WORKING LIFE AND FAMILY LIFE

Abstract

The relationship between work and family is changing. A question is raised about whether practice measures up to changed thinking concerning the interface between working life and family life. A study titled ‘Daily transitions between home, child day-care centre and workplace’ throws light on the Norwegian situation. This project takes its point of departure from what happens at the start and at the end of a workday seen from the perspective of parents with children attending day-care, staff in their day-care centres and leaders in enterprises which are the workplace of one of the parents. The article builds mainly on the interviews with company managers. It is suggested that the workplaces send ambiguous messages about their conception of the relationship between work and family and about equal opportunity issues and that this creates problems — for individuals, particularly women, and for families and workplaces. Some possibilities for improvement of the situation in the world of work are suggested.

La relación entre el espacio del trabajo y la familia está cambiando. Surge la interrogante sobre si la práctica logra mantenerse al día con los cambios en la manera de pensar con respecto a la interfase entre la vida del trabajo y la vida familiar. Un estudio sobre ‘Las transiciones diarias entre el hogar, el centrodiurno de cuidado infantil y el lugar de trabajo’ arroja luz sobre la situación noruega. Este proyecto toma como punto de partida lo que sucede al comienzo y al final de una jornada de trabajo vista desde la perspectiva de padres con niños que asisten a un centro diurno, del personal de estos centros diurnos y líderes de empresas que son el lugar de trabajo de uno de los padres. Il articolo està funfado principalmente sobre los entrevistas con gerentes de compañia. Se sugiere que el lugar de trabajo envía mensajes ambiguos sobre su concepción con respecto a la relación entre trabajo y familia y qué este produce problemas — para los individuos, particularemente las mujeres, y para las familias y los lugares de trabajo. Se hacen algunas sugerencias para el mejoramiento de la situación en el mundo del trabajo.

Keywords:

• gender
• work
• family
• equal opportunity
• ambiguity
• Norway

Keywords:

• género
• trabajo
• familia
• igualdad de oportunidades
• Noruega

I want to thank my reviewers and Moncrieff Cochran for helpful comments to content as well as language of this article, Mayra Isabel Marin Gómez for Spanish translation of the abstract and the University of Stavanger, Norway, for support to my project.

Notes

1. Data from the day-care centers are so far presented in a working report (B⊘, 2001) and in two articles (B⊘, 2002, 2006) and will soon appear in an article in English (B⊘, in press). Data from the workplaces are presented in the working report (B⊘, 2001) and in a conference paper (B⊘, 2004). These sources also give some general information about the project. An article based on the data from the parent interviews is on the way. Each source also looks across settings.

2. Parents talked about their own particular family, whereas day-care personnel and company managers spoke about parents in general. This provided data about the families directly involved in the study and, more indirectly, about a larger group of families.

3. By this expression is meant the whole person, who participates in two settings: working life and private life (Skjortnes, 1997a, p. 6).