

Excuse the Frau, but after being in Europe for six years, where everything shuts down between Christmas and New Years, the thought of being thrown back into the American Rat Race, where stores now open even on Thanksgiving, is one of the biggest reasons to stay in Europe. 

But then again, there's always that pesky long-haul flight just so Baby M can visit grandparents…

Oh help.

The only conclusion the Frau can come to this Thanksgiving is this: The idea of living in the U.S. again scares her. She wants to. She wants to not. She wants to. She wants to not.

But then again, staying in Switzerland scares her too. Does she want her daughter to be Swiss? Does she want her daughter to always be treated as a foreigner even if she grows up here? Does the Frau want to continue live her life as a foreigner? Does the Frau want her daughter to speak a secret language while she continues to feel like a two-year-old when it comes to Swiss German?

The Frau has become like many expats: stuck somewhere between two worlds. And because she knows them both so well now, neither one of them will be ever perfect.

What the heck was she thinking when she moved abroad?

She was thinking of adventure. Not of being ruined for life no matter what country she lives in.

Everyone knows it takes guts to move abroad. But no one talks about the fact that it might end up taking even bigger guts to move home again.

Does anyone else have these issues? What makes you want to move abroad? What makes you want to move home? And what makes you scared of ever doing either?  

Travel as a Political Act

I'm just finishing reading Rick Steves' Travel as a Political Act. He makes a lot of good points about Europeans, Americans, and travel. I particularly love the quote Steves gives from Muhammad: "Don't tell me how educated you are; tell me how much you've traveled."

So true.

While repatriation will be tough for many expats, I think it gives us an opportunity to impact our home countries from our learnings abroad in a positive way. And from that standpoint, when my time comes, I'll be looking forward to going home.

For instance: Steves discusses the European joy for life. I see this too. Most Europeans are happy to make do with less. They live in apartments. Many don't own cars. But they do have time off–and many aren't willing to part with that for more money and more stuff.

I've written about American work ethic before, and I don't think we will ever see protests in the street like you would in France if someone tries to take away your vacation time. But after living in Europe (and also working my butt off American style), I feel strongly that Americans have an opportunity to become less materialistic in exchange for a better work/life balance. I know Americans that work two jobs just so they can buy that fancy house with the three-car garage even though there are only two family members old enough to drive.

I didn't think I could go from living in an American three-bedroom house to living in a Swiss two-bedroom apartment, but guess what. It's great. There's less to clean, no grass to cut, and I have time to do other things instead: like travel and get educated.

Anyhow, for those interested in how travel (and living abroad) can help you improve your own country, I highly recommend Travel as a Political Act.

American Work Ethic: Will There Be a Backlash?

After living in Switzerland for almost four years, sometimes Americans ask me if the Swiss work hard. And all I can say is, "not as hard as you."

Maybe this is a good thing. Most Swiss people seem to work around 41 hours a week. Of course, they work harder than the French (this isn't saying much) and have less vacation than the French (doesn't everyone?). But still. I'd say on average the Swiss have a good work/life balance. Workers are guaranteed four weeks of vacation a year. And often, companies shut down completely for a week over Christmas. And the Swiss are paid much better than Americans too, on average.

Last week, I spoke with a Swiss woman who has a Swiss friend working in Miami. This friend is about to move back to Switzerland because her work load is unhealthy. "My friend even works on Saturdays," this woman told me, clearly shocked.

As I mentioned over on my blog about writing, I'm currently reading Should I Stay or Should I Go, by Paul Allen. I think nothing says more than this quote from his book, made by a software executive working in the U.S.:

"You have to work to make money to stay alive. It's a bit of a rat race. There are a lot of ambitious people. I see it with Americans--they go straight from college into a job, they work very hard, maybe 15 hours a day--and you wonder, 'is this your life?' But I don't see a lot of Americans asking that question."

Hey, Americans, are we asking this question? Do we not see that there is life outside of work? Or are we too scared of losing our jobs to revolt against 15 hour days, unpaid overtime, and weekend and holiday work? (Walmart open on Thanksgiving? Come on!) Are we Americans just wired to work, work, work, without thinking there could be a life beyond it? Please tell me there is hope. Is there?