# Both high-powered sales executives
# Grandma spends most time raising kids
# Aussies longest working week in OECD

SYDNEY mother-of-two Melissa Blackley is so obsessed with work that she doesn't know what her children eat for lunch and hasn't cooked dinner in two years.

She maintains her relationship with her partner of 18 years John Anderson via email. And each day the couple run a "dutch auction" to decide which parent will take daughter India, 11, to violin lessons or go to eight-year-old Holly's extra-curricular activities.

In fact, the high-powered sales executives are so focused on work that neither of them knows what time their children go to school. Mr Anderson said he only has "a pretty good idea" of the school's location.

"Our jobs are incredibly important to us and an extension of that is having a BlackBerry which distracts me when I am home," 42-year-old Ms Blackley, who like her partner works at least 12 hours a day, said.

"I find work exciting and engaging. It's easy to drift off and do work rather than playing dominos."

Ms Blackley foisted much of the responsibility of raising her children on her 69-year-old mother Di Ridley, who quit her own job at her daughter's behest just months after India was born. Ms Ridley arrives at the family's Randwick home at 6am every weekday to look after the children.

"I asked her (to resign from work) because like many mums I was concerned about my baby going into childcare," Ms Blackley said.

The Blackley-Anderson household is just one of many around Australia that is failing to strike a healthy work and life balance.

Australians are working more than 50 hours a week - the longest working week in the OECD.

Demographer Bernard Salt said: "Work has moved beyond the workplace, beyond the nine-to-five, beyond the Monday-to-Friday and into the space that was the soul preserve of the family.

"Work is like a monster. It has broken free from the cage and has extended its tentacles into the family home. Are we now so focused on making a good living that we have no time to live as well?"
The Blackley-Anderson family is just one of three profiled in the second series of SBS social experiment program The Nest.

Premiering tonight, the families go on a crash course to discover a better work/life balance.

would love to post this, do you have a source to quote on this Chant????

The antithesis of the catholic family, it seems.