Work Family Scholarship Research Articles

Where’s the community in community, work and family? A community-based capabilities approach

ABSTRACT Community is a key dimension in the work–family interface as highlighted by the recent Covid-19 pandemic. Yet it is critically understudied by much work–family scholarship. We highlight and address crucial barriers preventing the integration of the community concept, developing an interdisciplinary community-based capabilities approach. This approach conceptualizes three components of community: local relationships, local policies and locality (place, space and scale). Local relationships include formal and informal relationships, networks, and a sense of belonging. Dependent on the broader socio-economic context, local policies and services can provide important resources for managing these relationships and work–life situations more generally. These relationships and policies are embedded in specific geographical localities, shaping and being shaped by social action. This interdisciplinary conceptualization of community allows relational, spatial, structural and temporal aspects of community to be integrated into a more broadly applicable conceptual approach. We base this approach on the capability approach, which allows for a pluralistic work–life framework of what individuals value and do. We further argue for a conceptualization of family as community, moving towards a work–community interface. The resulting conceptual approach is useful for explaining work–life processes for individuals with and without care responsibilities, and offers a new framework for studying the social trends intensely and rapidly highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gender differences in the quality of leisure: a cross-national comparison

ABSTRACT Considerable work-family research has investigated the gendered division of work and care. Gender differences in leisure time have received much less attention from work-family scholars, despite the potential importance of such inequalities for women’s quality of life. Combining key insights from the substantial gendered leisure studies literature with work-family scholarship, the current study examines cross-national variation in gender differences in leisure quality. Using data on 23 countries from the 2007 International Social Survey Program, we expected that women’s leisure quality would be lower than men’s, but the gender gap would be smaller in countries with more gender egalitarian attitudes and divisions of care (via de-familialisation and paternity leave) and where women have more bargaining power. Our results show that these country characteristics moderate the association between gender and the extent to which free time is used to relax and recover. In countries with conservative gender norms, low levels of childcare coverage, limited paternity leave and lower political power for women, women’s leisure quality is lower than men’s. In more egalitarian countries, the gender gap in leisure quality is lower and in some cases, reversed. These results are in line with findings from cross-national research on the gendered division of labor and offer an important contribution to understanding gender differences in leisure quality across countries.

Advancing a Sociology‐of‐Knowledge Framework for the Study of Work–Family Scholarship: A Response to Perry‐Jenkins andMacDermidWadsworth

Advancing a Sociology‐of‐Knowledge Framework for the Study of Work–Family Scholarship: A Response to Perry‐Jenkins and<scp>MacDermid</scp>Wadsworth

Connecting Motherhood to Work: Teaching Resources and Strategies

Connecting Motherhood to Work:Teaching Resources and Strategies Stephen Sweet (bio), Judi C. Casey (bio), and Justine Lewis (bio) In this essay we consider how to teach the connections between women's roles as mothers and as paid workers. Our interest is to identify curricula and pedagogies that can illuminate how societies define what working mothers should (or should not) do and the ways that institutionalized arrangements shape women's experiences inside and outside the home. Although this topic can be of interest to a variety of audiences, our primary focus is on strategies for expanding the awareness of traditional-age college students on the ways mothering and employment intersect and how these intersections are shaped by cultural and policy frameworks. Kathleen Gerson (2001) observed that young women are entering adulthood taking for granted the pursuit of paid work and mothering. Their expectations are that they can "have it all," that a heavy commitment to paid work will result in personal satisfaction, and that eventual efforts to raise children will inevitably lead to satisfying family lives. As numerous analyses of the intersection between paid work and parenting reveal, the career mystique that underpins these expectations is not so easy to fulfill, because existing arrangements often pit family against work, resulting in negative spillover, strain, and exhaustion (Moen and Roehling 2005). Although work-family scholarship commonly focuses on the dark side of the intersections between home and work, equally important are observations that employment and new ways of working can result in enhanced experiences for mothers-employees and their families (Bailyn et al. 2006). Thus, in teaching gender and work-family, overarching goals are to help students learn about the emergence and current realities of institutionalized arrangements, the challenges that these arrangements present, and the possibilities that alternate arrangements may hold. Discussing the concept of motherhood and mothering—as it intersects with concerns about establishing a career—opens numerous opportunities to highlight the ways social structures and expectations shape lives and life chances (Omolade 2002; Sweet et al. 2008). [End Page 275] The provision of care, one of the most important components of motherhood, is a central issue in work and family scholarship. This is evident in the economic value placed on care work (Crittenden 2001; England, Budig, and Folbre 2002), the ways mothering fits into frameworks that separate home from work (Boris and Lewis 2006), the role of conflicts that result when mothers engage in work outside the home (Hochschild 1997; Moen 2003), the impact of various care arrangements on women's and children's lives (Crouter and Booth 2004), and the tradeoffs that mothers make as they navigate work and family careers over the life course (Stone 1997; Sweet and Moen 2006). Analysis of these topics can result in complex sets of understandings of how motherhood intersects with life experiences and social policy. For instance, students can readily recognize that the outsourcing of care work to other paid workers can ease the strains experienced by professional women. But they are less likely to immediately grasp that this approach to managing the maternal dilemma shapes transnational labor flows and undermines the quality of care that contracted workers can extend to their own families (Glenn 2002; Mohanty 2003). These are the types of micro-macro linkages concerning motherhood that work and family teachers hope to cultivate through their classes. The pages of this journal (and others) have offered a number of interesting approaches to teaching students about mothering and employment. For example, Jodi Vandenberg-Daves (2002) described a class activity in which students engaged in oral history projects that helped them understand how motherhood was tied to a cult of domesticity. Alternately, others have described how films helped students consider the cultural production of images of mothering, critically analyze those images of motherhood, and better understand gendered dynamics (Arredondo 2002; Baker-Sperry, Behringer, and Grauerholz 1999). Perhaps most important is the observation that exposure to course content (curriculum) concerning "family values" may have very limited impact on student's political stances concerning social policies as they relate to mothering (Magdol 2003). However, pedagogy (how something is taught) matters considerably, as attitudes can be strongly influenced by the way in which students...

Innovations in the study of the work‐family interface: Introduction to the Special Section

Research on the work–family interface has grown substantially over the past three decades. Two recent reviews of the literature (Casper, Eby, Bordeaux, Lockwood, & Lambert, 2007; Eby, Casper, Lockwood, Bordeaux, & Brinley, 2005) analysed approximately 200 articles published in industrial–organizational psychology and organizational behaviour journals between 1980 and 2003. Work–family scholarship has continued to flourish in I–O psychology, OB, and related disciplines since 2003, largely fuelled by an increasing representation of women in the workforce, a growth in the number of dual-earner, single parent, and ‘sandwiched-generation’ (Neal & Hammer, 2007) employees, and individual values that increasingly emphasize life balance. We have come a long way since Kanter (1977) revealed the mythical assumption that work and family constitute separate worlds. Research over the past several decades has convincingly demonstrated that work and family lives are often interdependent, sometimes negatively and sometimes positively, and that these interdependencies flow in both directions, from work to family and from family to work (Frone, 2003). New models of the work–family interface have emerged (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006; Voydanoff, 2008; Wayne, Grzywacz, Carlson, & Kacmar, 2007), and meta-analyses have assessed the strength of the relationships among key variables, most prominently work– family conflict (Byron, 2005; Ford, Heinen, & Langkamer, 2007; Mesmer-Magnus & Viswesvaran, 2005, 2006). Nevertheless, several reviews have identified a number of limitations in work–family research (Barnett, 1998; Casper et al., 2007; Eby et al., 2005; Greenhaus & Parasuraman, 1999; Parasuraman & Greenhaus, 2002). Some of the concerns expressed in the reviews pertain to the content of the research, such as a lack of comprehensive theory building, preoccupation with negative work–family interdependencies, and a minimal consideration of individual differences and changes in work–family relationships over time. Methodological concerns include an over-reliance on cross-sectional survey-based designs with single-source data and the tendency to use samples (managerial and professional employees, individuals in Western cultures, predominantly Caucasian employees in intact families) that are overly restrictive. Moreover, the neglect of contextual influences observed more broadly in organizational behaviour ( Johns, 2006) seems equally relevant to the work–family literature. The British Psychological Society 343

Work-Family Experiences and the Insights of Municipal Government Employees: A Case Study

This qualitative case study brings the work-family concerns of the municipal work force to the fore by sharing the insights employees in one city government have about their paid work and family experiences and about strategies that could create work environments that are more supportive of their multiple roles. A review of the literature indicated that while much is known about employees' work-family relationships in the private sector, the city government workplace has been neglected in work-family scholarship. A work-family spillover model and an organizational analysis framework guided this exploratory study. Findings from 12 focus groups with a total of 96 participants suggest that municipal government employees face several challenges in managing their work and caregiving responsibilities and that they can best meet these challenges by having flexible schedules, supervisor support, and an organizational culture that is responsive to employees' needs. Additional work-family insights that emerged from the focus groups were that public sector employees have a high level of commitment to voluntary work in their community, that “family friendly” means a work environment that embodies the positive qualities of a nurturing family system, that there is a strong demand for elder care, that employees want to have the prerogative to individualize and identify their own list of family members for whom Family and Medical Leave Act time off can be used, and that a work-family advocate should be employed to help supervisory staff create and maintain a more family friendly workplace culture. Such findings form a foundation for future work-family research in local government settings and provide useful strategies other public sector workplaces could consider.

Introducing Work-Family Scholarship to Social Work Students: The Development and Assessment of an Online Reading Seminar

ABSTRACT This three-part article first presents an overview of a Web-based reading-intensive course that introduces work-family scholarship to social work students so that they can integrate the historical, theoretical, and empirical perspectives of this rich body of knowledge into their practice. Second, the authors explore the compatibility of work-family scholarship, collaborative learning, and online course delivery. And third, a continual course assessment based on specific criteria associated with effective electronic discussion is used to illustrate how the teaching environment of this work-family online course is being modified and improved.

Workplace flexibility for hourly lower-wage employees: A strategic business practice within one national retail firm.

Flexible work options are becoming a popular organizational practice used to assist employees with meeting their work and family responsibilities. However, much of the work–family scholarship and many of the work–family policies offered within organizations focus on forms of workplace flexibility for professional workers, at the exclusion of workers in lower-wage hourly jobs. Using data from interviews with senior managers (N = 40), this paper examines the flexible work options offered to workers in lower-wage hourly positions and the associated benefits and challenges to businesses offering flexible work options. Implications for practice and policy are discussed.