Workers' attitudes concerning the competition for individual's resources between work and family are expressed by the relative centrality they attribute to each of these domains. This competition is also manifested in the tradeoff between work and family time. The study deals with 319 Israeli high-tech workers. We examined the effect of parenthood on men and on women regarding the centrality of and investment in work and family in the bicultural context of the Israeli high-tech industry (i.e., the family-centered Israeli society on the one hand, and the masculine work-centered high-tech industry on the other hand). a contrasting parenthood effect on men and women was found. Fathers showed higher relative work centrality than childless men, whereas mothers showed lower relative work centrality than women without children. Fathers invested more weekly hours in paid work than childless men, whereas mothers invested fewer weekly hours in paid work than women without children. In the parents' sub-sample, mothers evinced higher relative family centrality than fathers. Mothers also invested more weekly hours in childcare and core housework tasks than fathers. The uniqueness of the findings is that the contrasting parenthood effect prevails even in the demanding high-tech sector, in which women are expected to work long hours and play down their care-giving activities. Nevertheless, it should be stressed that mothers struggled to juggle active family caring with a career, at UNIV OF SOUTH DAKOTA on March 15, 2015 ccr.sagepub.com Downloaded from
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.