Description
Work-life integration is an increasingly hot topic in the media, social research, governments and in people’s everyday lives. This volume offers a new type of lens for understanding work-family reconciliation by studying how work-family dynamics are shaped, squeezed and developed between consistent or competing logics in different societies in Europe and the US.
The three institutions of "state", "family" and "working life", and their under-explored primary logics of "regulation", "morality" and "economic competitiveness" are examined theoretically as well as empirically throughout the chapters, thus contributing to an understanding of the contemporary challenges within the field of work-family research that combines structure and culture. Particular attention is given to the ways in which the institutions are confronted with various moral norms of good parenthood or motherhood and ideals for family life. Likewise, the logic of policy regulation and gendered family moralities are challenged by the economic logic of working life, based on competition in favour of the most productive workers and organizations.
Demonstrating different aspects of what is behind and between the logics of state regulation, morals and market, this innovative volume will appeal to students, teachers and researchers interested in areas such as family studies, welfare state studies, social policy studies, work life studies as well as and gender studies.
Table of Contents
Contents
List of figures and tables
- Integrating work and family: Changing institutions and competing logics
- The logics of work, care and gender change in the new economy: A view from the U.S.
- Managing work-life tensions in the neo-liberal UK
- Work and family cultures: Dynamics of family change in Southern Europe
- Fathers integrating work and childcare: Reconciling the logics?
- When work meets childcare: The competing logics of mothering and gender equality
- Making sense of motherhood and fatherhood: Competing moral discourses and logics of caring and work 'choices' in the UK
- Hidden rules and competing logics: Working fathers within organizations in Germany
- Long hours and the work devotion schema: The case of executive men in the United States
Nordic work-family regulations exported to a liberal context
- Pregnancy as a career killer
- Exploring the career logic within the Nordic work-family model
Elin Kvande, Berit Brandth and Sigtona Halrynjo
Part 1 Current challenges of work-family dynamics – institutional differences
Kathleen Gerson
Diane Perrons
Isabella Crespi and Almudena Moreno Mínguez
Berit Brandth and Elin Kvande
Part 2 Gendered logics and strategies of work and parenting
Kristine Warhuus Smeby
Tina Miller
Mechtild Oechsle and Sandra Beaufaÿs
Part 3 Competing logics intensified: Careers and elite professions
Mary Blair-Loy and Stacy J. Williams
Gunnhild Foss Heggem and Elin Kvande
Hege Børve
Sigtona Halrynjo
List of contributors
