Strained life of the nonstop American family

updated 2:04 p.m. ET March 21, 2005

LOS ANGELES - Jake Zeiss bolts from his west LA bungalow before 8 a.m., red hair damp and shirttail flapping.

After seven hours of back-to-back meetings, he volleys for an hour with his tennis pro. Still perspiring, he slides back into his Mercedes, gobbles a nutrition bar and does paperwork on a lap desk while his chauffeur burrows through the nation’s worst rush hour traffic.

Jake Zeiss is 9 years old. His paperwork is multiplication tables.

He gropes for a pencil that has dropped down the dark, sticky crevasse of the back seat. And he’s tempted by a new yo-yo. It’s the kind that beeps and lights up.

“Jakey, is that a good use of your time?” hollers his mother, Kim, as she swerves past a loafing Honda. “How many problems have you done?”

The Zeiss family is late for hockey practice. After that, it’s fencing lessons for Madison, Jake’s 10-year old sister. Their father, Gary, will meet them at the gym — hopefully by 8 p.m.

Kevork Djansezian / AP Kim Zeiss, right, organizes the family schedule on her Palm Pilot with the help of her husband, Gary, as their son, Jacob, 8, watches. Scientists using digital cameras recorded the Zeiss' every move for a week.

Kim Zeiss has transformed her SUV into a rolling Wal-Mart, with cases of snacks and drinks buried beneath backpacks and sports equipment piled so high she can’t use the rearview mirror.

“Fortunately, the kids don’t get carsick,” Kim quips as she steers hard down a highway ramp, triggering an avalanche of books and shrieks.

“If that happened,” she said, “we’d be sunk.”

The Zeiss family might be insanely busy. But they are not alone.

Scientists at UCLA have spent the past four years observing 32 Los Angeles families in a study of how working America somehow gets it done. Day after day.

Changing family dynamics
For a week, scientists using digital video cameras recorded the Zeisses’ every move. Back in the lab, the researchers analyzed their behavior — frame by frame — intent on seeing them with a dispassionate eye as if their subjects were chimps in the wild.

Archaeologists sifted through the family’s belongings, down to the stray sock behind the dryer and the cans of tuna in the pantry.

Psychologists required everyone but the family dog Ozzie to spit into test tubes several times a day. The vials were frozen and shipped to a Pennsylvania lab where technicians measured the rise and fall of stress hormones in saliva.

The UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families is one of six long-term projects sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation examining the intersection between family life and work.

At UCLA, a team of 21 researchers has completed the $3.6 million data-collection phase. A second phase will be devoted to analysis and, researchers hope, influencing federal policy on family issues.

Already, trends are emerging from their observations, and they appear to be related to the biggest change in family dynamics since Kim and Gary Zeiss were kids themselves:

Mothers working outside of the home.

It’s a poorly understood seismic shift in both the nation’s economy and daily life. For some families in the study, it allows them to own a bigger house, drive better cars and take nicer vacations.

Reflection of the American office
For many more families in the study, two paychecks are necessary to put food on the table.

Researchers say now there are three jobs in the American family — two careers plus parenting — and only two people to accomplish them.

In short, home life is beginning to imitate the downsized American office.

It means parents and children live virtually apart at least five days a week. They reunite for a few hours at night, sleep and separate again the next morning. In this study, at least one parent was likely to be up and gone before the children awoke.

When they are together, today’s families tend to stay in motion with lessons, classes and games. Or, they go shopping.

UCLA researchers say that, for the most part, husbands in their study haven’t cut back on their work. Some, like Gary Zeiss, work from home occasionally. Others help out with chores a little more.

Mothers in the UCLA study still bear the key household and child-rearing responsibilities, even while working full-time.

Researchers contend this appears to erode families from within, like a rusting minivan dropping parts as it clatters down the highway.

'A child-dominated society'
What’s falling by the wayside?

Playtime. Conversation. Courtesy. Intimacy.

And guess who is driving the minivan now? Researchers say parents effectively have relinquished the steering wheel to their children. That’s because most family decisions and purchases are geared toward the kids’ activities.

Whether these highly programmed kids will grow up to become competent and compassionate adults is an open question for many scientists.

They fear that all of this motion could cause health problems if elevated stress becomes chronic.

“We’ve scheduled and outsourced a lot of our relationships,” says the study’s director, Elinor Ochs, a linguistic anthropologist. “There isn’t much room for the flow of life, those little moments when things happen spontaneously.

“And, we’re moving from a child-centered society to a child-dominated society. Parents don’t have a life after the children go to bed.”

The study’s requirements were straightforward: Find households with two parents who work outside the home, pay a mortgage and have two or three school-aged children.

The 32 families were paid $1,000 each to participate. Most responded to ads in neighborhood newspapers.

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