Conclusions for research on work–life balance concentrates

Conclusions

Most research on work–life balance concentrates on the experiences of the mothers of young children. However, lack of work–life balance is a problem for men as well as women, and for the parents of older, as well as preschool, children (Chandola et al., 2004; Emslie et al., 2004a). Our research contributes to the literature in exploring the experiences of men as well as women in mid-life, most of whom had teenage (or older) children. Despite the similarities in the current work and family circumstances of these men and women, our data suggest that gender remains interwoven in the business of negotiating home and work life. Our methodology meant that respondents were free to choose the situations and times in their lives when they felt it had been most difficult to reconcile paid work and other areas of life. It was notable that the female respondents discussed their current and varied concerns about juggling paid work, adult children and ageing parents, while the men tended to locate problems of work–life balance in the past; often when paid work conflicted with the demands of raising young children. Thus, while the presence of children in the household was associated with a lack of work–life balance for both men and women, these difficulties lasted longer, and took more complicated forms, for women. Our data suggest that, across the life course, women are seen as being responsible for maintaining smooth, or preferably imperceptible, transitions between the worlds of home and work life (see also Connell, 2005). As Loscocco (1997) argues, ‘changes in gender consciousness are the “final frontier” in the quest for greater gender equality in work–family linkages’ (p. 223).

Our research also contributes to the body of work which notes the variety of ways in which men and women do gender (Connell, 1985;Paechter, 2003). Exploring the boundary between the ‘male’ domain of work and the ‘female’ domain of home life is a fruitful way to explore how gender identities are continually (re)constructed (Smithson and Stokoe, 2005). The range of masculinities constructed by our sample is illustrated by the contrast, on the one hand, between men who said that they ‘worked to live’, noting the importance of life outside paid work, and on the other, the few men who ‘lived to work’, demonstrating a more traditional version of masculinity (also seeEmslie, et al., 2004b for similar findings for an older cohort of men). Some men discussed how they had moved from a ‘live to work’ to a ‘work to live’ mentality over time, illustrating the way in which gender identities are continually reassessed and reconfigured (Paechter, 2003). Similarly, women constructed a range of femininities through their narratives; some emphasized their close family ties, while others underscored their independence from partners.

Our research also points to the importance of socioeconomic position when considering issues of work–life balance. Most research on work–life balance concentrates on non-manual (usually professional) employees (although see Collinson and Hearn, 1996; Speakman and Marchington, 2004). Through the analysis of our qualitative interviews, we identified a group of pragmatic workers (either male manual workers, or women married to manual workers) who discussed the practical and economic benefits of work. While health concerns often pushed them to consider early retirement, lack of resources prevented them from doing this. Our study suggests that, for some groups of employees, securing sufficient income may be a more pressing concern than balancing work and home life. However, our main focus in this study was on gender rather than social class. Future work should take a more nuanced approach to social class, rather than merely distinguishing, as we did, between manual and non-manual employees.

In the introduction, we referred to Clark's (2000) theory of border-crossing as a useful way to conceptualize work–life balance. Our empirical data provide some support for this theory and also suggest some ways to extend it. First, Clark's exclusive focus on the border between the worlds of work and family may have more resonance for men than for women: for women the family may comprise many worlds with conflicting demands (for example, children and elderly parents) and so women may cross more borders (more often) than men. Secondly, the temporal borders between work and family may vary for men and women. For some men in this sample, their role as a father was associated with attending key family events such as school plays or associated with spending time with their children outside the working week as ‘weekend dads’ (Hatten et al., 2002). The women did not discuss motherhood in this way. Finally, the ways that people position themselves in relation to social structures such as gender has consequences for the ways they shape the worlds of work and family (and vice versa). For example, female carers had relatively weak boundaries between home and work life as they integrated these worlds through the identification of similar (caring) aspects in each. In contrast, pragmatic workers — who were manual workers, or married to manual workers — had stronger boundaries between work and home life. Collinson and Hearn (1996) refer to the way that working-class men seek to ‘maintain an impenetrable psychological wall between “public” and “private” life’ as an attempt to distance themselves from organizational cultures that treat them as second-class citizens (p. 69). Respondents with greater resources were more able to renegotiate the boundaries between work and home life, through cutting down their hours in paid work (independent women) or by physically removing themselves to a place where they could not be contacted out of working hours (men who worked to live going to their boat or caravan for the weekend).

This project raises two methodological issues. Firstly, it is interesting that our findings cannot be explained simply by our sampling strategy. The respondents who expressed less traditional attitudes to work and gender roles in the semi-structured interviews (men who worked to live and the independent women) were not all from the less conventional group of respondents (for example, those who never married or never had children, or had very high or very low masculinity scores). Thus changes in marital status, socioeconomic status and resources, and parenting experiences seem as important, if not more important, in influencing gender identities than similarities or differences between people in the same age cohort.

Secondly, our study raises some issues about trying to access respondents' accounts of work–life balance. Integrating work and family life is intimately tied to constructions of identities and therefore questions about this topic may be experienced as threatening. Given that it is women who are expected to balance work and family life (Moen and Yu, 2000), we might expect women to find these questions more threatening than men. Our data provide some evidence that the working-class women respondents experienced these questions in this way. Their narratives suggest that they initially tried to minimize problems with work–life balance, instead noting that they ‘coped’ and ‘just got on with it’. Pill and Stott's (1982) study of perceptions of illness amongst working-class mothers came to similar conclusions. They found that their respondents defined a good mother as ‘one who “keeps going” and copes with the multifarious demands that her family make of her’ (p. 50).

In conclusion, while we have reported respondents' own accounts of work–life balance it is important to bear in mind that their individual choices were constrained by their socioeconomic resources and cultural norms about family, work and gender (Moen and Yu, 2000). For example, while the middle-class independent women had the freedom to reduce their working hours in order to enhance their work–life balance, this option was not open to those with more limited resources. In addition, it is striking that work–life balance was perceived as a personal issue to be dealt with using individual strategies and not as a structural problem caused by a lack of flexibility in the workplace and a lack of affordable childcare and elder-care in the UK. Indeed, Caproni (2004) suggests that balance may be an unachievable goal because it is built on an individualistic, achievement-orientated model that assumes that people have choice and control over their lives.

To the extent that the work/life discourse remains focused on the individual, power relations will remain beyond the scope of the discourse … who gets to define what work/life balance is? Who has access to available benefits, and who does not? (2004, p. 215).

Future research should concentrate on work–life balance among men and women in less privileged class positions in order to further illuminate the relationship between individual choice and structural constraints.