Paying the toll: a feminist post‐structural critique of the discourse bridging work and family

On the surface, the modern workplace and home life appear to stand in sharp contrast to one another. The workplace seems to epitomize the modern concern with bounded time and the necessity of effective ‘use time’ (e.g., efficiency, effort, organizational commitment, speed‐up). Home life, on the other hand, is characterized by idealized images of emotionality and relief from the pressures of work. Yet numerous reported experiences of working people seem to belie this supposed duality. For many, home life is experienced as an appendage of the workplace, with its demands on time‐effort balance. Nonetheless, we continue to act as if there are two separate spheres of life that can ultimately be balanced and reconciled. This has been reinforced over the years by a growing discourse of work‐family conflict. Deconstruction of the discourse suggests that far from unraveling the ‘problem’ its characterization as a ‘work‐family’ conflict serves to privilege the dominant themes of use‐time and speed.