TonioTimeDaily

“In the intersection of work and personal life, the work–life balance is the equilibrium between the two. There are many aspects of one's personal life that can intersect with work, including family, leisure, and health. A work–life balance is bidirectional; for instance, work can interfere with private life, and private life can interfere with work. This balance or interface can be adverse in nature (e.g., work–life conflict) or can be beneficial (e.g., work–life enrichment) in nature.[1] Recent research has shown that the work–life interface has become more boundary-less, especially for technology-enabled workers.[2][3][4][5]” -Wikipedia.

"When I read Dianne M. Stewart’s “Black Women, Black Love: America’s War on African American Marriage,” I felt seen in her descriptions of the systemic forces working against us. Stewart lays out the issue masterfully when she says, “Most heterosexual Black women in America today, whether parenting offspring or not, are single by circumstance, not by choice.” Stewart continues, “The trouble is not with Black women failing to value marriage; it is the shrinking demographic of those whom Black women want to marry . . . In some cases, Black women lack dating prospects within their socioeconomic group, and in other cases, they don’t have any dating prospects at all!”

She characterizes Black women’s lack of opportunities for love and marriage with Black men as “the nation’s most hidden and thus neglected civil rights issue to date.” Stewart provides the historical receipts that reveal Black love as a contested site in this nation and details the way that the “war on African American marriage” was waged in the past and present." _ Ekemini Uwan.

"I have always found the idea of blaming the autistic child for the deterioration of marriage unfair to autistic people. Yet, when my own marriage ended, I couldn’t help but wonder if any of those ideas behind the eighty per-cent divorce rates and autism might in some way be true.

A single mom of an autistic child for several years now, I’ve seen that when relationships fall apart, we begin by looking outside ourselves for the external causes to blame. No matter what the circumstance, illness, disability, death are the certainties of a full life. We make vows for better or for worse, even if most of us want the “better.” Frequent divorce seems to reflect the advent of the re-start button — an impatient, quickly gratified culture with many options at our fingertips, and a waning attention span. It’s perhaps an unforgiving view about what as I see as the marriage du jour — the one that bypasses commitment. Even so, two people who come together with the best of intentions (or delusions), sometimes cannot endure the stress when faced with life’s many challenges. This has nothing to do with autism.

Consider some of our flippant views about marriage and commitment against the last decade of autism in the media. The media and many in the medical field created an environment of fascination and fear about autism. Most parents relate to the panic we felt on the day of the official autism diagnosis. We heard and read that we had a six year window in which to cure our children. That is, we were told that if our children didn’t talk and lose those autism behaviors by the age of six, our children were doomed to be autistic for the rest of their lives. With such pressure, as individuals and couples, we can be extremely challenged. Coping with stress and even grief is different for all people. Press restart?

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that autism is frequently blamed by some autism charities, and in the media, for divorce. When we blame something else other than ourselves, such as perpetuating the notion that autism is to blame, the innocent autistic child is targeted." _Estée Klar.