Five years ago, I co-wrote a book on downshifting. The term, coined in America, was hardly known on these shores at the time; but the idea of living more simply, of stepping off the rat race treadmill, struck a chord with overworked, unfulfilled people of all ages and walks of life. Judy Jones and I wrote the book while literally living it: we had both just downshifted from reporting jobs on a national newspaper. She switched to writing in the idyllic Wiltshire countryside, while I began a family and a freelance career in London. At the time, everyone wanted to know why we would give up high-status, well-paid jobs for a more uncertain, if less stressful, future. Our colleagues, even some of our friends, thought we were crazy.

How times change. Five years on, in our frantic 24 - hour society, the need for greater 'work - life balance' is on everybody's lips. It has become a kind of secular Holy Grail for employees, politicians, journalists, employers (at least the enlightened ones), and above all, parents. For me personally, the term has more resonance than ever. As mother to 5-year-old Jessie, I have spent the past six years working from home, putting in 25 - 35 hours a week, ten months a year. It hasn't all been plain sailing. Working alone can be isolating and most years I earn less as an author and freelance journalist than I did as a fully paid-up member of staff. But the benefits - working whatever time of day suits me, taking my laptop into the garden, having time off without a qualm when my daughter is sick - definitely outweigh the disadvantages.

And I am in good company. When Judy and I left good, traditional jobs in favour of freelance, flexible careers, we were very much exceptions to the rule. But today one in four Britons work from home, at least part of the week, often to achieve a better balance between career and home life.' And many others work in flexible posts such as job shares or during school term time only.

Work - Life Balance: The New Nirvana

The idea of downshifting was and is optional, aspirational - a chance for those who can afford it to exchange income for time and a quieter paced life. But work - life balance has emerged as perhaps the lifestyle issue of the day, affecting almost everyone in a full-time job. It is not necessarily about working less; rather about having personal control and flexibility over when, where and how we work. In this new book, a natural successor to Dowrishifting, I attempt to provide a work - life road map of practical solutions for parents of all backgrounds and circumstances.

Not so long ago commentators envisaged a twenty-first century in which machines would take on a greater role in the workplace and humans would be able to divide time equally between work and leisure. Instead, in 2002, the opposite is the case. Workaholism is endemic, and, as Britain shifts to a 24 - hour economy, more people than not are working weekends, evenings or through the night. As we hurtle from home to work to late-night or early-morning supermarket, it sometimes seems as if we are all living on perpetual fast-forward.

For the UK's 6.5 million parents the stresses are particularly acute. Those who have managed to achieve a good work - life balance, by working flexibly, fewer hours or from home, are growing in number but remain the lucky minority. For the rest - juggling long working hours or unsocial shifts with family meals and school pick-up times - parenting too often feels like an endless assault course. A myriad of pressures bombard today's mothers and fathers. Overwork, job-related anxiety, finding good, affordable childcare, dealing with the academic pressure placed on schoolchildren at an ever younger age, to name but a few. Not to mention getting Johnny to his football practice and Sarah to her dance class within half an hour of dashing home from work. Sometimes we are stretched so thinly, it feels like there is not a spare minute of time or drop of energy left. For many mums and dads an extra 30 minutes in the mornings to get to the office; an hour to ourselves at the end of the day; or a romantic night out once a fortnight would make all the difference. Given that so many find even these modest needs hard to meet, we should hardly be surprised that work - life balance has taken on such resonance.

How Everyone Would Benefit

All this talk of parents' needs may sound like special pleading. After all we choose to have children despite living in a work-driven, 24 - hour society. We (sort of) know what we are letting ourselves in for. But the fact is that better work - life balance for parents, and for that matter all employees, is not just good for families. It has many knock-on benefits for society as a whole. Perhaps it could even be considered essential to the future prosperity and competitiveness of this nation.

When politicians look ahead, one of the biggest clouds they see on the horizon is the relentless ageing of Britain's population. Birth rates continue to fall, more women are choosing not to have children and people are living longer. By 2016, pensioners (65 and over) are expected to outnumber those under sixteen for the first time, placing great strain on the pensions and national health systems. The ticking of this demographic time-bomb is one reason why government is so anxious to tempt women back to work after having children. The country simply can't afford to let their skills languish in the home or go to waste in jobs for which they are over-qualified.

Yet these same women are finding their time and energy increasingly squeezed during much of their working lives. Despite all the talk of New Man, women remain overwhelmingly the primary carers of both children and elderly parents. For many thousands of mothers in their 30s and 40s, this makes holding down a full-time job, especially one that demands long hours, very problematic; for lone parents often impossible. Many women who go back to work after a first child find they simply cannot manage both job and family after they have a second. At any given time, for example, 50000 female science, engineering and technology graduates are not in work. And it is no coincidence that the few sectors with respectable levels of senior women include those - such as the NHS and civil service - that have enthusiastically embraced good work - life practices.

Such organisations, needless to say, have not become flexible pioneers simply out of the goodness of their hearts. Rather, as I explain more fully in Chapter 4, enabling parents to work around family commitments is not only good for the economy as a whole; it also brings proven bottom line benefits to individual employers.

And then there are the wider social benefits. This book is full of evidence in favour of a portfolio lifestyle where employees work a flexible, maximum 35-hour week. If the polls are to be believed, millions of people, regardless of whether they have children, want reduced work hours and will be more contented citizens for getting them; children seem to fare better when they have more time as babies with their mothers (see Chapter 3 for the evidence); and a 'short hours culture' would help to foster more equal relationships between men and women.

Lets face facts. As long as a majority of fathers continue to work the longest hours in Europe many men desperate to spend more time with their children, to be more than 'weekend dads', will simply not be able to do so. And many working mothers, unwilling or unable to compete in the long hours marathon, will remain at a disadvantage - both in terms of advancing their careers and shedding domestic drudgery. Introduce more flexible arrangements for all, and you instantly strike a major blow for equal opportunities.

And what about our children? What is best for them? It is not just a rising swell of parents, heartsick that they are never able to make it to school events, who believe long working hours to be incompatible with a healthy family life. Academics who have spent decades analysing this very issue tend to agree. Take, for example, Professor Shirley Dex, a family policy expert at Cambridge University's Judge Institute of Management Studies. She has argued that when it comes to good parent - child relationships, two part-time working parents offer 'by far the most advantages' compared with either traditional or workaholic households. And she has even suggested enforcing lower legal limits on the hours worked by parents of children under ten.

This may sound rather drastic. But if we stick with business as usual, it is hard to see how things are going to improve. With average hours among full-time working mothers rising by the year, workaholic couples are increasingly common. Yet these parents and their children inhabit the 'worst of all worlds', according to Professor Dex. 'People get locked into a lifestyle based on poor relationships,' she says. 'There is no time for the children, nor any time for building a sustained marital relationship.' The result? 'We may be producing a genera-tion who do not realize that relationships matter because they were deprived of experiencing that for themselves.'

Such words should give every parent, employer and policymaker in the land pause for thought. It is a profoundly depressing, even dangerous scenario. But it is not the way things have to be. This book aims to advise and empower parents and their employers to map out a better, mutually beneficial future.

Making Work Work for You and Your Children

So how do we make family-friendly working a real option for all parents? Clearly, we need to free ourselves of the tenacious long hours culture. The desire so many people seem to have for greater balance and meaning in their lives needs to be translated into opportunities for shorter hours or smarter working practices without the risk of being sidelined or even sacked for daring to want to do things differently. But how do we - employers, government, parents - make this happen?

So far most of the debate about work - life balance has focused on the negative - how hard we all work, how stress levels are soaring, how dual income couples may be harming their children - and so on. Many books have defined and debated these problems, particularly from the perspective of the harassed working mother; and for anyone who reads a newspaper it is hard not to pick up on the great work - life debate. But there is a 'missing middle' between all the theory and practice exchanged between policymakers, the parenting lobby, academics and work - life consultants on the one hand and the millions of struggling juggling parents on the other. The 24 - hour Family aims to bridge that divide.

In all the media coverage of how stressed out we Brits are, we seldom hear that there are promising signs of change afoot. But the truth is that the solutions we so desperately seek are already out there.

Largely unnoticed, many UK organisations have developed innovative, family-friendly work options. Already, a quarter of all employers offer employees flexitime and/or part-time work and one in five allows occasional working from home. And there is evidence of an accelerating 'domino effect' as businesses see proof that work - life practices can make for happier, more productive workforces. The government has also belatedly discovered working parents. Between 1998 and 2004, £8 billion will be spent expanding childcare facilities and reducing parents' childcare bills. The April 2003 legislation entitles fathers to two weeks' paid paternity leave and mothers to a year's maternity leave while around four million working parents of children under six have the legal right to request flexible work arrangements.

All this adds up to a family-friendly revolution in the making. In this book, I draw on the latest best practice and on inspirational case studies to provide practical solutions both for parents seeking better work - life balance and employers anxious to provide it.

Of course, the starting point to finding such a balance is to work out what we parents really want - from life, work and family. Part I, How Family-friendly Are We?, sets out the background against which we make our individual choices about jobs, childcare, finances and family time, attempting to explain the powerful economic and social forces shaping our personal decisions.

Equally important - and less frequently voiced - are children's own views about their parents' work and what they want from us. Chapter 3 includes some funny, fascinating and poignant examples of children's views on working parents while Chapter 4 describes the rise of the family-friendly employer and the benefits that flexible working practices can produce for parents and employers alike.

The practical advice for parents that makes up the heart of this book can be found in Part II, Making the Change. It includes a detailed explanation of parental leave and employment rights and of a dozen flexible working practices, illustrated by case studies; a step-by-step guide on how to negotiate a more family-friendly deal with your existing boss or a new employer; information and advice on employment and childcare options as your children grow from toddlers to teenagers; and advice for parents facing particular hurdles to achieving a good work - life balance - the low-paid, lone mums and dads, rural families - and also looks at the particular concerns of parents with disabilities or a disabled child. There is inevitably some crossover of information in these sections, but I have tried to keep repetition to a minimum.

In the final chapter, 'Making Our Voices Heard' I pick up the themes outlined above and suggest how we might make changes to reduce the strains on family life, including taking a few leaves out of the books of more family-friendly European nations. And finally, the comprehensive Resources section at the back of the book lists useful organisations for parents and employers.