Everyone needs to “have it all”

Ahead of her keynote presentation today at our 5th International Conference: Unequal Families and Relationships, Kathleen Gerson writes for us about how rising uncertainties in jobs and relationships are reshaping strategies for work and care.


In the United States, like most of the developed world, debates are raging about whether women can "have it all" or need to "lean in." Yet these debates almost never focus on the real issue – that the new economy is creating impossible binds for everyone and no individual strategy can provide a solution. The rise of an economic system based on hi tech and service work has blurred the boundaries between home and work for women and men alike and thereby dismantled the “breadwinner-caregiver bargain” put in place during the industrial revolution.

The good news is that new generations of Americans are responding to this 21st century revolution by affirming a new gender ideal that stresses work-caregiving balance in the context of an egalitarian relationship. My interviews with twenty- and thirty-somethings, reported in The Unfinished Revolution, found that 80 percent of women and 70 percent of men hope to blend the traditional value of lifelong commitment with the modern value of flexible, egalitarian sharing. Mounting evidence from other studies shows similar trends: When it comes to their aspirations, most American women and men want flexibility and equality in their intimate relationships.

Yet there is plenty of bad news as well. Most Americans also believe that this egalitarian ideal is largely out of reach in the current context. At the workplace, the rise of job insecurity has created greater pressures to put in ever longer hours. On the home front, the rise of anxieties about childrearing, coupled with a lack of childcare, has simultaneously increased the pressure to practice intensive parenting. Even though new generations increasingly need and desire egalitarian relationships, new insecurities and pressures have made it even harder to share parenting equally and blend it with a satisfying work life.

How are new generations of Americans responding to this conundrum? In interviews with adults living in “new economy” locales such as Silicon Valley and New York, I have found a variety of strategies emerging to cope with these conflicts and uncertainties. About a third are “reluctant traditionalists,” where fathers are sacrificing family time to manage time-intensive jobs, while another 15 percent are “reversed traditionalists,” where women are providing the bulk of financial support even though they face barriers at work. An additional third are “going it alone” because financial insecurities make it difficult to sustain a relationship; and the remaining 15 percent are “exhausted egalitarians” who are attempting, against the odds, to maintain two demanding jobs while also attempting to share equally at home. Despite their differences, all these strategies entail significant drawbacks – and not for women alone. In the absence of social supports for integrating stable work with parenting involvement, everyone faces difficult and often painful trade-offs.

In an era when insecurity in both jobs and relationships is the new normal, we need to jettison the notion that “having it all” is an unrealistic, selfish goal that only applies to middle-class women. The widespread ideals of equality and balance reflect universal hopes that are increasingly essential for thriving societies as well as thriving relationships. In the U.S., as elsewhere, these urgent needs can only be met by creating social supports that dissolve the obstacles to achieving a more equal, integrated, and secure blending of work and care.

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Kathleen Gerson is Collegiate Professor of Sociology at New York University  You can read a brief introduction to her presentation 'Intimate Commitment in the New Economy: How Rising Uncertainties in Jobs and Relationships Are Reshaping Strategies for Work and Care' here

You can follow live tweets from the conference using the hashtag #CRFR2016 on Twitter.

http://www.kathleengerson.com/

Creating Good Lives and Decent Societies

GLADS - Good Lives and Decent Societies, is one of five projects funded under the 2014 Scottish Universities Insight Institute wellbeing programme. A collaboration between academics, policy makers and practitioners, here Marie-Amelie Viatte and Christine McMellon take time to describe what is being discussed.

Development has historically focused on reducing poverty and gaining financial wealth, as measured by GDP. This, however, raises questions about what it is that makes life worth living and presents several problems:

• It implies that acquiring wealth will necessarily improve people's quality of life, and yet there is extensive evidence that, at least after basic needs are met, money is not necessarily one of the key determinants of happiness.
• Economic growth can have a directly negative impact on wellbeing as it often leads to pollution and the depletion of resources.
• Events which can have a negative impact on wellbeing - such as natural disasters, crime and divorce, can sometimes increase GDP.

The GLADS seminar series provides an opportunity to take stock of what has been said on wellbeing, what has been said about measuring wellbeing, and what it means for policy and practice. Wellbeing is an important concept across disciplines, but meaningful conversations can be challenging and it is important to be clear about whether we are referring to the same things when we use terms such as 'wellbeing', 'quality of life' and 'happiness'. Wellbeing is related to both individual lives and broader social issues. It is relevant across time and is at the core of many of the issues, such as education, health, and governance, being addressed in policy and practice settings. GLADS is focusing on three themes: health; place and space; and welfare and employment.

The Scottish Government, like other countries, is trying to move away from from a narrow, GPD-based definition of development, to a more holistic approach - setting indicators within a National Performance Framework, Scotland Performs, to measure the progress of Government in 'creating a more successful country'. GLADS is facilitating discussion around these issues, bringing together key people to look at the connections between these issues and explore strategies to tackle them.

The first event took place in February 2014, to define wellbeing and open up discussion on how to assess wellbeing. It attracted presentations from The University of Edinburgh, Scottish Government, The Office for National Statistics, OECD and Oxfam Scotland. Copies of the presentations are available on the website.

The second event is taking place on 14 and 15 May. It focuses on the practice promoting wellbeing. If you are interested in being part of the discussion and contributing to GLADS please take a look at the website and register online. 

Read the GLADS blog and follow us on twitter @ScotGLADS #gladsmay

Opting out in order to opt in to new lifestyles

In 2003, Lisa Belkin caused a stir with her New York Times column ‘The Opt-Out Revolution’. The question whether or not successful women opt out of their high powered careers to stay home and raise their young children has been hotly debated both in the media and in academia ever since. There seems to be little agreement about whether or not this indeed is a phenomenon at all – for example, are women really opting out or are they being pushed out? However, while statistics show that relatively few women are giving up their careers to become full-time stay-at-home moms, we are living in a time where ‘on your terms’ has become something of a mantra. Maybe the focus on opting out has been wrong. Maybe it isn’t only about women with young children. Maybe it isn’t only about quitting work altogether. Maybe opting out is actually about opting in, or rather opting out of certain expected ways of having a career in order to opt in to new lifestyles where one can live and work on one’s own terms.

In my study on opting out, I found that most of the women I interviewed did not become full-time stay-at-home moms at all – they didn’t want to. While it was not unusual that children were given as a reason for leaving – perhaps because that is something that is hard to argue with – these women ended up creating new ways of working, and of combining work with other interests and areas of life. They did this in a way that provided them with a sense of balance and coherence, both of which they lacked while they were still on the so-called fast track. But perhaps most importantly, this new lifestyle provided them with a greater sense of control: they had more control over their time and their lives. And with regards to their children, in general they did not have more time with them, but they had control over when they spent time with them. Despite having to give up the recognition and financial rewards that come with high-powered careers, these women felt opting in improved their quality of life.


Ingrid Biese is a Postdoc researcher and project manager at Hanken School of Economics. She recently received her PhD from the Hawke Research Institute at the University of South Australia. The title of her thesis is: Opting Out: A critical study of women leaving their careers to adopt new lifestyles.

Read more at: McKie, L., Biese, I. & Jyrkinen, M. (2013) ' "The Best Time is Now!": The Temporal and Spatial Dynamics of Women Opting in to Self-Employment', Gender Work and Organization, 20(2): 184-196.


Contact Ingrid by email

What does the evidence say about childcare in Scotland?

The budget brings promises from the UK Govt for childcare subsidies to help couples with joint incomes who are "working hard, who are feeling the squeeze" and to "assist women back into the workforce". Similarly, the SNP have pledged to increase state-paid childcare for all three and four- year olds, again to "help people, especially women, to move into the workforce", if it was elected within an independent Scotland.

Those with an interest in research on families and relationships may question whether these announcements skim over some of the tough issues facing families, particularly those families struggling to get into work. The recent launch of the Scotland's Outlook campaign to raise awareness of the extent of poverty across Scotland, followed by the Scottish Government's publication of a new poverty strategy does help to widen the lens to look at the many contributing factors affecting many parents ability to enter the paid workforce.

CRFR reflects on what the evidence says about childcare and working families:

• Most families in Scotland use childcare in the early years[1]. This tends to be a mixture of informal (typically grandparent) and formal providers for their childcare arrangements[2]. The support provided by grandparents should not be underestimated, with many grandparents involved in childcare or babysitting on a regular basis. We know that work is important to women and families. Evidence from GUS shows that most mothers of young children who are in paid work, work part-time[3]. Mothers value work highly, not only for its economic contribution, but also for personal identity, social contact and as an important message for their children[4]. Most working parents with children under 5 believe that their employment is not detrimental to their enjoyment of family life nor to their ability to raise their child(ren).[5][6] 
• The focus on childcare costs is not misplaced - accessing available, affordable and quality childcare remains a key concern for parents combining caring and working[7][8]. But all is not equal. Factors associated with poverty can add up to make it tougher for families. Lone parent families and re-partnered families are more likely to have no parent in employment than couple families[9]. Lone mothers[10], families living on low incomes[11] and families affected by disability[12] are particularly affected by lack of affordable and suitable childcare.
• Work, does not in itself, protect families from poverty, particularly when there is only one worker in the household. Families in deprived areas often require quite complex childcare arrangements to make work a possibility[13].
• Parents from low-income areas tend to have low levels of social support and are least likely to access formal services[14].
• People living in rural areas and areas of higher deprivation are less likely to be able to access childcare services than those in urban areas[15]. 
• Living in child friendly communities and having a reasonable level of resources, such as access to outdoor play, are also very important to outcomes for children[16].
• Flexibility in childcare provision needs also to be matched by flexibility in workplace practices and employment opportunity: 
• Parents working full-time and those in lower supervisory or technical occupations were more likely to say that their employment had a negative impact on family life[17].
• Parents face competing demands on their time relating to their responsibilities as parents and employees. This is experienced through the difficulties of balancing work and family life and results in a sense of harriedness, of feeling constantly busy, tired and stressed.[18]
• Lone mothers of children of all ages are more likely to experience employment barriers. Low qualifications, lack of confidence, family health issues, lack of training and transport are other barriers they face[19].
• Parents of disabled children face particular barriers around employment, including inflexible employers, and especially a lack of affordable and appropriate childcare[20], which are not addressed in the consultation document.
• The debate on childcare should also consider the behavioural and cognitive benefits for children. Attending nursery or pre-school is important for our young children. Evidence from GUS shows that non-parental childcare in the early years is beneficial to a child’s cognitive development, in small effect[21]. However, universal policies which seek to improve children’s cognitive ability and school readiness in the pre-school period will not benefit all children equally.
• The level of parents’ education qualification is a driver in a child’s cognitive ability at ages 3 and 5. Any strategies aimed at improving school readiness via a pre-school setting need to include, for disadvantaged children, strategies which seek to influence the child’s home environment and parenting experiences at the same time[22].
• Similarly, lone parents, younger mothers, parents with lower educational qualifications and parents from more deprived socio-economic communities had lower levels of participation in their children’s school activities – both in terms of homework once they had started school and in the number of activities they attended at the school. This has been shown to be associated with lower educational achievement for children[23]
• Lastly, there is very little known about children’s views and experiences of their parent’s work. Qualitative research carried out in Scotland found that there are clear challenges in negotiating how work and family life balance out[18].
• Work is typically justified by the financial gains, rather than any of the social or personal benefits for parents, when helping children to understand why work is part of everyday life.
• ‘Home’ is an important space for children, and was described as a more natural space where they have greater freedom to be themselves. This was contrasted with the more collective and organised nature of after-school clubs.
• This brings challenges in keeping clear boundaries between home and work, and importantly how available they are to their children when at home – particularly for parents who also work from home.
• Parents expressed feelings of guilt and anxiety about not being able to give 100% to either work or family, and are constantly trying to meet the demands of both sides.
• Children are aware of the impact of work on their parents’ emotional and physical state, and do support their parents by complying with routines, helping with chores, looking after themselves and young siblings.
• However, families were creative in realising some of their aspirations, with holidays and weekend highlighted as times when children’s wishes could be better met, opportunities to reap some of the financial rewards of employment and overall family well-being achieved.

Are you involved in research that can contribute to this debate? We are interested to hear from others invovled in research on families and relationships. Please leave a comment below, tweet us at @CRFRtweets or email us at kirsten.thomlinson@ed.ac.uk.

 

 

[1] Bradshaw P. and Wasoff F. (2009) Growing Up in Scotland: Multiple Childcare Provision and Its Effect on Child Outcomes. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.

[2] Jamieson, L., Warner, P. and Bradshaw, P. (2012) The involvement of grandparents in children’s lives. Growing Up in Scotland Topic Research Findings no.1/2012. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.

[3] Bradshaw P, Cunningham-Burley S, Dobbie F, McGregor A, Marryat L, Ormston, R. and Wasoff F. (2008) Growing Up in Scotland: Sweep 2 Overview Report, Edinburgh: The Scottish Government.

[4] Backet-Milburn K, Cunningham-Burley S, and Kemmer D (2001) Caing and providing: Lone and partnered working mothers in Scotland. London: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

[5] Bradshaw P, Cunningham-Burley S, Dobbie F, McGregor A, Marryat L, Ormston, R. and Wasoff F. (2008) Growing Up in Scotland: Sweep 2 Overview Report, Edinburgh: The Scottish Government

[6] Backett-Milburn, K., Harden, J., Maclean, A., Cunningham-Burley, S. and Jamieson, L (2011) Work and family live: the changing experiences of ‘young families’. Timescapes final report, project 5. 

[7] Bradshaw P, Cunningham-Burley S, Dobbie F, McGregor A, Marryat L, Ormston, R. and Wasoff F. (2008) Growing Up in Scotland: Sweep 2 Overview Report, Edinburgh: The Scottish Government

[8] McKie, L., Gregory, S. and Bowlby, S. (2004) Caringscapes: the experiences of caring and working. CRFR research briefing No.13. Edinburgh: Centre for Research on Families and Relationships.

[9] Growing Up in Scotland (2009) Non-resident parent summary report. Growing Up in Scotland Topic Research Findings no. 1/2009. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.

[10] Backet-Milburn K, Cunningham-Burley S, and Kemmer D (2001) Caring and providing: Lone and partnered working mothers in Scotland. London: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

[11] McKendrick J, Cunningham-Burley S and Backett-Milburn K (2003) Life in low income families in Scotland: Research report. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive 

[12] About Families (2012) Parenting on a low income. Edinburgh: Centre for Research on Families and Relationships.

[13] Barnes, M., Chanfreau, J. and Tomaszewski, W. (2010) The circumstances of persistently poor children summary report. Growing Up in Scotland topic research findings no.1/2010. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. 

[14] About Families (2012) Parenting on a low income. Edinburgh: Centre for Research on Families and Relationships. 

[15] Growing Up in Scotland (2009) Parenting and the neighbourhood context summary report, Growing Up in Scotland Topic Research Findings no. 3/2009. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.

[16] Growing Up in Scotland (2009) Parenting and the neighbourhood context summary report, Growing Up in Scotland Topic Research Findings no. 3/2009. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.

[17] Bradshaw P, Cunningham-Burley S, Dobbie F, McGregor A, Marryat L, Ormston, R. and Wasoff F. (2008) Growing Up in Scotland: Sweep 2 Overview Report, Edinburgh: The Scottish Government 

[18] Harden, J., Backett-Milburn, K., MacLean, A., Cunningham-Burley, S. and Jamieson, L. (2013) Home and away: constructing family and childhood in the context of working parenthood. Children’s Geographies, 11(3):298-310. 

[19] About Families (2012) Parenting on a low income. Edinburgh: Centre for Research on Families and Relationships.

[20] About Families (2012) Parenting on a low income. Edinburgh: Centre for Research on Families and Relationships.

[21] Growing Up In Scotland (2009) Multiple Childcare Provision and its Effect on Child Outcomes Summary Report. Growing Up in Scotland Topic Research Findings no.4/2009. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. 

[22] Bradshaw, P. (2011) Changes in child cognitive ability in the pre-school years, Growing Up in Scotland Topic Research Findings no.2/2011. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.

[23] Bradshaw, P., Hall, J., Hill, T., Mabelis, J. and Philo, D. (2012) Early experiences of primary school – parental involvement in school activities. Growing Up in Scotland Topic Research Findings no.3/2012. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. 

 

 

Digital epiphanies: work and family in a digital age

CRFR Associate Director Natasha Mauthner on the Digital Epiphanies project 

When I tell people that I am doing a research project on how digital technologies are reshaping our work and family lives, everyone has a story to tell.

A mother I meet on holiday in a youth hostel says that while her partner takes their three children skiing, she uses her day to clear emails, catch up on work and generally get ahead of herself for when she returns to the office.

Another mother explains that while her husband – who travels a lot for work – was physically present with the family during the Christmas holiday he was mentally absent, glued to his computer and iphone even when engaged in family activities.

While one father bemoans the fact that his wife spent their summer holiday ‘on the blackberry the whole time’, another tells me he finds the idea of having a holiday without wifi unimaginable. Gesturing to the smartphone that he his holding, he tells me his digital devices have become ‘part of my body’.

What questions do these anecdotal stories prompt?

• are people’s use of digital devices challenging not only the traditional separation between work and home, but also that between work and leisure

• is ‘the holiday’, as we have come to know it in recent historical times, undergoing change?

• who stands to gain or lose from these shifts? employers, employees, families, men, women, children?

• Are these changes contested by some while accepted and even embraced by others?

These are some of the questions that colleagues and I are exploring in a project, Digital Epiphanies, www.abdn.ac.uk/business/research/epiphanies/index.php, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).). Our collaboration emerged from an EPSRC interdisciplinary workshop ¬- “Sandpit and creativity greenhouse” – on work-life balance in a digitally dependent society. Read more about Sandpits on EPSRC’s website.

Having never met one another before, four of us – me; Anna Cox, University College London; Chris Preist, Bristol University; and Rosie Robison, Anglia Ruskin University –  came together as an interdisciplinary research team over the course of six days: two days face-to-face at the University of Nottingham, and the remaining four in a virtual 3D collaborative workspace.

We came together because of our shared interest in understanding how work-life boundaries are being reconfigured through the use of digital technologies; and what scope there might be for developing digital means of negotiating work-life challenges.

The Aberdeen study – being undertaken by myself and Karolina Kazimierczak - focuses on 15 case study families with children under 18 living at home. Informed by new and emerging mobile and digital methodology the project uses multiple methods including observation, shadowing, conversations, video ethnography, digital, photographic and written diaries. The overall approach is to invite family members to take part in the project as collaborators in the research by involving them in the selection of methods and production of artefacts. The project started in March 2013, and we look forward to sharing our progress in a future contribution to this blog.

If you’d like to know more about the project contact Karolina Kazimierczak  or Natasha Mauthner or visit the project website: www.abdn.ac.uk/business/research/epiphanies/index.php

Grandparents to the rescue…?!

The high and rising cost of professional childcare has been in the news recently, but there has been little mention of grandparents, who provide a substantial proportion of the child-care needed by young families.

At the simplest level, rising costs of childcare mean more children living in poverty. In March this year, Save the Children expressed concern that 3.5 million children in the UK are living in poverty, the majority of them in working households. Commenting on the recent welfare reforms in the UK (‘Universal Credit’), Save the Children pointed out that these would hit poorer working mothers hardest, whereas evidence from abroad suggests that enabling mothers to work reduces child poverty.

In reaction to the recent media focus on childcare costs, many commentators have noted that excessive increases in costs can mean the second income in two-income families is almost entirely spent on childcare, so that there is scant financial incentive to continue that employment. However, dropping out of employment during children’s early years can have enduring impacts, in terms of lost skills and/or failure to progress in a career structure, resulting in lower income and job satisfaction when resuming work. And of course it is most often women, as mothers, who are the ‘second’ workers. This scenario reinforces gender inequality in earnings in later life.

The Growing Up in Scotland (GUS) survey has been following the lives of thousands of children right across Scotland from infancy through to, currently, the end of primary school, but further sweeps of data collection are planned, up to teens. A recent GUS report looked at the role of grandparents in the lives of young families when the children were aged 6 years old, in 2010/11.

The report found that virtually all GUS children had at least one grandparent (99%), and 87% had at least one grandparent living nearby (within 20-30 minute drive). GUS has found that grandparents are a key source of regular informal childcare for parents throughout children’s early years, and that when children started school, reliance on grandparents increased markedly, to 67% among parents who used any childcare. Starting school, with the ensuing see-saw need for childcare depending on whether it is term time or holidays, poses a challenge for families, so this is a stage where grandparents can most support working parents by providing ‘flexible’ childcare. This generally requires grandparents to be not fully employed and, one would expect, to live reasonably close by.

One finding of the survey was that children in the highest income households were more likely to have no local grandparents (22%) than children in the lowest income households (8%). Nevertheless, in term-time, the proportion of children receiving ‘some hours’ of weekly grandparent care is highest among higher income groups, ranging from 43% in the highest income group to 24% in the lowest income group. And in the school holidays, receipt of childcare from a grandparent for more than 14 hours a week shows a similar pattern, ranging from 23% in the highest income group to 11% in the lowest. So, higher income families seem to be able to make more use of grandparent care, even when they are less likely be living ‘locally’. Perhaps is it to do with age (given that grandparents of children in higher incomes group tend to be older), and whether still employed. In this regard, the recent removal of compulsory retirement ages, and the prevailing economic situation and its impact on pensions, might mean that in subsequent survey sweeps it will be found that fewer families are benefiting from grandparent care, further exacerbating the adverse impacts of rising childcare costs.

Grandparents play an important and multi-faceted role in children’s lives, and in addition they are an invaluable childcare resource for parents, especially when children start school and flexible care is needed. It could be argued that this role is becoming more important with recent changes in welfare, and ever-increasing childcare costs, but clearly, working families will face challenges if more grandparents tend to continue in fulltime employment until older ages.

Pamela Warner, CRFR

Read the full GUS report at: Jamieson, L., Warner, P., and Bradshaw, P. (2012). Growing Up in Scotland: The involvement of grandparents in children's lives, Edinburgh: Scottish Government.

In addition to being a Co-Director at CRFR, Pam is Reader in Medical Statistics and is a member of staff at the University's Centre for Population Health Sciences (CPHS) teaching on their Master in Public Health.

Families, Relationships and Societies, issue 2

Eagerly awaited by many of us at CRFR, issue 2 of Families, Relationships and Societies has just been published. Many of the articles draw on the rich accounts of qualitative research, and themes of relationships and parenting dominate.

Access to the journal is free for 2012 by emailing tpp-frs-trial@bristol.ac.uk.

Taking the relationships theme, Julie Carter explores theories of commitment from a female perspective in her interviews with young women aged 19-30 years. Lester Coleman and colleagues outline an academic and voluntary sector collaboration seeking to enhance relationship support for 'mixed' couples and families. And lastly, Ciara O'Dwyer and colleagues are interested in how grandparents cope with relationship breakdown among their adult children.

Parenting is another strong theme. Rhiannon Evans and Sally Holland make an important contribution by positioning their research on child protection within the context of 'troublesome' families - policy areas which are typically dealt with seperately. The authors suggest that many protective activities are carried out by communities labelled as 'troublesome'. Issues of child safety are similarly picked up in research by Anna Conolly and Jenny Parkes. Their work has gathered the experienes of young people's living in areas affected by high youth crime in relation to their parents' strategies to keep them safe.

Jeni Harden and colleagues present a very different aspect of parenting, exploring how parents negotiate paid work and care responsibilities. The authors emphasise the inevitable flexibility that emerges in boundaries between work and home, for example in relation to how time is managed and negotiated.

Sandra Cunning and colleagues shift the focus to evaluation, presenting a case-study of a Canadian mental health agency where evidence-based practices were implemented as part of a significant organsiational change process.

While Artur Steinerowski and Mike Woolvin present findings from an action research project in rural Scotland to reflect on the challenges and opportunities to support older people to establish social enterprises.

The Open Space article this month is from our own Sarah Morton and close collaborators David Phipps and Sandra Nutley to ask how research can be used to influence family services and policies. The article begins by outlining the growth in academic understanding of reserach use and offers some emerging lessons about reserach use can be improved. It continues by relating experiences of CRFR's work over the last 10 years and also experiences from the Knowledge Mobilization (KMb) Unit at York University in Toronto, Canada.

 

Editorial is by Brid Featherstone & Tess Ridge.

Visit the contents page by clicking here to access all the articles.

Informing the Parenting Strategy

CRFR recently facilitated a meeting at the Scottish Government to help inform the development of the Parenting Strategy.

Through conversations with Scottish Government staff we saw an opportunity to highlight research from our Associate Director, Professor Claire Wallace of Aberdeen University and Associate Researcher Dr Jeni Harden, which we felt made an important contribution to our knowledge on parenting in Scotland. Professor Lynn Jamieson, a co-Director at CRFR also presented findings from Growing Up in Scotland, the national longitudinal study of children's experiences from across the country.

Prof Claire Wallace, University of Aberdeen

Work-Care Synergies Project

This project has provided a comparative analysis of parenting in Europe, looking at the quality of life for parents in different European countries and the strategies adopted by parents in managing work and care in different national contexts. The team has also developed a typology based on a policy analysis of work and care for families with young children in different European counties. The research ran from 2010-2011.

The project found that parenting policy varied across Europe. There was convergence in the progress of women's rights but women still do the majority of domestic chores. Men are contributing more, but the general trend across all countries was that men are more involved in childcare, not domestic chores. This results in a lot of pressure on women to manage professionally while also taking primary responsibility for the upkeep of the household and childcare. The project identified barriers facing men in getting time off work to look after children: both in terms of paternity policies and with colleagues not taking them seriously after taking the decision to focus more on parenting. There were five strategies that working families use to help with childcare that there shared by all countries included in the research: using flexible working arrangements where available, taking on shift work to share responsibility between both parents, relying on formal care and using informal care support from grandparents and others where possible.

For more information please contact Claire at claire.wallace@abdn.ac.uk

Dr Jeni Harden, University of Edinburgh

Work and Family Lives: The changing experiences of ‘young families’

This project explored how families achieve a work life balance over time, drawing on the changing experiences and perceptions of families with primary school-aged children. Both parents and children were involved in the research, providing their different perspectives, as well as exploring the processes of negotiation between parents and children in addressing issues raised. The project is a qualitative longitudinal study with fourteen families in Scotland, conducted between 2007 and 2010.

The project identified a number of themes relating to parental responsibility that impact on families ability to achieve a work-life balance:

• Parents faced competing demands on their time relating to their responsibilities as parents and employees. This is experienced through the difficulties of synchronising work and family life and results in a sense of harriedness, of feeling constantly busy, tired and stressed. Parents expressed feelings of guilt and anxiety about not being able to give 100% to either work or family.
• Challenges of keeping clear boundaries between work and home, particularly when parents are working from home or 'catching up' on work at home.
• Children do support parents by complying with routines, helping with chores, looking after themselves and younger siblings.
• Negotiating changes in responsibility for children as they get older, particularly when they move to secondary school
• Helping children to understand work as part of everyday life is often justified by financial gains.

For more information please contact Jeni at jeni.harden@ed.ac.uk


Growing Up in Scotland

Growing Up in Scotland is a major longitudinal research study following the lives of over 10,000 children across Scotland from infancy through to the teenage years. Parenting is one of a number of topics covered in the study, with the data able to tell us how parents in Scotland are parenting, what factors influence parenting and parenting practices, and how parenting affects childrens' outcomes. Some of the findings include:

• The support provided by grandparents should not be underestimated, with many grandparents involved in childcare or babysitting on a regular basis.
• Social support networks are very important in the lives of families with young children.
  
• Most mothers have contact with professionals, although young mothers, particularly lone mothers in low income groups are most wary of asking for help from professionals.
  
• Early parenting approaches and experiences have an impact on social, emotional and behavioural development at age 5.
• Children living in low-income households are doing home-learning activities like reading and singing less frequently, which impacts on cognitive development. They are also less likely to visit places like farms and museums.
  

For more information go to: www.growingupinscotland.org.uk

The National Parenting Strategy aims to highlight the value and importance of parenting, recognising the wide range of influences on growing children - mums, dads, grandparents and the wider family, foster, kinship and adoptive parents. The Government has asked partner organisations to engage with parents and others with a parenting role across Scotland, seeking their views of what would help them to be the best parents they can be for their children. They will then gather views from practitioners through the consultation on the Children's Services Bill, with a view to publishing the strategy later in 2012.

For more information please contact Clare.Collin@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

Making work-life balance work for all

It is inspiring and entertaining to hear men like Nigel Marsh address the issues of work-life balance as he does in his TED talk " How to make work-life balance work" broadcast this February. He points to the importance of day to day relationships and making small changes in how we spend our time with loved ones as the key to changing work-life balance. But the research evidence reminds us that not everybody’s lives allow the degree of power and control he can take for granted. CRFR's work on work-life balance for people on low incomes paints a picture of rather different, probably more difficult and certainly more restricted choices.
I welcome Nigel Marsh’s assertion that commercial companies should not be in charge of addressing work-life balance because they are designed to “get as much out of you as they can”. International comparisons suggests that the statutory requirements set by the state can make significant differences to the likelihood of people taking leave to spend time with their family. In our study of low-waged mothers working in the food retail sector (Working and Caring), work-life balance was achieved through choosing to work part time, accepting the struggle of reduced income, and through mutual support amongst women workers who helped each other out by swapping shifts in times of crisis, like a child being ill. Those with somewhat better paid albeit still low income jobs with supervisory responsibility found these kinds of crises much harder to deal with – they were the ones relying on the company’s work-life balance policies for support.

Nigel emphasises his role as a father but Lynn Jamieson reflected that work-life balance and making time for friends and family is an issue for all workers not just for those with children. In a briefing (Work-Life Balance Across the Lifecourse RB21 2005) based on our 2004 international conference on this topic, she also concluded that inequalities of gender, class, and ethnicity affect ways in which work-life issues will be experienced, and the ability to balance the demands of work with other needs. It is great to hear well-paid men like Nigel Marsh tackle the issues, but his experiences and recommendations may not translate to people in different circumstances.

In the end how we experience work-life balance is dependent on a mixture of state polices, individual circumstances and cultural factors. Our individual place in relation to these will be defined by how we relate to these norms and assumptions particularly in relation to gender roles and how men and women play their part in household, family and friendship responsibilities.

Written by Sarah Morton and Lynn Jamieson based on CRFR research:

Work Life Balance in Scottish Food Retail Companies full report (pdf)

Working and Caring Summary (pdf)

Work Life Balance Across the Lifecourse Research Briefing 21 2005 (pdf)

Caringscapes Research Briefing 13 2004 (pdf)

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