Dual-earner parents’ work-family time: the effects of atypical work patterns and non-parental childcare

Finding time to both earn money and raise children is demanding. Within the constraints and opportunities of their employment and social policies affecting work and family, parents seeking to manage their time may use a number of strategies. For example, they can outsource childcare or adopt atypical work patterns: non-standard work schedules, self employment, working from home. In this paper we compare the effects of these measures on the household time use and gender division of labour of dual-earner couples with children, using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Time Use Survey, 2006 (n?=?772 couples). We find that these strategies do help households manage their work and family time. However, this is almost exclusively a result of women changing their time use. Such measures generally enable mothers, not fathers, to adjust paid work around family commitments, and offer little amelioration of gendered divisions of labour. This reinforces normative gender-role expectations and is probably a result of institutional constraints, including sparse social policy and workplace support for mothers?? full-time employment and for fathers?? involvement in childcare.     

?Hegemoniale M?nnlichkeiten‘ alsnarrative Distinktionspraxis im Wissenschaftsspiel

The paper focuses theoretically and methodologically on the analysis of narrative constructions of gender from the perspective of sociology of science. It contributes to discussions about extending discourse analytical perspectives by impulses from theories of social practice. Thus it suggests analyzing scientific narratives as routinized ??strategic fictions?? in the context of gendered boundary work. Additionally, it draws on recent discussions on the concept of ??hegemonic masculinity?? as a generative principle and asks theoretically about practices in the course of which multiple, complex and context-specific versions of hegemonic masculinity are drafted as the outcome of discursive struggles and also of the competition among men. The empirical analysis thus reconstructs narrative practices of symbolically distinguishing and situating gendered actors in the social field of science. This is illustrated at the example of the professionalization of modern German engineering in the time period from the 1870ies until the turn of the century. In their writings engineering scholars initially composed the ??scientist of machinery?? as the symbolically neutralized position of objectivity by following a narrative of progress. Later the engineer as the ??man of action?? displaced the former concept by now stressing a narrative of a prehistorical origin of technological man whose competence is a gift of the nature of his sex. Both narratives are interpreted as an, in each case, specific mode of masculinity construction in order to struggle for a dominant position not only with respect to women but also to other social groups of men.     

Is money the main reason mothers return to work after childbearing?

Women’s reasons for returning to work after childbearing are complex, often including a mix of financial and other reasons related to their preferences, choices and constraints regarding employment; various qualitative studies have explored this decision-making process. This paper also considers how these decisions about returning to work are made, but uses quantitative techniques to analyse how reasons for return to work vary with factors such as women’s timing of return to work, what types of jobs they had previously worked in, or returned to, and what type of leave they used. This enables an examination of which women feel more constrained in their labour market options by returning to work sooner than preferred, and also their reasons for returning. Analysis is based on the 2005 Parental Leave in Australia Survey, a survey nested in the Wave 1.5 collection of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). Mothers had children aged between 15 and 29 months at this time, and 56 per cent of these mothers had returned to work.     

Reconciling Work, Family and Child Outcomes: What Implications for Family Support Policies?

This paper discusses the potential of family policies to reconcile the multiple objectives that they are expected to serve, over and above their role in offsetting the economic cost of children. We start by emphasizing the need to consider the multiple challenges that family policies in European Union??and/or OECD??countries have to address through a broadening of the standard economic approach to the cost of children. Policies indeed aim to reduce the ??direct?? monetary cost of raising children, but they also aim to minimise the indirect cost arising from the incidence of children on the parents?? work-life balance and on the aggregate level of employment. Moreover, motives for policy intervention such as concerns about child development, gender equity or aggregate fertility levels are not fully captured by cost measurements. We thus analyse how, and to what extent, family policies can successfully reconcile these multidimensional objectives. We offer a holistic approach, pointing out that a coherent family policy mix supporting working parents with preschool children is the only way to reconcile or limit the conflicts between work, family and child outcomes. Three main dichotomies are identified to explain cross-country differences in family policy packages: the emphasis on poverty alleviation; the supposed antagonism between fertility and female employment; and the potential conflict between this latter and child development. Ways to reconcile these objectives and to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of family policies are further discussed.     

Social Relationships and Children’s Subjective Well-Being

The quality of relationships is now recognised as an important aspect of children??s subjective well-being. This article focuses on both positive and negative quality of relationships. It includes six areas of children??s relationships??family, neighbourhood adults, positive affect friendship, negative affect friendship, experiences of being bullied by other young people, and being treated unfairly by adults and analyses their association with children??s subjective well-being. Data for this study were obtained from a national survey among 4,673 children in secondary schools across England. Children??s relationships with their family, friends (positive affect) and neighbourhood adults appear to increase their well-being, whereas, negative aspects of friendship relations, experiences of being bullied and treated unfairly by adults is proved to decrease young people??s well-being. Relationships with family, positive relations with friends and experience of being bullied appear to have respectively the first, second and third highest effect on children??s subjective well-being. Although the influence was low, children??s relationships with neighbourhood adults, their experiences of being treated unfairly by adults and their negative relations with friends contributed significantly to explaining variations of their subjective well-being. These findings are discussed in the context of previous empirical studies and theories on social relationships and subjective well-being. Suggestions for future research are also put forward.     

Walking a well-being tightrope: young people in Australia

The economic and social contribution young people make to society is increasingly important as the population ages. Yet a substantial number of young people face economic and social challenges that have an impact on their current and future well-being. Independent indicators are often used to describe what we know about how young people are faring, but these fail to show how young people are doing holistically, across their whole life. If we are to better understand and improve young people??s well-being and their lives more generally, it is critical that research establishes the connections and interactions between life domains. This paper uses a well-being framework and secondary analysis of national statistics to begin to understand how young people are faring when we cross economic outcomes with other social indicators. It argues that some Australian young people fare poorly across a large number of other social indicators and thus may be walking a tightrope in regard to their well-being and well-becoming. This paper also aims to generate a dialogue about using a well-being framework for future research with and about young people.     

Gender Differences in Subjective Well-Being In and Out of Management Positions

This study used data from the German Socio-economic Panel to examine gender differences in the extent to which self-reported subjective well-being was associated with occupying a high-level managerial position in the labour market, compared with employment in non-leadership, non-high-level managerial positions, unemployment, and non-labour market participation. Our results indicated that a clear hierarchy exists for men in term of how status within the labour market was associated with subjective life satisfaction. Unemployed men were the least satisfied, followed by men who were not in the labour market, while men in leadership positions reported the highest level of subjective life satisfaction. For women, no statistically significant differences were observed among women in high-level managerial positions, women who worked in non-high-level positions, and women who specialized in household production, with no market work. Only women who were unemployed reported lower levels of life satisfaction, compared with women in other labour-market statuses. Our results lend evidence to the contention that men can ??have it all??, but women must still choose between career and family in Germany. We argue that interventions need to address how the non-pecuniary rewards associated with high-level managerial and leadership positions can be increased for women. Such policies would also likely serve to mitigate the ??pipeline?? problem concerning the number of women who are available to move into high positions in the private sector.     

Complementarity of work and fertility among young American mothers

Abstract In this paper information about cohorts of young women in the National Longitudinal Survey of Work Experience is used to examine the extent to which women maintain a continuity of work attachment during their early years of childbearing, the years when traditionally they were most likely to withdraw from the work force. The results indicate that women who maintain closer ties to the work force immediately before and after their first birth are also more likely to be employed in 1978 - between five and ten years after their first birth - independently of intervening fertility events and other labour supply factors considered to be important predictors of work. The notion that work and fertility are increasingly becoming complementary activities for American women is supported by these data.     

Discretionary Time of Chinese College Students: Activities and Impact of SARS-Induced Constraints on Choices

How people make choices about activity engagement during discretionary time is a topic of increasing interest to those studying quality of life issues. Assuming choices are made to maximize individual welfare, several factors are believed to influence these choices. Constraints theory from the leisure research literature suggests these choices are heavily influenced by intrapersonal, interpersonal and structural constraints. Within these constraints, the individual is motivated to make choices that maximize perceived personal welfare. Leisure affordance theory focuses on these motivations by suggesting the importance of more positive influences on choices within a set of constraints. In this study, an inventory of discretionary time activities and reasons for choosing these activities were documented for a sample of Chinese college students. Because data were collected during an unanticipated SARS epidemic, the impact of the SARS crisis on students’ daily choices was also examined in detail. Despite the constraints imposed by SARS and the attendant suspension of off-campus activities, some students did not perceive a change of daily life as a result, while others perceived positive changes in attitudes and behavior. Findings shed light on students’ experiences during a time of rapid change in Chinese society and higher education. Decisions made during this influential time of life are important because they may affect students’ future choices related to leisure and discretionary time.     

Women’s Job Quality Across Family Life Stages: An Analysis of Female Employees Across 27 European Countries

There is little empirical evidence on how working conditions affect women’s employment and fertility choices, despite a number of studies on the impact of individual-level and institutional factors. The article addresses this gap by examining how family life stages are related to particular aspects of job quality among employed women in 27 European countries. The central argument of the analysis is that high-quality jobs are conducive to both transitions to motherhood and employment after childbirth as women select into these roles. Accordingly, mothers of young children, if employed, are expected to have relatively better quality jobs. Four dimensions of job quality are considered: job security, career progression, working time and intrinsic job quality. The results indicate that mothers with young children are more likely to hold high-quality jobs than women at other life stages with respect to working time quality and job security, but with some variation across countries for job security. The findings highlight the importance of high-quality jobs for women’s fertility decisions and labour market attachment after childbirth, with implications for European employment policy.     

Epidurals during normal labour and birth — Midwives’ attitudes and experiences

BackgroundMidwives have their own beliefs and values regarding pain during childbirth. Their preferences concerning labour pain management may influence women’s choices.AimTo gain a deeper understanding of midwives’ attitudes and experiences regarding the use of an epidural during normal labour.MethodsA qualitative approach was chosen for data collection. Ten in-depth interviews were conducted with midwives working in three different obstetric units in Norway. The transcribed interviews were analysed using Malterud’s systematic text condensation.FindingsThe analysis provided two main themes: “Normal childbirth as the goal” and “Challenges to the practice, knowledge, philosophy and experience of midwives”. Distinctive differences in experiences and attitudes were found. The workplace culture in the obstetric units affected the midwives’ attitudes and their midwifery practice. How they attended to women with epidural also differed. An epidural was often used as a substitute for continuous support when the obstetric unit was busy.DiscussionMidwives estimate labour pain differently, and this might impact the midwifery care. However, midwives’ interests and preferences concerning labour pain management should not influence women’s choices. Midwives are affected by the setting where they work, and research highlights that an epidural might lead to a focus on medical procedures instead of the normality of labour.ConclusionMidwives should be aware of how powerful their position is and how the workplace culture might influence their attitudes. The focus should be on “working with” women to promote a normal birth process, even with an epidural.     

Working and caring for large families: do mothers face a trade-off?

Does having three or more children lower the chance that mothers participate in the labour force compared to those who have two children? Most of the previous literature on this topic describes the substantial indirect costs of children for first-time mothers, but having additional children at higher parities can entail even higher indirect costs. This paper finds a labour force participation gap between mothers who have three or more children and those who have two children. It explores whether this gap is caused by the selectivity of those who purposely choose to have large families or by family size itself. It also questions if the gap occurs simply because mothers with 3 or more children are consequently more likely to care for young children: 42?% of them have a child under the age of five compared to only 38.7?% of mothers with 2 children. A priori, it is unclear if the employment gap between these two groups of mothers is driven by the difference in the age of the youngest child or by the difference in the number of children. This paper contributes to the literature by disentangling the effect of having an additional child from having an additional young child in the household with a simple but innovative approach (grouping by mother??s age and her age at the second pregnancy) that avoids controlling for the age of the youngest child in regression.     

Generational Juggling Acts in Midlife Families: Gendered and Ethnocultural Intersections

This study draws upon a sociocultural stress and coping perspective to examine generational demands in midlife families. It examines both the predictors and family-related circumstances that contribute to perceptions of greater demand, with a focus on gendered and ethnocultural dimensions. Using mixed-methods, data are based on a sample of 236 parents collected in 2006/2007 from four cultural groups: British-, Chinese-, Southern European-, and South Asian Canadian. Key findings reveal that caregiving experiences remain highly gendered and are mediated by ethnocultural background and other work/family contextual characteristics. Recommendations for those who work directly with culturally diverse “sandwiched” generation families are highlighted.     

Subjektivierung der Biographie. Lebensorientierungen und Anspruchshaltungen

Opposing the tendency within current analyses in the social sciences to draw a conclusion from present changes in people??s working and living conditions to corresponding social-psychic dispositions, this article both theoretically and empirically develops the thesis that people??by considering structural preconditions??put demands on themselves and structure their resources and possible courses of action. In order to understand how this is done, the article develops the concept of ??life-orientation??. By means of four exemplary typifications of life-orientations gained from a research project on employees?? demands on work, we will demonstrate that established beliefs about actual forms of subjectivity are in need of correction.     

Pregnancy,Then It's “Back To Business”

This essay theorizes the contours of a post-feminist gender regime that utilizes figures such as Beyoncé in order to hail women as self-governing subjects who make the right choices with respect to career, marriage, motherhood, and the disciplining of their bodies. As a black woman, the narrative about Beyoncé's life and choices has specific implications; it positions professional black women as ideal citizens and mothers and also seeks to reconfigure and normalize representations of the black family. The body, specifically the black female body, plays an important role in attempting to transform and normalize these representations. This essay offers one of the few examinations of black women's relationship to post-feminism. Although post-feminism has been conceptualized in ways that ignore black women, I aim to demonstrate why further consideration of black women's relationship to post-feminism is needed. It is my contention that with successful black women increasingly in the public eye, what they say about feminism and how they relate to feminist politics have important implications for how all women, but especially young black women, engage in types of activism that go beyond placing value on individualism at the expense of the collective.     

“Sexy” And “Laddish” Girls

Unpacking ideologies at work within contemporary popular media discourses about young womanhood can be challenging when the terrain of their representation is often presented in a kind of binary-oppositional fashion. There is concern that in contemporary popular culture traditional gender roles are becoming even more entrenched, with femininity increasingly defined around notions of (hyper, hetero-normative) “sexiness.” At the same time, it seems that certain aspects of masculinity, namely sexual hedonism and social, drinking-centred hedonism, have conditionally opened up to young women. The panics that exist around both the figures of the “sexy girl” and the “laddish girl” lead me to unpack here how it is that concerns about women's excessive “sexiness,” and the gendered reinforcement of the sex-object role, relate to discourses of gender “transgression” that often circulate around the figure of the “ladette,” and the supposedly new-found freedoms she is exercising. I suggest that while the figures of the “sexy girl” and the “laddish girl” are both to some extent deplored and constructed as “excessive” and “transgressive” in recent media discourses, they are also both normalised and publicly imag(in)ed through such discourses as central post-feminist paradigms of young womanhood. I go on to explore a possible ideological function of the co-existence of “sexy” and “laddish” girls as normative figures within contemporary media culture.     

Parents’ economic support of young-adult children: do socioeconomic circumstances matter?

We assess how the support parents provide to young adults as they leave school and begin working is related to their family’s socioeconomic circumstances. We do this using an innovative Australian data set which merges survey and administrative data. The survey data inform us about intergenerational co-residence and financial gifts and the administrative data about the family’s welfare receipt history. We find that disadvantaged young people are more likely to be economically independent of their parents than are their more advantaged peers. This disparity is larger for financial gifts than for co-residence and increases with age. Moreover, there is a complex relationship between parental support and participation in study and work. We find no evidence, however, that a lack of parental support is the source of the socioeconomic gradient in either studying or employment. These results are important in eliminating one potential pathway through which socioeconomic disadvantage limits young people’s outcomes.     

Women ‘like parched earth in need of rain’ and who relax by working: gossip and the surveillance of Filipino seafarer wives’ morality and mobility

Research on the impact of male emigration on stay-behind wives shows that gossip, which transnational migration intensifies, surveils the women’s morality and constricts their mobility. Based on semi-structured interviews supplemented by field observations, this article examines the impact of gossip on the lives and experiences of stay-behind Filipino seafarer wives. First, it looks into how the women negotiated an environment in which their morality became dominated by the need to keep their reputation as faithful wives intact. As women whose husbands were away for long periods of time, they were seen as being ‘like parched earth in need of rain’ and therefore susceptible to temptation and seduction. Second, it examines how through dibersyon – activities that translated work into recreation – they counteracted the constricting effects of gossip on their mobility without compromising their perceived morality. The article concludes with a reflection on the contradiction the women’s negotiation of gossip creates: they inadvertently help to maintain gendered conceptions of morality and mobility while simultaneously working around the gender ideological and normative boundaries gossip enforces.     

山东丘陵地区农村剩余劳动力转移态势与路径探讨

根据对山东省丘陵地区临沭县的农户外出打工情况的抽样调查,研究发现:目前山东丘陵地区农村剩余劳动力外出打工情况是相当普遍的,打工对家庭的收入具有决定性的影响,打工的主要原因是城乡收入差距,其次才是劳动力剩余和年轻人渴望从事非农业生产等原因。存在缺乏双亲监督,留守儿童读书不理想的家庭约有20%。当地政府对农民外出打工起到的引导作用比较有限,调查中接受过政府培训或者由政府组织外出打工的农民仅约占20%。当地招商引资项目对就业的拉动效果不太明显,文章呼吁一定要注意发挥我国劳动力便宜的相对比较优势,走劳动密集型道路,以求拉动就业。关于劳动力转移的态势,研究发现,农村25岁以下,初中以上文化程度的劳动力供给已经出现逐年减少的趋势。估计在不久的未来,流向城市的农村剩余劳动力虽然总量上不会减少,但是真正能够融入城市工业化进程的农村年轻知识型劳动力(知识型在这里指初中以上文化程度)的供给会出现短缺。     

My parents taught Me. Evidence on the family transmission of values

The paper uses questions included in the 2010 wave of the Bank of Italy’s Survey on Household Income and Wealth to investigate the role of family transmission of values. It presents three main empirical findings. First, the paper shows that a number of attitudes (generalized and personalized trusting behaviour, risk and time preferences) and outcomes (female labour force participation, fertility, entrepreneurship, productivity) are associated with the values received. Second, it documents that values received from parents are correlated with the values transmitted to descendants. Third, by using respondent moving patterns, the paper highlights that values received are slowly changing even after a discontinuity in the reference environment. Comparisons between first- and second-generation movers suggest that what matters for breaking the family chains are the formative years, when young people somehow strike a balance between the values transmitted by their parents and what they experience in the (possibly different) environment where they grow up.