Gendering boundary work: Experiences of work–family practices among Finnish working parents during COVID‐19 lockdown

Abstract

In the spring of 2020, the COVID‐19 outbreak and governmental lockdowns changed the everyday lives of families with children worldwide. Due to remote work recommendations and the closing of school premises and childcare centers, work–family boundaries became blurred in many families. In this study, we examine the possibly gendered boundary work practices among Finnish parents during the COVID‐19 lockdown in spring 2020 by asking, how do parents perceive the blurring of work–family boundaries? What kind of boundary work practices did families develop to manage their work and family roles, and were these practices gendered and how? Boundary practices are analyzed by combining theories of doing boundaries and gender theories in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic and applying them to survey data. The results revealed that during lockdown, both spatial and temporal boundaries blurred or partly disappeared, and boundary practices developed by families were highly gendered. Especially in families where childcare practices had been gendered already before the lockdown, it was predominantly mothers, who shouldered the main responsibility of increased childcare and struggled to manage their work duties. Hence, families had varying means to cope with blurring boundaries based on their ability to switch to remote work, but also on their work–family practices before the pandemic.

The work-family interface and the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review

“…One of the lockdown’s consequences was the involuntary integration of work, family, and other systems ( Andrade and Fernandes, 2021 ; Niu et al, 2021 ), mainly by the absence of spatial and temporal boundaries ( Otonkorpi-Lehtoranta et al, 2021 ). Thus, individuals had to use strategies to manage the boundary loss ( Wang et al, 2020 ; Johnson and Onwuegbuzie, 2004 ; Chenji and Raghavendra, 2021 ; Kashive et al, 2021 ; Otonkorpi-Lehtoranta et al, 2021 ).…”

“…The involuntary integration between work and family increased mothers’ struggles to switch from their worker roles ( Andrade and Fernandes, 2021 ; Otonkorpi-Lehtoranta et al, 2021 ). On the one hand, childcare negatively impacted paid workload more intensely for mothers than for fathers ( Otonkorpi-Lehtoranta et al, 2021 ).…”

“…The involuntary integration between work and family increased mothers’ struggles to switch from their worker roles ( Andrade and Fernandes, 2021 ; Otonkorpi-Lehtoranta et al, 2021 ). On the one hand, childcare negatively impacted paid workload more intensely for mothers than for fathers ( Otonkorpi-Lehtoranta et al, 2021 ). On the other hand, while gender was found to moderate the relationship between boundary violations and segmentation behaviour from work-to-family, gender did not moderate the relationship between boundary violations from family-to-work and segmentation behaviour from family-to-work ( Carvalho et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Consequently, women place family identity on a higher stand and perceive low control over work-family boundaries ( Kashive et al, 2021 ). Further, these antagonistic findings could also be related to the idea that, especially in families where the unpaid workload was gendered before the COVID-19 outbreak, mothers took the bulk of childcare ( Otonkorpi-Lehtoranta et al, 2021 ). Hence, for these mothers, the boundary absence combined with increased unpaid workload boosted role strain during the lockdown ( Andrade and Petiz Lousã, 2021 ; Otonkorpi-Lehtoranta et al, 2021 ), making it challenging to apply segmentation strategies ( Waismel-Manor et al, 2021 ), especially from family-to-work ( Otonkorpi-Lehtoranta et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Concerning physical boundaries (e.g., rooms at home), at the parental system level, the stress stemmed from mothers’ feeling that their partners could not understand at what cost physical boundaries were being managed ( Otonkorpi-Lehtoranta et al, 2021 ). The tension in the parental subsystem did spill into the couple’s subsystem ( Otonkorpi-Lehtoranta et al, 2021 ).…”