Integrating Work, Family, and Community through Holistic Life Planning.

This article provides a rationale and interdisciplinary framework for integrating work and other dimensions of life by (a) reviewing relevant changes in society and the career development and counseling profession, (b) describing one holistic career-planning model called Integrative Life Planning (ILP), based on 6 interactive critical life tasks, and (c) discussing questions and issues surrounding narrow versus broad approaches to life planning. ILP includes a strong emphasis on career counselors as advocates and change agents. It focuses on several kinds of wholeness, integrative thinking, democratic values, and helping clients make career decisions not only for self-satisfaction but also for the common good. A key question as one era ends and another begins is the extent to which career counseling as a profession has matured enough to meet the needs of diverse human beings who are making life choices and decisions in a dynamic technological society. Most career professionals probably would agree that in the twentieth century, with the help of traditional theories of vocational choice and computer-assisted career guidance and counseling, career counseling made great advances in the process of helping people find jobs. Some professional counselors have broadened their practice to help clients examine work in relation to other life roles. However, it seems evident that most career counseling practices in our individualistic, democratic, information society still focus mainly on finding a job for self-satisfaction and less on using our talents for the common good. Before writing this article, I reread Parsons's Choosing a Vocation (1909/ 1989). Writing in the context of his time, he reflected the realities of that period in introducing the idea of choosing a vocation as a simple matching process, acting on his humanitarian concern for immigrants in the new industrial society, and cataloging the stereotypic options for girls and women in a list of limited "industries open to women" at home and away from home. He also established the importance of individuals making their own decisions. Recalling that era makes one realize how much progress has been made in a century in advancing the profession of career counseling, attending to the needs of diverse populations, and improving the status of women. Although Parsons created the matching model of vocational choice, his protocol interview for gathering client data is quite holistic, including how to be a good and successful person and dimensions of life beyond work. As I think about the context and status of the career counseling profession today, I sense two tensions: (a) a highly visible national focus on the development and use of information technology that reinforces traditional matching ofpeople and jobs (or colleges) or creating resumes and (b) a growing but less visible attention to holistic human development, balance, and career development over the life span. On the one hand, driven by the soon to sunset School-to-Work Opportunities Act, youth are being urged to choose work early-by 11 th grade, with less emphasis on developmental career guidance; on the other, many of their parents are being told that the occupation they chose early in life no longer needs them. Millions of dollars are being allocated to create the most advanced information systems, especially with the Internet, and to develop the educational and vocational infrastructure to deliver these systems. At the same time, their parents are beginning to ask why they gave 30 or 40 years of their lives to a job and neglected other parts of life, especially as they find themselves downsized and unable to find jobs of comparable status, pay, or security. A difficult question is, what is happening to balance and holistic planning in this rush to technologize the career-planning process and again fit people into jobs? The purpose of this article is to provide a rationale and framework for integrating work and other dimensions of life (a) by reviewing relevant societal changes within and across cultures, (b) by describing one holistic conceptual model for broader life planning in this new century, and (c) by discussing questions and issues surrounding broader career and life planning. …