Contexts

Earlier notions of work–family reconciliation and family-friendly employment policy were ostensibly driven by concerns for gender equality, but the policy agenda has lately been firmly concerned with notions of ‘work–life balance’ and more generally with labour market behaviour (Lewis, Reference Lewis2002). The work–life balance agenda lies at the intersection of two secular trends: one, a shift in global political and economic orthodoxies from a Keynesian demand-side approach to monetarist supply-side policies; the other, social-demographic shifts associated with a tendency in post-industrial capitalist societies toward a decline of the male breadwinner household and a corresponding rise in both dual-earner and lone-parent households. Work–life balance is therefore set in the general context of labour market policies concerned with maximising labour flexibility and labour market participation, and policies aimed at adapting social welfare provision to the changing dynamics of the household economy (Esping-Andersen, Reference Esping-Andersen1999, Reference Esping-Andersen2002).

In the specific UK context, the New Labour government has repeatedly indicated a concern with policies intended to make it easier to combine paid employment with the responsibilities of family life (Department for Trade and Industry, 2000, 2005; Home Office, 1998). This has entailed explicit employment measures relating to rights to maternity and paternity leave and pay; provision for parental leave; and a right for parents with young children to request flexible working arrangements. More generally, the government promoted a national Work–Life Balance Campaign by which it has sought voluntary compliance by employers with the principles of a work–life balance approach (Department for Trade and Industry, 2001). The wider context of these initiatives, however, has been a triumvirate of ‘joined-up’ policy initiatives addressing labour market participation, income maintenance and childcare provision, respectively.

The studyFootnote ¹

The neighbourhood chosen for the study was centred on an inner-London housing estate. In comparison to the national average, the estate had a relatively low level of employment participation but a high proportion of households with dependent children, and very high proportions of lone-parent households, households in social housing and Black/minority ethnic households. The neighbourhood has been the focus of several urban regeneration initiatives, including a Sure Start project. The aim had been to explore what residents understood by, or expected from, ‘work–life balance’ and whether they could substantively identify what might make for a better work–life balance.

The study entailed in-depth interviews with 42 economically active working-age parents: 35 women and seven men. It was decided that the sample should include a small number of men: while the work–life balance agenda has greater immediate salience for mothers than for fathers, key aspects of the gender dimension can only be explored by considering men's as well as women's understandings and experiences. The sample also included a small number of participants (six) who were currently unemployed but who had past experience within the labour market and were currently seeking employment. Two participants described themselves as disabled, ten had children whom they described as disabled, and two were additionally caring for disabled adult relatives. The sample was evenly divided between partnered parents and lone parents. A majority of the sample were from Black or minority ethnic backgrounds. Most participants were on relatively low original incomes and, after housing and debt-servicing costs, it was clear that none enjoyed anything better than a modest income. The participants' families ranged in size and age composition, but most included two or more children, and one third had at least one child under school age. The interviews sought to explore the participants' experiences of education, work, benefits (including tax credits), childcare provision and other policy measures, but also their views on the importance and effectiveness of the facilities and services currently at their disposal.

Participants supported the idea of work–life balance but found it difficult to achieve. Stress and long hours were unavoidable in some jobs, or else income and prospects had to be forgone in order to obtain ‘family-friendly’ working conditions. Employment rights were poorly understood. Standards of management at work were inconsistent. Pay levels were thought to be insufficient and, though benefits/tax credits helped, they were regarded as impenetrably complex and badly administered. Childcare provision was certainly available, but quality and access were uneven. It emerged very clearly that what people in this neighbourhood wanted was more jobs, better managers, more accessible childcare (especially in the early morning and during school holidays), more efficient benefits/tax credit administration, and more extensive and effective advice and information provision.

In several respects the tensions experienced by working parents in this low-income neighbourhood would not appear to have been so very different from, for example, the ‘broadly middle-income 1.5-earner households' (Dex, Reference Dex2003: 76) who have tended to predominate in recent discussions of work–life balance. However, this study sought to focus on a social ecological context that featured a three-way tension between a polarised inner-London labour market (for example, Hamnett, Reference Hamnett2002), a highly complex system of income maintenance and a fragmented and evolving nexus of childcare provision. Work–life balance was seldom experienced as a comfortable state of equilibrium so much as a way of managing a variety of intersecting tensions.

Systematic analysis of the interview transcripts suggested that participants had offered four broad kinds of account or narrative depending, first, on whether they described a situation in which they were adjusting their life to fit in with their work or their work to fit in with their life; and, second, whether they seemed to be happy (or at least reasonably content) or unhappy (or perhaps ambivalent) about their situation. It is not suggested that there were four different kinds of participant, but four different kinds of story to be told about work–life balance in this particular neighbourhood. These corresponded to what might be called the ‘guilty worker’ scenario, the ‘reluctant carer’ scenario, the ‘grateful worker’ scenario and the ‘lucky carer’ scenario. Nor is it suggested that the narratives for each scenario are exactly the same, because they were not. Nonetheless:

• • In the guilty worker scenario, work–life balance was not working for people. They were needing to put work before family and they felt unhappy about it. Seventeen of the 42 participants described such a scenario (15 women and two men). Some participants expressed forthright dissatisfaction with their employers' failure to accommodate their needs. Others gave more ambiguous answers, but clearly were struggling to give priority to family life in the way they would have wanted.

• • In the reluctant carer scenario, people were needing to care for their families when they would have preferred to put more into their work. Six participants described this scenario (five women and one man), all of whom were currently in search of employment.

• • In the grateful worker scenario, people were putting work before family but they were grateful for the opportunity to work. Eight participants described this scenario. Half of these were fathers, none of whom were primary carers. The others were mothers, two of whom had gladly returned to paid employment in middle age when their caring responsibilities were significantly reduced. The other two seemed especially deferent towards their employers and represented perhaps the only exemplars in this particular study of what Hakim (Reference Hakim1991) once described as the ‘grateful slave’ syndrome.

• • In the lucky carer scenario, people were putting family before work and felt lucky that they were able to do so. Work–life balance was working for them, but they had achieved this as a matter of serendipity or chance, or because, fortunately, they felt able to forgo income and/or career opportunities. Eleven participants described this scenario. All were women. Some of these women were themselves working as childminders or as foster parents. The others were either working under especially exemplary managers or were working very short part-time hours.

This is, of course, a model intended for only heuristic purposes. It was recognised that experiences of the participants were changing and complex. At a subsequent feedback meeting held on the estate, several participants emphasised that much depended on the stage people were at in their lifecourse and on the ages of their children. It also emerged that there could be different interpretations for each scenario. While the guilty worker scenario was widely recognised and reflected a stage through which many participants felt they had gone, some of the others were potentially ambiguous. The nature of the luck entailed in being a lucky carer would not necessarily be obvious at the time. The gratitude entailed in being a grateful worker might not stem from submissive satisfaction with one's employer, but from satisfaction with one's own achievements: people may be grateful for the chance to work even when they feel (or know) they are being exploited. Nonetheless, the model provoked lively discussion and it was agreed that it did capture something about the nature of work–life balance issues affecting the residents of the estate.

One important observation to be drawn from these qualitative data is that a majority of the economically active working-age parents in a sample drawn from a low-income neighbourhood were not wholly content with the work–life balance they had achieved under their current working arrangements. This contrasts with findings from a telephone interview survey conducted on behalf of the UK government which claim that 87 per cent of British workers are satisfied with their working arrangements (Hooker et al., Reference Hooker, Neathey, Casebourne and Munro2006).

More interestingly, perhaps, a majority of the participants in this study were polarised between those currently experiencing a guilty worker scenario and those experiencing a lucky carer scenario. Considering that in this instance none of the reluctant carers was currently employed and all but two of the grateful workers currently had relatively limited parental responsibilities, it is arguably the guilty worker and lucky carer scenarios that have the greatest salience for our understanding of work–life balance. In various ways, those experiencing these particular scenarios were subject not just to lack of opportunity, but a lack of control over their work–life balance. Guilty workers could not get what they wanted, while lucky carers got it just by chance or good fortune.

Powerlessness and (un)predictability

This leads us to consider the general powerlessness that may afflict workers and the unpredictability of the economic and social environment in which they must negotiate their work–life balance. In the study described this was evident, first, in relation to the participants' experiences of management practices and, second, in relation to their lack of knowledge and understanding.

We have already observed that standards of management among the participants' employers were variable. Reflecting the peculiarities of the local labour market, two-thirds of the participants currently in employment worked either in the public or the voluntary/community sectors, and the other third in the private sector. It became evident that variations in management practice were quite considerable: not just between employers but even between different departments within the same employing organisation (cf. Bond et al., Reference Bond, Hyman, Summers and Wise2002). Participants needed their bosses to be flexible so as to accommodate the often complex routines associated with childcare arrangements or the unexpected demands associated with children's illnesses. What made a difference so far as the participants were concerned were not simply the policies officially subscribed to by their employers but the degree of ‘understanding’ exhibited by their line managers. Such understanding was not something that could be relied upon, although several participants suggested that much depended on whether their managers had had experience of bringing up children themselves. The difference between lucky carer and guilty worker scenarios depended in several instances on the degree of understanding demonstrated by line managers. It was clear that the culture in some employing organisations and the attitude of line managers could be conducive to a satisfactory work–life balance, but such experiences were not the norm. Some managers could be insensitive or even bullying, especially when workers needed time off work because of their own or their children's sickness. Of particular concern, however, were employers – particularly public and voluntary/community sector employers – who subscribed to work–life balance ideals in principle, but whose ethos at the everyday operational level demanded maximum personal commitment. Participants were often contractually entitled to flexibility in their working hours, but found it extremely difficult or were made to feel guilty when, for example, they sought legitimately to take time off in lieu of contractual hours already worked. The two male participants who described ‘guilty worker scenarios', although neither was currently a primary carer, both regretted the long hours they felt obliged to work because of the lack of time they spent with their children. The long hours worked by some participants did not always result from the Gradgrind attitudes of employers, so much as more subtle pressures and a sometimes unthinking hypocrisy on the part of managers.

Compounding the problem of inconsistent employer practices was the participants' own uncertainty about the nature and extent of their employment rights. Most were vaguely aware of, or had at least heard about, rights to maternity and even paternity leave, although few had any idea as to the specific details or conditions attaching to such rights. Few were aware of their (somewhat tenuous) statutory rights to parental leave or to request flexible working, although those who had been able to exercise such rights – sometimes without any understanding as to their statutory basis – clearly valued them. The few who were at least partially aware of their rights would often lack the confidence to ask for them, since they had no expectation that their requests would be acted upon or because they felt vulnerable. Some participants were trade union members but none appeared to have received any clear advice or support from their trade union in relation to work–life balance issues.

If the participants' lack of awareness of their employment rights was worrying, their lack of awareness as to their rights to income maintenance through the social security and tax credit system was alarming. All the participants (or their partners) were receiving the universal child benefit (or, as some still call it, ‘family allowance’). Most were receiving some other form of means-tested income maintenance, although some who clearly were entitled to additional assistance – for example, through the child tax credit – were not claiming it, sometimes through ignorance and sometimes through choice. Most of those who had claimed the new child and working tax credits had had adverse experiences, often entailing overpayment and subsequent recovery proceedings. Many had at some stage in their lives had adverse experiences claiming other benefits, such as jobseeker's allowance or income support, and almost all expressed uncertainty, if not bafflement, as to the basis on which they should or should not be entitled, for example, to means-tested housing benefit and council tax benefit. So particularly lacking in transparency is the new tax credit system that the only participant truly to understand it happened herself to be a welfare rights adviser. Several participants acknowledged that they ‘didn't have a clue’ as to whether they were receiving everything they were entitled to.

Benefits systems are designed increasingly to tailor support to meet diverse individual needs. The UK government claimed when it introduced the tax credit system to be creating a ‘seamless' system of support for families with children (HM Treasury, 2002), but while universal child benefit appears to provide a seamless (if skimpy) undergarment to which the participants were comfortably inured, the tax credit scheme was worn as a strange and clumsy outer garment that, while essential to many households, had been rejected by some because of the risk of overpayment and the fear that it might at any moment be snatched away.

The particular neighbourhood in which the study was conducted was not especially well served by advice and information facilities. The nearest Citizens' Advice Bureau, which was generally much respected by the participants, was some distance away and could only be accessed by appointment or, in an emergency, by being prepared to queue. Several of the lone parents in the sample had benefited from advice and support from Job Centre personal advisers. The neighbourhood itself boasted a ‘One Stop Shop’ offering periodic advice sessions provided by visiting staff from a variety of official agencies, but this was not well used by residents. Participants tended to rely on information direct from official agencies – often from the internet – when they had problems. It seemed, however, that if the residents of this neighbourhood were to begin to believe in their rights at work and their entitlements to benefits or tax credits, large quantities of indigestible information would not be enough. People's rights need to be simpler. Or when rights cannot be made simple, people need sources of information and advice they can trust and they need advocates who can effectively champion their rights.

One final aspect of the participants' powerlessness is that there was no apparent sense in which they shared or held their labour market experiences in common. Very few participants had anything but the vaguest idea about where their neighbours or other members of the community might be working. This is without doubt at least partly because of the nature of the labour market in an inner-London neighbourhood, since this will inevitably be more metropolitan than ‘local’ in any conventional sense. The scale and volatility of such a labour market make it inherently unpredictable. While there was a certain sense of community on the estate, with a clear majority expressing themselves to be happy living there and many reporting engagement in voluntary activities on the estate, there was no awareness among the participants of where the economic foundations of that community might be located. Work–life balance requires that jobs should, so far as possible, be stable and that employment standards are consistent. There needs to be some shared sense in place and time that certain employment norms and practices are customary and a legitimate expectation. This is difficult to achieve in an inner-urban environment, especially if the jobs created – for example, by regeneration funding – tend to be neither permanent nor expertly managed.

If work–life balance principles are to become universally applicable, employment practices need to be more consistent, vulnerable workers must be afforded the means to exercise their rights and labour markets have to be more stable.

Calibration and (in)calculability

This raises deeper questions concerning the fundamental ambiguity of current policy objectives and the extent to which the boundaries between labour market and household may be shifting. The calculations that workers must make are not merely complex, they are contestable.

Work–life balance appears to have been absorbed into the ‘Third Way’ social policy orthodoxy whose hegemonic influence reaches beyond the sphere of liberal/Anglophone welfare regimes to Europe and beyond (Bonoli and Powell, Reference Bonoli and Powell2002; Deacon, Reference Deacon2003). The orthodoxy rests not so much on a facile compromise between New Right and Old Left as an inherent tension between competing notions of individual responsibility in relation to work and family respectively. Preoccupations with responsibility began with neo-conservative scepticism towards the ‘demoralising’ effects of the classic welfare state (Himmelfarb, Reference Himmelfarb1995), but took an additional turn when champions of the new modernity began to argue that the role of the state was not passively to protect its citizens by pandering to their needs, but actively to enable them to manage their own risks and provide for themselves (Giddens, Reference Giddens1994, Reference Giddens1998). The result is a policy agenda that combines ‘new paternalism’ (Mead, Reference Mead1997) with ‘advanced liberalism’ (Rose, Reference Rose1999). New paternalism is characterised by more or less aggressive workfare policies (Lødemel and Trickey, Reference Lødemel and Trickey2000) and, more generally, the ‘creeping conditionality’ that attaches to the administration of social welfare provision (Dwyer, Reference Dwyer2004). Advanced liberalism embraces a consumerist rather than a public service ethic (Le Grand, Reference Le Grand2003) and aims to promote self-provisioning, prudentialism and an individualistic ethic of self-responsibility (Burchell, Reference Burchell, Barry, Osborne and Rose1996). Social policies may contradictorily encompass, on the one hand, a moral authoritarian insistence that able-bodied adults should be forced into work, however menial, while parents should be made to control the behaviour of their children; and, on the other, an ethical-individualist insistence that people should be enabled to enhance their human capital, while parents should be encouraged to promote their children's self-development. A study of recent trends in family law in the US and Britain draws attention to the ‘contrast between endeavours to determine what institutions required of individuals [and] the multitude of ways of trying to make individuals act in a “responsible” way towards those with respect to whom they appear to have special responsibility’ (Eekelaar, Reference Eekelaar2003: 117).

Work–life balance sits at the heart of this nexus of contradictions because working parents are required to be individually responsible for providing for themselves and their families and for bringing up their children, and yet many parents must depend on state subvention and institutionally regulated forms of childcare in order to do so. Legislating for work–life balance has entailed shifts in the ‘calibration’ (Pierson, Reference Pierson1996) of policy instruments, but this in turn entails shifts of locus so far as the calculations that working parents must make. Dividing lines between market income and state income, between childcare and child development, between personal aspiration and social obligation become, if not blurred, then increasingly fluid. This was amply illustrated in the study outlined above.

We have already observed that policies to promote childcare provision may reflect competing objectives: promoting parental employment on the one hand and enhancing child development on the other (see also Huston, Reference Huston, Crouter and Booth2004). There was a confusing variety of childcare options in the neighbourhood studied. Participants did not always find them accessible or affordable, and feelings about the standards of provision were mixed. There was a government-sponsored Sure Start project on the estate (providing, inter alia, childcare and parenting training), and a range of childminders, nurseries (including privately run nurseries), after-school clubs and holiday play schemes. Despite this, the most commonly used and the most valued form of childcare was informal care from family and friends.

Formal childcare provision was not meeting the needs of every parent. The UK government seeks to promote choice and diversity in childcare (Department for Education and Employment, 1998), but what seemed to matter most to participants was that childcare should be generally available and wholly reliable. Such findings are consonant with those of other researchers in demonstrating that organising childcare is time-consuming and stressful for parents (Wheelock and Jones, Reference Wheelock and Jones2002). Working parents are not only grappling with practical issues of affordability and accessibility, but with moral considerations about what is right for their children (Duncan and Irwin, Reference Duncan and Irwin2004). There were competing views about what constitutes ‘good-quality’ childcare. Different parents had different priorities with regard to provision for children's emotional needs on the one hand, or their developmental needs on the other. It was clear that, for many, informal (that is, ‘unregistered’) childcare was and would remain a critical and valued part of their coping strategy. Where formal childcare provision is available, parents seek certainty as much as choice. The fluidity and perceived impermanence of formal childcare arrangements on the estate were problematic and undermined people's confidence in what was available. Some childcare providers were regarded not just as expensive but as exploitative.

In so far as childcare was a contested issue as far as parents were concerned, this was rooted in an awareness that policy and practice in relation to childcare were changing. This was most clearly illustrated by one of the older members of the sample, who herself worked as a registered childminder and part-time playworker (while also providing unpaid childcare for her grandchildren). She was able to look back on the time before childcare was formally regulated, when she had combined paid childcare work with caring for her own children. Asked how she managed in those days, she said ‘No idea. It just all flowed.’ The new regime, calculated to facilitate work–life balance, had reconstituted her role: not only because she had been required to undertake ‘silly little bits and pieces' of training, but because she found:

An informal economy of childcare on the estate is giving way to a commodified nexus of provision. Ambivalence towards the formalisation of childcare did not necessarily stem from mere nostalgia but could spill over into sometimes quite bitter resentment towards the particular approach fostered by Sure Start, which was attacked by some participants for being, paradoxically, exclusive. One participant accused Sure Start of promoting ‘middle-class' parenting values, while neglecting the needs of the very poorest parents on the estate: an observation that has at least passing resonance with formal evaluations of Sure Start (National Evaluation of Sure Start, 2005).

The formalisation of childcare has coincided with the explicit promotion of work–life balance. Childcare is now a calculable component of the relationship between labour market activity and the household economy. Historically speaking, moral obligations within households have been socially negotiated in spite rather than because of social policy interventions (Finch, Reference Finch1989). Recent evidence concerning the decision making of lone parents has demonstrated that this is informed as much by moral rationality as by economic utility (Duncan and Edwards, Reference Duncan and Edwards1999). And yet parents in the study described above demonstrated the way in which calculative processes could now extend across boundaries between the labour market and the household. The difficulties of negotiating a change in household strategy were illustrated by one lone parent with two children aged two and 11. She had been prepared in the past to ‘go into some menial job just to put some change on the table’, but then three years ago chose to ‘have time out to be with the kids'. Her ‘time out [had] now run out’ and, despite help from the Job Centre, she was struggling to find a suitable job again:

The negotiation she had unsuccessfully attempted involved employers, her childcare providers and even one of her own children. While some participants struggled with the incalculability of work–life balance equations, others had clearly learned, after a fashion, to cope with them. This was expressed by an articulate lone parent, now working for a local authority, who had four children aged between one and 15. Asked whether she had thought about requesting reduced hours when returning to work after the birth of one of her older children, she acknowledged that ‘It really didn't enter my mind at that time. I think, being a single mum, hoping that things will work out, you know.’ Following the birth of her latest child, however, she had negotiated reduced hours. She remained mindful on the one hand that she was being materially undervalued: ‘at the end of the day, in truth, financially it really isn't worth stepping out of your house because you're working for the nursery, childminder [or] whatever child provision you're using. That's what you're working for – and your rent.’ But on the other hand, she partly welcomed the driving force behind the work–life balance agenda: that employers and the government recognised the kind of skills she had as a mother and were seeking deliberately to harness them:

Other participants related accounts of what US commentators have called ‘tag-team parenting’ (Presser, Reference Presser, Crouter and Booth2004), whereby two-parent households mutually negotiate their working shifts so that one of them will be available to care for the children. There were, similarly, accounts of how the complex transport logistics, sometimes associated with childcare arrangements, had to be factored into parents' calculations (cf. Skinner, Reference Skinner2005).

Overwhelmingly, participants wanted to work. Some rejoiced in the work they were doing. Repeatedly, however, they would utter variations on the mantra: ‘my children come first’. And yet the scenarios they presented so often entailed trade-offs between flexibility and function: trade-offs that ‘spilled-over’ (Hyman et al., Reference Hyman, Scholarios and Baldry2005) or encroached not on the nature of their work, but the substance of their family life.