Work/life benefits: not just for working moms anymore.

Child care advocates in the 1970s and '80s knew that employers who made it easier for working mothers to keep their minds on their jobs would have employees who are more productive and less stressed.

After some convincing, their message eventually took hold, and organizations of all sizes began offering benefits: on-site child care, child care subsidies and even some flexibility for moms who had to leave work early or come in late occasionally due to a family commitment.

From there, a new category of employee benefits was born: work/life benefits, which today involve far more than child care benefits for working mothers. In fact, employers are designing their work/life benefits to also serve fathers, single employees, empty-nesters, lesbians and gays.

Moms in the workplace

"Anyone who works can use a little help with work/life balance," said Sharon O'Malley, editor/publisher of the newsletter Work/Life Today, who spoke at the 10th annual conference of the College and University Work/Family Association (CUFWA) in Phoenix in February.

"And they've come to expect that help to come from their employers." said O'Malley, also an adjunct associate professor of journalism for the University of Maryland.

The trend toward inclusiveness has been evident at work/life conferences over the past few years, she said. At both the Alliance for Work-Life Progress annual conference in February and a 2002 Working Mother magazine conference, the groups discussed the growing desire of fathers to balance work with family commitments.