To accomplish that, we need to change ingrained attitudes and gender stereotypes. In an office the other day, I heard someone say that "Ed" was on a four-month maternity leave. I thought I'd heard wrong. In fact, the person speaking was acknowledging a more and more common occurrence--men staying home with a newborn. Our society needs to accept and encourage men's moving into traditionally female roles.

Second, we need to make it acceptable for workers, especially women, to take time off from their careers. They need to be able to take six weeks, six months or six years with a child--how-ever long they feel they need. After that period, they should be able to bone up on their field of expertise, re-enter the workplace and be considered as qualified as ever for high-level positions and promotions, if they deserve them.

Although our society talks a lot about the importance of a solid family, it seems that many high-powered companies do everything they can to prevent their workers from spending time with their spouses and children. More companies need to include children as part of their plan, by allowing generous maternity leaves, creating in-house daycare centers and being sympathetic to couples with small children. A teacher I know says that when she plans the year's classes for her department, she gives first priority for free periods late in the day to teachers with small children at home, so they can leave work early. That's a step in the right direction.

A seasoned veteran in my office said the other day that when she was hired in the early 1970s, many bosses thought that women her age were useless because they would just get married and have kids. Twenty-five years later, that perception has not changed as much as it should have Although a woman--or a man, for that matter--may take time off to care for children, that does not mean that she somehow loses a vital part of what made her a desirable employee in the first place. After having her child, she will likely return with more experience and perspecctive--valuable assets for any forward-looking company.

Nor should age be a stigma in the workplace. As many middle-aged executives will tell you, the race is not necessarily to the young, and should not be. As the retirement age continues to move upward and life-expectancy increases, returning to a career at 35 or even 40 should not exclude workers from reaching high levels of management. After all, they still have 30 or more productive years left on the job.

Only when we accept that healthy families are critical to healthy families are critical to healthy workers, that time spent in a workplace does not necessarily correlate to productivity or creativity and that age is not a burden--only then will we effect true change in the way our society perceives work. And if cases like Ellen Kossek's or studies like Work-Family Directions' are any indication, we need that change soon.