Speaker: Hendrick Smith

April 1, 2002

Journalist, Author and Producer

Walking the Tightrope

For tens of millions of American households the stress of juggling the competing demands of work and family is the number one problem of the household after making a livable income. In the 21st Century economy, Americans are working longer, earning more, but seeing less of their families, and liking it less. Time stress has become nearly universal- a result of massive changes in the American force over the past 30 years and the relentless demands of the modern 24X7 workplace that keeps workers tied to their jobs through fax, cell phone and Internet.

Hedrick Smith, Executive producer and Correspondent for the PBS special broadcast, Juggling Work and Family, looks at the daily obstacles faced by tens of millions of working couples. His draws on the experiences of people who range from high tech managers in Silicon Valley and high-priced lawyers in Boston to assembly-line workers in the Midwest, hospital technicians in New York City and the army of housemaids, desk clerks and doormen who are the front-line for the hospitality industry.

Mr. Smith reports on how some progressive companies and unions are working with their employees to ease the pressures on working parents and on others who must care for aging parents. And he explores the structural and cultural norms in the American economy that took root half a century ago and that, in the eyes of some experts, no longer fit the modern workforce. This leads to a discussion of public policy as well as private initiatives.

Hedrick Smith is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of several best selling books. He has created and hosted numerous award-winning PBS prime-time specials and series on Washington's power game, Soviet perestroika, the global economy, education and teen violence. For twenty-six years Mr. Smith served as a correspondent for the New York Times in Washington, Moscow, Cairo, Saigon, Paris and the American South. In 1971, as chief diplomatic correspondent, he was a member of the Pulitzer Prize winning team that produced the Pentagon Papers series. In 1974, he won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting from Russia and Eastern Europe. From 1976-1988, he was The New York Times Washington bureau chief and chief correspondent.

Mr. Smith's appearance at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum is cosponsored with the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies.