Strong boundary control, weak boundary control and tailor-made solutions: the role of household governance structures in work–family time allocation and mismatch

Abstract

To date, the gaps between actual and preferred working hours are mostly theorised and analysed at the individual level. This article provides new insights as to what extent different household arrangements relate to matches or mismatches concerning the achievement of a desired time allocation. The concept of household governance refers to regulations and practices families apply to keep work–family relationships under control, like the earner model, outsourcing of household task and household rules. This article explores by linear regression analyses how these are related to time-use problems of families: the gap between actual and preferred working hours, lack of free time and the experience of time pressure. The rivalling perspectives of flexibility, regulation and boundary theory have different predictions as to which modes of governance produce favourable outcomes. The results generally support boundary theory. However, households often are unable to choose their earner model optimally.

A la fecha, las brechas entre horas de trabajo reales y preferidas han sido teorizadas sobre todo desde la perspectiva del individuo. Este artículo proporciona nuevas ideas sobre cómo distintos regímenes del hogar se relacionan con ajustes o desajustes relativos a la asignación deseada del tiempo. El concepto de gobernanza del hogar se refiere al régimen y prácticas que las familias utilizan para mantener la relación entre trabajo y familia bajo control, tal como el modelo de ingreso, tercerización de tareas y las reglas del hogar. Este artículo explora a través de un análisis estadístico (regresión linear) cómo estos aspectos se relacionan con problemas del uso del tiempo en las familias: la brecha entre horas de trabajo preferidas y reales, falta de tiempo libre y la experiencia de apremio. Las perspectivas teóricas de la flexibilidad, la regulación y la Teoría de límites ofrecen distintas predicciones en relación a qué regímenes producen resultados favorables. En general, los resultados del estudio apoyan la Teoría de límites. Sin embargo, éstos también indican que los hogares son a menudo incapaces de elegir un modelo de ingreso de manera óptima.

Keywords:

• work–family
• time allocation
• household rules
• boundary theory

Palabras claves:

• trabajo y familia
• asignación del tiempo
• reglas del hogar
• teoría de límites

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Phyllis Moen and two anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments. The project was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

Notes on contributors

Philip Wotschack is Senior Researcher in the Research Unit Skill Formation and Labor Markets at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. He graduated in Sociology at the Free University of Berlin where he worked as researcher and lecturer until 2000. From 2000 until 2005 he was researcher at the Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS) at the University of Groningen (Netherlands) where he received his doctoral degree in 2009. Since 2005 he has been researcher at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Research areas are work organisation, working hours, lifelong learning, and work–family arrangements.

Arie Glebbeek is Associate Professor of Sociology. At present he is also Secretary of the Dutch Sociological Association (NSV). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Groningen in 1993 with an empirical study of labour market careers. After that he was engaged in research on the Dutch tripartite employment service and was one of the leaders of a national research project on time-competition and work stress. Research areas are labour market, socio-economic policy and school-to-work transition.

Rafael Wittek is Professor of Theoretical Sociology at the University of Groningen, where he chairs the Department of Sociology (since 2001). Since 2006 he is the Scientific Director of the Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS), a collaboration between the social science faculties of the Universities of Groningen, Utrecht and Nijmegen. The ICS is a research centre and graduate school providing an advanced integrated training programme for research master and Ph.D. students. Fields of interest and research are sociology of organisations, applied social network analysis, social and institutional change, theory construction and modelling.

Notes

1. These practices rather refer to general differences in household strategies. At the same time, there might be quite some additional variation according to different elements of household work (e.g. when it comes to emotional elements, like childcare) that we could not consider in this study.

2. We are grateful to one of the reviewers for spelling this out to us.

3. For the two other dependent variables, the analyses were conducted on the subsample of 528 households. We checked whether it would make any difference if we also performed these analyses for the reduced sample. This proved not to be the case. There is an undesirable loss of power, but the patterns remain the same.

4. Since the research unit is the household and our theory and research question refer to the household level, individual characteristics (like gender or age) were not included in the analysis.

5. For the third indicator (hours of free time) these effects are the other way around.