Aspects of Workplace Flexibility and Mothers’ Satisfaction with Their Husbands’ Contributions to Household Labor*

Abstract

This article explores whether mothers’ perceived control over their own workplace flexibility options has any relationship to their satisfaction with their husbands’ contributions to household labor in the United States. We hypothesize that flexibility enhances their ability to more adeptly engage in role management in multiple life areas, thus enabling them to be more satisfied with their partners’ domestic input as well. We use a unique data set of 1,078 randomly sampled women involved in mothers’ organizations that generally attract members based on their current level of participation in the paid labor market. We then link nine distinct workplace flexibility policies with mothers’ satisfaction related to their husbands’ participation in all household tasks, as well as a subset of female-typed tasks. We find that across both arrays of tasks, mothers with more perceived control over work-related schedule predictability and those that had the ability to secure employment again after an extended break had higher levels of satisfaction with their husbands’ participation in household labor. In addition, short-term time off to address unexpected needs was important for all tasks considered together only.

Family Work Through Time and Space: An Ecological Perspective

“…Limited research has explored how workplace polices are related to household labor. In one of the few exceptions, Alger and Crowley (2012) examined the relationship between workplace flexibility and mothers' satisfaction with the division of household tasks. They found that mothers with more perceived control over work-related schedules reported more satisfaction with husbands' participation in household tasks.…”

Necesidades percibidas en el trabajo doméstico y de cuidados: un estudio cualitativo

“…La crisis del cuidado señala la prioridad de plantear colectivamente la organización del cuidado en nuestras sociedades del bienestar. Por un lado, se observa que, a pesar de los cambios producidos, la responsabilidad y la carga de este trabajo sigue recayendo en las mujeres (Alger y Crowley, 2012;Carrasco y Domínguez, 2011). La muestra obtenida para este estudio refleja esta situación, ya que las personas voluntarias que han acudido a participar en él son mayoritariamente mujeres y se han producido discursos diferenciales de género en los grupos.…”

Understanding Rural Women’s Domestic Work Experiences (DWE) in Ibadan, Nigeria: Development of a Measurement Tool Using Confirmatory Factor Analysis

“…Demographic Factors [Grey Box, Figure 1 ]: Situational and contextual determinants of health, such as socioeconomic status or life stage and pregnancy status, may moderate women’s DWE, including the exposure and reaction to domestic work stressors [ 49 , 52 , 53 ]. Although variability in levels of domestic work stress/exposure is not the focus of this study, the model proposes that the magnitude of domestic work exposure varies over time, life stage, season, and place.…”