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When the past comes back to haunt you : the enduring influence of upbringing on the work‒life balance decisions of professional parents
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Lupu, Ioana, Spence, Crawford and Empson, Laura (2018) When the past comes back to haunt you : the enduring influence of upbringing on the work‒life balance decisions of professional parents. Human Relations, 71 (2). pp. 155-181. doi:10.1177/0018726717708247
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717708247
Abstract
Research on work‒family balance decisions generally presents them as an individual’s rational choice between alternatives. The anticipatory socialisation literature highlights the role that early formative experiences play in shaping work and parenting decisions. We go further to emphasise the role of habitus – historically constituted dispositions –in work‒family balance decisions. This relational approach explores how the entrenched and historically formed dispositions of individuals interact dynamically with contextual (i.e. organizational) imperatives. Numerous studies have highlighted the difficulties of reconciling the intense demands of professional careers with family lives. Drawing on 148 interviews with 78 male and female professionals, our study looks at much deeper rooted causes of work‒family conflict in professional service firms than have previously been considered. We identify four broad patterns of response to the work‒family conflict: professionals may willingly reproduce their parental model, reproduce their parental model against their will, willingly distance themselves from their parental model, and distance themselves from the parental model against their will. We show that the impediments to greater equality lie not only in organizational and societal structures, but within individuals themselves in the form of historically constituted dispositions which contribute towards the maintenance and reproduction of those structures.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School > Accounting Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School |
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| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Parents -- Interviews, Work-life balance, Work and family | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Human Relations | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Sage Publications Ltd. | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0018-7267 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | 1 February 2018 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 71 | ||||||||
| Number: | 2 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 155-181 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1177/0018726717708247 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
| Funder: | Seventh Framework Programme (European Commission) (FP7) | ||||||||
| Grant number: | FP7-MC-IEF x 628151 | ||||||||
| Related URLs: |
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