Separating Spheres? Diverging Trends in Youth's Gender Attitudes About Work and Family

The authors investigated whether trends in attitudes about gender were consistent with the gender stall primarily occurring in the family domain and examined potential mechanisms associated with changing gender norms. Using data from Monitoring the Future surveys (1976–2015), the authors assessed three components of trends in youth's beliefs about gender: the marketplace, the family, and mothers' employment. Findings showed continued increases in egalitarianism from 1976 through the mid‐1990s across all three dimensions. Thereafter, support for egalitarianism in the public sphere plateaued at high levels, rising support for mothers' employment persisted at a slower pace, and conventional ideology about gender in families returned. The changing demographic composition of American high school students did not account for the gender attitude trends. Youth's mothers' employment and increased education were related to increased egalitarianism. Changes in population averages of mothers' employment and educational attainment were only weakly associated with increases in egalitarian attitudes.     

Daily Spillover of Low‐Income Mothers' Perceived Workload to Mood and Mother–Child Interactions

This study investigated associations of low‐income working mothers' daily perceived workload and their reports of their own mood and their interactions with their young children. Sixty‐one mothers were asked to report on their workload, mood, and interactions with their preschool‐age children every day for 2 weeks (N = 520 work days). Low‐income mothers reported significant day‐to‐day variability in workload. The results revealed a curvilinear pattern of negative work‐to‐family spillover: Both lower‐than‐average and higher‐than‐average workload days were associated with increased negative and tired mood, decreased positive mood, and increased harsh mother–child interactions. Although both younger and older mothers experienced a curvilinear pattern of spillover to daily mood, younger mothers in the period of emerging adulthood also experienced spillover to mother–child interactions, perhaps because they are still learning how to balance work and family demands. Both high and low workload are salient stressors in the daily lives of low‐wage working mothers.     

Reclaiming the Mother-daughter Relationship after Sexual Abuse

This paper seeks to provide direction to therapists working with mothers and daughters after a disclosure of father-daughter sexual abuse. The importance of the mother's belief in and support for the child's recovery is highlighted, as are some of the cultural assumptions about mothers and daughters which negatively impact on the relationship. Despite paying lip service to offender responsibility, there continues to be a culture of mother blaming in the child sexual abuse and family therapy literature on incest. Current research findings challenge some of the prevalent myths about mothers’ responses to their children's disclosures. Few clinical sources have addressed this issue, and therapists who reject the mother blaming literature are therefore left with little guidance as to how to work more effectively with mothers and daughters. Consequently they may unwittingly further undermine the relationship. Work with mothers and daughters as they recover from intrafamilial sexual abuse is discussed, and key therapeutic themes and guidelines for practice presented. We explore the significant theme of the rebuilding of trust between mothers and daughters and facilitate a process whereby the woman is able to bear witness to and acknowledge the trauma experienced by her daughter.     

Making Milk and Money: Contemporary Mothers' Orientations to Breastfeeding and Work

In most Western industrial nations, gains have been made in women's educational and occupational opportunities as part of a larger gender revolution. At the same time, contemporary mothering expectations have expanded and intensified, especially the renewed focus on breastfeeding as the “optimal” choice for infant feeding. How do women perceive the simultaneous pursuit of these activities? Prior scholarship has identified tensions in cultural models of breastfeeding as well as in women's subjective experiences, emphasizing how breastfeeding is shaped and encountered through sociocultural context, especially ideologies that position work and mothering as incompatible. Building on this, I examine how the current generation of working mothers view working and breastfeeding. Through in‐depth interviews with 32 U.S. women, I show how women espouse distinctly different orientations to breastfeeding: instrumentalist, quasi‐maternalist, and pragmatist. I argue that these different orientations both reflect and reframe existing cultural models and discourses about contemporary women's relationships to work, mothering, and breastfeeding.     

COVID‐19 and the gender gap in work hours

School and day care closures due to the COVID‐19 pandemic have increased caregiving responsibilities for working parents. As a result, many have changed their work hours to meet these growing demands. In this study, we use panel data from the US Current Population Survey to examine changes in mothers’ and fathers’ work hours from February through April 2020, the period of time prior to the widespread COVID‐19 outbreak in the United States and through its first peak. Using person‐level fixed effects models, we find that mothers with young children have reduced their work hours four to five times more than fathers. Consequently, the gender gap in work hours has grown by 20–50 per cent. These findings indicate yet another negative consequence of the COVID‐19 pandemic, highlighting the challenges it poses to women’s work hours and employment.     

The Costs of Thinking About Work and Family: Mental Labor,Work–Family Spillover,and Gender Inequality Among Parents in Dual‐Earner Families

One of the aspects unaccounted for in previous assessments of employed parents ‘distribution of time is the mental dimension of tasks and demands. This aspect, referred to as mental labor, is conceptualized as the planning, organization, and management of everyday activities. Using the experience sampling method, a unique form of time diary, and survey data from the 500 Family Study (N = 402 mothers with 16,451 signals and 291 fathers with 11,322 signals), this study examined the prevalence, context, and emotional correlates of mental labor among parents in dual‐earner families. Results show that fathers reported thinking more frequently about job‐related matters than mothers but these concerns did not spill over into unpaid work. By contrast, mothers’ job‐related thoughts tended to spill over into unpaid work and free‐time activities. When engaging in mental labor, mothers and fathers were equally likely to think about family matters, but these thoughts were only detrimental to emotional well‐being in mothers. Among both mothers and fathers, paid work was relatively insulated from thoughts about family matters. Overall, findings highlight mothers’ double burden and suggest that mental labor may contribute to mothers’ emotional stress and gender inequality among dual‐earner families.     

State Policy? Traditional Gender Stereotypes? Relative Contributions of Factors Affecting Positive Work–Family Interface for Working Mothers in Korea

This study explores the gap between policy rhetoric and the reality faced by Korean working mothers, by addressing the following question; whether and to what extent do policy measures for work–family balance contribute to positive work–family interface for working mothers? Although the Korean government has advocated a positive relation between state policy and satisfaction with work–family balance, this is not necessarily the case in practice. To this end, this study focuses on the relative contribution of policy measures to achieve work–family balance reported by working mothers, in relative to traditional gender stereotypes based on Confucian culture as well as working conditions. An empirical analysis with 1,082 Korean working mothers shows interesting findings. First of all, the contribution of policy towards the reported satisfaction in work–family balance is not supported, while the set of traditional gender stereotypes is found to be a negative contributor. Husbands’ psychological support for their wives’ employment, which seems to strengthen the impact of traditional gender stereotypes, follows. The implications of the findings are discussed in depth, by considering the relationships between policy outcomes and traditional gender stereotypes in Korea.     

Long Working Hours and the Corporate Gender Divide in Japan

While the workplace custom of working long hours has been known to exacerbate gender inequality, few have investigated the organizational mechanisms by which long working hours translate into and reinforce the power and status differences between men and women in the workplace. Drawing on 64 in‐depth interviews with workers at financial and cosmetics companies in Japan, this article examines three circumstances in which a culture of long working hours is disadvantageous for women workers, and the consequences of those circumstances: (a) managers in Japanese firms, reinforcing gender stereotypes, prioritize work over personal and family lives; (b) non–career‐track women experience depressed aspirations in relation to long working hours and young women express a wish to opt out due to the incompatibility of work with family life; and (c) workers who are mothers deal with extra unpaid family work, stress such as guilt from leaving work early, salary reduction and concerns over their limited chances for promotion. The article argues that the norm of working long hours not only exacerbates the structural inequality of gender but also shapes employed women's career paths into the dichotomized patterns of either emulating workplace masculinity or opting out.     

Low‐income and Middle‐class Mothers Gendered Work and Family Schemas

Conflict between the demands of paid work and motherhood has been studied primarily from the experience of middle‐class and professional mothers in dual‐earner families. Recently, with the reform of welfare, a number of studies have focused on the problems of poor mothers in meeting the demands of paid employment and caring for children. This article explores the moral discourse of judgments about paid work and motherhood and how this differs for low‐income and married middle‐class women. It reviews research that considers why poor single mothers are seen as irresponsible when they leave work due to family demands when professional and middle‐class married mothers are seen as acting selflessly. It examines how gendered schema differentially influences the work and family choices of married middle‐class and professional mothers compared to poor and low‐income mothers.     

Dual‐earner parent couples’ work and care during COVID‐19

COVID‐19 and the associated lockdowns meant many working parents were faced with doing paid work and family care at home simultaneously. To investigate how they managed, this article draws a subsample of parents in dual‐earner couples (n = 1536) from a national survey of 2722 Australian men and women conducted during lockdown in May 2020. It asked how much time respondents spent in paid and unpaid labour, including both active and supervisory care, and about their satisfaction with work–family balance and how their partner shared the load. Overall, paid work time was slightly lower and unpaid work time was very much higher during lockdown than before it. These time changes were most for mothers, but gender gaps somewhat narrowed because the relative increase in childcare was higher for fathers. More mothers than fathers were dissatisfied with their work–family balance and partner’s share before COVID‐19. For some the pandemic improved satisfaction levels, but for most they became worse. Again, some gender differences narrowed, mainly because more fathers also felt negatively during lockdown than they had before.     

Demands and Devotion: Cultural Meanings of Work and Overload Among Women Researchers and Professionals in Science and Technology Industries

How do cultural meanings influence how people experience work‐life demands? Much research, especially quantitative research, on the effects of structural work and family conditions does not account for employees’ cultural beliefs about the meaning of work in their lives. This article uses unique survey data to investigate the effects of employee embrace of elements of the “work devotion schema”—a cultural model that valorizes intense career commitment and organizational dedication—on their sense of “overload,” an experience that includes feeling exhausted and overloaded by all one's roles, net of actual hours on the paid job and family responsibilities. We argue that by cognitively, morally, and emotionally framing work as a valued end, the work devotion schema reduces feelings of overload. Using a case of senior women researchers and professional service providers in science and technology industries, we find that those who embrace work devotion feel less overloaded than those who reject it, net of work and family conditions. However, this effect is curtailed for mothers of young and school‐aged children. We end by discussing implications for flexibility stigma and gender inequality.     

Work–family Management among Low‐wage Service Workers and Assistant Professors in the USA: A Comparative Intersectional Analysis

Noting an inattention to the specific ways in which class, race, and gender combine to affect work–family management, we conducted a qualitative exploration of the processes of intersectionality. Our analysis relies on two points on a continuum of class experiences provided by two groups of predominately white female workers: low‐wage service workers and assistant professors. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with each group, we examine the similarities and differences in their experiences of negotiating their work worlds as they tried to meet family demands. We focus on the ways in which class and gender interacted to shape these women's everyday lives in different ways. While we found that women privileged by class were privileged in their abilities to manage work and family demands, we also found that class shaped the gendered experiences of these women differently. Our data suggest that, in the realm of work–family management, class mutes gendered experiences for assistant professors while it exacerbates gendered experiences for women working in the low‐wage service sector. Our analysis not only highlights the importance of considering intersecting hierarchies when examining women's lived experiences in families and workplaces, but provides an empirical example of the workings of intersectionality.     

Scaling Back and Finding Flexibility: Gender Differences in Parents' Strategies to Manage Work–Family Conflict

Studies show that fathers report work–family conflict levels comparable to mothers. The authors examine gender differences in work‐related strategies used to ease such conflicts. The authors also test whether the presence of young children at home shapes parents' use of different strategies. They address these focal questions using panel data from the Canadian Work, Stress, and Health study (N = 306 fathers, 474 mothers). The authors find that mothers with young children are more likely to scale back on work demands when compared with fathers with young children, but mothers and fathers with older children are equally likely to pursue these strategies. Furthermore, women with young children and men with older children are more likely to seek increased schedule control as a result of work–family conflict when compared with their parent counterparts. The authors situate these findings in the vast literature on the consequences of work–family conflict.     

Gender,Spousal Caregiving,and Depression: Does Paid Work Matter?

Studies have shown that spousal caregiving leads to psychological distress, but few have analyzed the moderating effect of paid work. Using the 2000 to 2012 Health and Retirement Study and two‐stage least squares regression models, this study found that caregiving increased women's and men's depressive symptoms. Ordinary least squares models showed that caregiving had more adverse effects on women's mental health than on men's, but these differences were eliminated in two‐stage least squares models that accounted for the bidirectional effects of depression and caregiving. The current study also found that for women, part‐time work attenuated the depressive effect of spousal caregiving, whereas for men, part‐time work exacerbated it. These gender differences persisted even for intensive spousal caregivers. The authors suggest that caregiving women who work part‐time may benefit from work‐related resources. Caregiving men who work part‐time, however, may feel distressed, as their work–family experiences conflict with traditional gender norms.     

Preferences,constraints or schemas of devotion? Exploring Norwegian mothers' withdrawals from high‐commitment careers1

Despite decades of focus on gender equality and work–family balance, parenthood still affects mothers' and fathers' careers differently. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with Norwegian mothers who are relinquishing high‐commitment careers of law and consultancy, this paper questions the adequacy of established explanations emphasizing constraints vs. individual preferences. Our sample of female professionals living in a well‐developed welfare state is particularly apt to explore the processes and mechanisms upholding the statistically gendered pattern of women reducing their work commitment after childbirth. These doubly privileged mothers might be considered to have the best odds for combining career and work commitment with motherhood. Thus, we argue that the approach emphasizing practical constraints does not sufficiently account for the withdrawal from high‐commitment careers among these female professionals. Nevertheless, we are not content with the claim of Preference Theory that this shift in commitment is merely a matter of ‘not‐so‐dedicated’ women discovering their ‘genuine’ preferences. Rather, in order to understand why and how this shift occurs, we explore the culturally constructed rationalities and schemas of both work and family devotions. We specifically examine the circumstances, mechanisms and steps in a seemingly individual process of making the shift in commitment from a promising career to a family‐friendly job. Moreover, the analysis demonstrates how generous parental leave arrangements designed to enhance gender equality and work–family balance by simply reducing practical constraints may have limited – or even counterproductive – impact within high‐commitment occupations where the ‘irreplaceability’ of workers is taken for granted. Our findings indicate that unless the culturally (re)produced discourses, demands and expectations of both work and family are exposed and challenged, even intentionally gender neutral work–family policies will continue to facilitate mothers' career withdrawals, expressed as modified individual preferences.     

‘From Behind the Women's Petticoats’: The English Factory Act of 1874 as a Cultural Production1

Abstract In 1874 Parliament passed a law entitled ‘The Factories (Health of Women. etc) Act’ which limited the hours that women and children could work in textile factories to a 56 1/2 hour work week. In this paper I interpret the debates over hours legislation and the resulting Act as cultural productions. These cultural productions contributed to the formulation of a new social problem,‘the working mother’ promulgated an interpretation of who caused the problem, and reinforced a particular view of who was responsible for social reproduction. The rhetoric in the debates about the measure made crucial contributions to the future agenda for public policies concerning married women workers and working mothers, and reinforced a world view that state, economy and family are, and ought to remain, independent entities. My analysis draws from a range of theoretical traditions and works stressing the importance of language and other symbolic practices such as rituals in creating political subjects, problems and solutions. I examine the debates about state regulation in the 1870s to show how a symbolic or cultural analysis illuminates state-level politics and the formulation of public policy. It was through such laws and debates that the state contributed to the social construction of gender and a gendered economy.     

Are women less career centric than men? Structure,culture, and identity investments

Some work/family scholars assume that gender differences in career centrality (i.e. the importance of career to one's identity) are a result of differential job characteristics and family demands; others trace these differences to pre-existing cultural orientations. Using the 2010 Generations of Talent data from 9210 employees working in 11 countries for 7 multinational companies, this study verifies the existence of gender differences in career centrality and explores structural and cultural explanations. Gender disparities in career centrality are modest, indicating that women's and men's identification with careers is more similar than is commonly asserted; the most pronounced (but still relatively small) disparities are observed in Japan and China. A large portion of the gender gap is explained by job characteristics, supporting structural explanations. Family demands contribute to explaining the gap as well, but the findings are unexpected: having minor children is associated with higher career centrality for both women and men. In support of cultural explanations, however, traditional gender beliefs are associated with lower career centrality, especially for women, while two job characteristics (job variety and peer relations) have distinct links to career centrality for women and men. Findings challenge the common assumption that family identities compete against work identities.     

The Experience of Work–Family Conflict Among Divorced Parents in Flanders

This study investigates the difference between married and divorced parents, accounting for gender and relationship status after divorce. It also provides insight into differences within the category of divorced parents. Data from 769 married and 1,424 divorced parents were analyzed using logistic regression analysis. The results identify a complex interplay among marital status, relationship status, and gender. For mothers, both marital and relationship status have an impact on work–family conflict. For fathers, it is the presence of a partner that affects the interference of family with work. Gender, working hours, and child’s presence were identified as important factors influencing work–family conflict among divorced parents.     

How Does the Gender of Parents Matter?

Claims that children need both a mother and father presume that women and men parent differently in ways crucial to development but generally rely on studies that conflate gender with other family structure variables. We analyze findings from studies with designs that mitigate these problems by comparing 2‐parent families with same or different sex coparents and single‐mother with single‐father families. Strengths typically associated with married mother‐father families appear to the same extent in families with 2 mothers and potentially in those with 2 fathers. Average differences favor women over men, but parenting skills are not dichotomous or exclusive. The gender of parents correlates in novel ways with parent‐child relationships but has minor significance for children's psychological adjustment and social success.     

Impact of Genetic Relatedness and Emotional Closeness on Intergenerational Relations

Both emotional closeness and genetic relatedness are known to influence helping behavior between family generations, yet few studies have explored them together. The authors investigated the associations between (a) parenthood and perceived emotional closeness toward own parents and parents‐in‐law and (b) emotional closeness and receiving child care from grandparents across and within lineage lines. The data include information on the 8 dyads of possible parent–grandparent relations from a nationally representative survey of young adults in Finland (born 1962–1990, sample N = 1,216). The results show that parenthood was associated with women's emotional closeness to their own mothers and men's emotional closeness to their parents‐in‐law. Maternal grandmothers provided the most grandchild care. After controlling for emotional closeness, the difference in child care provision between one's own mother and one's mother‐in‐law disappeared for women but was accentuated in men. Thus, emotional closeness shapes intergenerational relations differently for kin and in‐laws.