Balancing the responsibilities of a job and a family is a critical problem for many people in contemporary society. One of the central questions researchers ask is, what job trade-offs do women make to help them balance jobs and children? The purpose of this study is to extend that question to men. Using qualitative and quantitative data collected from fathers in the United States, Canada, and Australia, I investigated how gender as a social structure influences the job trade-offs fathers make as they juggle the responsibilities of their jobs and their children. I recruited study participants through fathering web sites on the Internet and collected data via an on-line survey and standardized follow-up e-mail interviews. A content analysis of the fathering web sites reveals that web sites in the United States reflect the underlying assumption that job-family issues are a dilemma for individual fathers whereas web sites in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom address job-family balance as a social issue as well as an individual problem. Analysis of the survey and interview data show that fathers make career trade-offs as well as everyday job accommodations to be involved with their children. Fathers cite time, travel considerations, and flexible workplace conditions as primary reasons for changing jobs and declining promotions. Logistic regression and Ordinary Least Squares regression analyses of the survey results reveal that working long hours, having a male-dominated job, flexible working conditions, the ages of his children, his attitude toward gendered behavior, his education, his religion, and his level of involvement affect the type of job accommodations a father makes as well as the magnitude of job-family juggling he does. More importantly, my research also provides evidence that gender as a social structure constrains fathers' behaviors. For example, fathers receive encouragement and support when they are somewhat involved with their children, but disapproval and skepticism when they assume primary caregiving responsibility for their children. In addition, there are contradictory ideological assumptions regarding gender and caregiving, for example, fathers and mothers have the same caregiving capabilities but, at the same time, fathers and mothers have different caregiving responsibilities / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_24061 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Contributors | Mennino, Sue Falter (Author), Brayfield, April (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
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