If the moms aren't happy and the dads aren't happy...

It isn't easy being a modern mom or a modern dad.

A brand new report about the realities of having a baby and a job hit the streets in the UK today.

The Fawcett Society's report Not Having it All: How Motherhood Reduces Women's Pay and Employment Prospects made the all-too-familiar point that moms are heavily penalized for the time they step out of the paid labor market to start and raise families. 'For each year she is absent from the workplace, a mother's future wages will reduce by 5%,' the study notes.

What the report didn't look at is how well or how poorly dads have been faring in the modern economy. Guardian columnist Brian Schofield decided to tackle that topic in a thought-provoking column entitled The Distant Dads. Schofield argues that what dads are missing out on, as opposed to wages, is time with their kids. ('I have to travel for work, and have been absent for six weeks of my son's first six months; [another father I know] has missed about 16 weeks out of the first 24.')

Instead of becoming more family-friendly, UK society has become vastly more un-friendly toward the family, Schofield argues. He takes to task various flexible working options that have received much positive press in recent years: e.g., freelancing ('you work when the phone rings, and you deliver when you're told to, or you won't get asked again'), contracting ('insecurity and feast-or-famine work now re-branded as 'labour flexibility'), agencies ('you sell the client the work of five people, and only employ four'), and commuting ('I know a group of hack-dads who sleep, fruit-picker-style, on mattresses bundled into a London bedsit for four nights a week, so that their wives and kids can live happily in the only family homes they can afford, in Wales.')

For most of us, the work-family juggling act is tough, even slightly crazy-making.

For new parents who are trying to deal with all the changes that go along with becoming a parent for the first time, the situation can be totally overwhelming.

Families who are dealing with the illness of a family member on top of the day-to-day challenges of juggling work and family may feel similarly overwhelmed.

And what makes it all the more difficult is the spin -- the idea that we should be grateful for work arrangements that leave our families with no long-term financial stability; and for the opportunity to work longer and longer hours for less pay.

If we're honest about what's so objectionable about some of the arrangements families are being forced to accept as the new normal, we won't feel like we're selling our souls for pocket change.