English Translation
My family comes before my career.
Why not 家族 ? Are they interchangeable?
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@Conor_JPN
Interesting question that I’ve never thought about!
家庭 is much more frequently used than 家族 in this work-life balance/dilemma situation. I wouldn’t say replacing 家庭 with 家族 is completely wrong, but 家庭 is definitely better for the following reason.
仕事 is a combination of tasks/assignments. But 家族 (family) itself isn’t a task but person(s). So, it is a broken parallelism in Japanese. That’s why we don’t compare 仕事 with 家族.
On the other hand, 家庭 in the context work-life balance refers to “managing household affairs” and “squeezing time to be with family”, which are a combination of activities rather than person(s).
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