Work-family habits? The persistence of traditional work-family decision making among working couples

Posted on: 5 October 2023 by Dr Laura Radcliffe and Hannah McAleavey in Research

New research co-authored by Dr Laura Radcliffe, looks into work-family habits and explores the persistence of traditional work-family decision making in dual-earner couples.

How can our everyday work-family choices and how we make them impact gender equality in both work and family life? Why, when gender beliefs and attitudes are becoming more egalitarian, are we still often organising work and family along gendered lines in daily practice?

These are questions Laura and her co-authors, Professor Cathy Cassell and Dr Leighann Spencer, have been exploring for some time, and their new paper conceptualises ‘Work-Family Habits’ as one key component of this complicated puzzle.

This research recently published in the Journal of Vocational Behavior, explores how decision-making processes at the couple level impact whether work-family arrangements uphold or challenge traditional, gendered roles and contribute to achieving (or failing to achieve) a more equal balance between work and family responsibilities.

In a world where the lines between work and family roles are blurring, the dynamics within dual-earner couples are becoming increasingly complex.

Couples whereby both parties contribute to the financial support of their household is a prevalent family form across much of the world, shifting away from the specialisation of work and family roles based on gender.

Despite this change, traditional parenting norms dictating gender-based family responsibilities persist, with women often shouldering the weight of family roles.

This imbalance, impacts not only daily life but can also lead to challenges in maintaining and progressing in a career.

Our research

In the paper ‘Work-family habits? Exploring the persistence of traditional work-family decision making in dual-earner couples’ we explore the persistence of these traditional decision-making processes within families and how they affect achieving true gender parity in both the home and workplace.

In our exploration, we engaged in qualitative interviews and daily diaries kept by both members of a couple over a one-month period to unravel how family identity narratives influence how couples manage their work and family responsibilities on a daily basis.

We dig into the daily realities of work-family decision making, shedding light on the role of subconscious routines or 'work-family habits' that uphold traditional gender-based roles.

Lastly, we explore how and why some couples break these traditions, striving for a more balanced and equal approach to their work and family dynamics.

What did we find?

Our research uncovered that even when couples see themselves as sharing family responsibilities equally, it often doesn't play out that way in their daily lives.

Despite many of our participants expressing egalitarian identities and approaches to managing work and family, we found that real equality in managing work and family is rare.

We introduced the concept of 'work-family habits', key decision-making shortcuts or biases that are used with little awareness or conscious consideration, that worked to sustain specialisation along gendered lines.

Our findings emphasise how work-family habits play a big role in daily work-family decision making and can keep traditional gender-based roles in place, at times unintentionally.

We discovered three main shortcuts or biases that sustained work-family habits: reality blindness, option blindness and gendered competency traps.

Reality Blindness

Couples believed they shared care equally when looking back in interviews, but diary entries showed something quite different. For example, one couple spoke retrospectively about sharing the load equally in their interview but often their diaries told a different story:

He started work very early so he left before I woke up, this means he cannot help me with the babies, and I am struggling to get them ready on time…. I was stressed...I felt guilty when pushing them to walk quicker…. I arrived late and everyone seemed disappointed.

Option Blindness

Here, there was a perception that options were limited when seeking to resolve a work-family conflict. 

Couples seemed to consider that only certain options were viable without a genuine consideration of what other possibilities may be available.

If they’re really poorly I feel.... mum always says, “you want your mum when you’re poorly”, so I can’t really abandon them when they’re desperately poorly.

My wife sorts it all out…her work life has more flexibility and scope to adapt.

Gendered Competency Traps

Participants were caught in gendered competency traps, using internalised gender-based expectations as shortcuts for daily work-family decisions.

I get everything ready for nursery and sort things out the night before…My husband is like he can't do this; he just wouldn't know what to do.

Our data suggests that all three biases worked together to maintain habitual work-family decision making that is based on limited information, but reduces daily mental effort by relying on pre-defined scripts, which are often gendered..

Did any couples portray a more egalitarian approach?

Out of thirty couples, seven were more equal in how they shared responsibilities by taking a more carefully considered decision-making approach.

These couples valued each other's work roles, especially the woman’s. They made decisions together through regular and continuous communication each day, discussing each daily decision as it arose, rather than decisions being implicitly based along gendered lines.

These couples also often relied on taking turns, rather than any one person performing a particular role.

Conclusion

The paper highlights how traditional work-family decisions often persist, driven by internalised gender stereotypes manifesting into work-family habits. These habits simplify decision-making, which is often much needed given people’s busy work-family lives.

However, they also work to uphold gendered norms, often despite more egalitarian beliefs and intentions.

This study uncovers some of the important biases that reinforce these habits and identifies daily practices that can challenge these by biases and help to ensure couples have more information on which to make work-family choices.

The paper concludes that more carefully considered daily decisions, although potentially more effortful at first as they seek to undo quicker implicit decision-making, are essential for giving both men and women genuine choices in balancing their careers and family roles.