Social and family responsibility or self-interest?

Abstract

Mothers’ increasing labour market participation is posed as a key aspect of a growing trend towards individualization — both for ill and for good. In ‘for ill’ versions, mothers’ employment is regarded as undermining commitment to family relationships and leading to a loss of community. In ‘for good’ versions, family and community relationships become contingent upon values of equality and respect. ‘Preference theory’ modifies the individualization thesis, with a posited distinction between mothers in full-time employment with ‘work-centred’ identities and those with part-time work who want ‘adaptive’ or ‘home-centred’ identities. This paper examines such issues, drawing on qualitative case study research on mothers employed full and part time in a hospital and an accountancy firm in the UK. It considers how the variable work ethos of organizations, and the ways mothers engage with these, can interact with their engagement in family and community relationships. In particular, it suggests that employment can be as much about social obligation in a local community, and commitment and obligations to family, as about individualized self-provision and options.

La participation accrue des mères au marche du travail est posée comme un élément marquant d'une individualisation grandissante produisant des réactions négatives et positives. De manière négative, le travail des mères est considéré comme une attaque à l'engagement aux relations familiales et conduisant à une perte de liens communautaires. De manière positive, les relations communautaires et familiales sont perçues comme étant contingentes des valeurs d’égalité et de respect. La ‘théorie de préference’ modifie la thèse d'individualisation en posant en principe une distinction entre les mères travaillant à temps plein ayant une indentité centrée sur le travail et celles qui travaillent à temps partiel et souhaitent avoir une identité adaptative et centrée sur leur foyer. Ce document examine toutes ces questions sur base de cas concrets de mères employées à temps plein ou partiel dans un hopital et une société de comptabilité en Grande-Bretagne. Ce document considére comment les éthiques de travail variables de différentes organisations, et la manière dont les mères les appréhendent, peuvent avoir un impact sur leur engagement dans les relations familiales et communautaires. En particulier, ce document suggére qu'un emploi peut s'agir autant d'obligation sociale dans une communauté locale, d'investissement et d'obligations envers la famille que de développement personnel et d'options individuelles.

Keywords:

• mothers' employment
• individualization
• preference theory
• family
• community
• work ethos

emploi des mères:

• individualisation
• théorie de préférence
• communauté
• éthique de travail

Notes

1. Such ideas can have longer roots of course, and — although more recent debates may have posed them in this way — are not necessarily premised on mothers’ increasing labour market participation (Crow, 2002; Jamieson, 1998). Furthermore, not all discussions are polarized into ‘good’ or ‘ill’ versions but can draw on aspects of both.

2. We are grateful to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for funding for the project, ‘The impact of mothers’ increasing labour market participation on family relationships’.

3. The part played by fathers in how mothers’ employment affects family life, and the effect of their own employment, is addressed in the full report (Reynolds et al., 2003).

4. A question that our paper leaves unresolved concerns the relationship between workplace ethos, family and social obligations and commitments, and the wider gender order or culture. Our study was not designed to model these processes, although they are obviously important for developing further understanding.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rosalind Edwards

Rosalind Edwards is Professor in Social Policy and Director of the Families & Social Capital ESRC Research Group. Her main research interests focus around family lives and family policies

Claire Callender

Claire Callender is Professor of Social Policy and co-leader of the Education & Employment strand of the Families & Social Capital ESRC Research Group. In particular, she has published widely in the area of student funding

Tracey Reynolds

Tracey Reynolds is a Senior Research Fellow, currently doing research on Caribbean young people, family and social capital under the Ethnicity strand of the Families & Social Capital ESRC Research Group. Her research interests and publications are around the areas of the family, mothering and employment, race and ethnicity and social capital, with a particular interest in the black family