Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Families have been changing, as have workplaces, the distribution of paid work, the types of opportunities for individuals to be economically self-supporting and the gender composition of the workforce. The paid work side of this equation tends to get organized in labor markets through employers' decisions. Families supply their labor power to the market in exchange for money to support themselves, but also need to engage in unpaid work in the home, in part to reproduce themselves. On the supply side men and women have changed their participation in the labor market and their hours of work in response to opportunities offered, new preferences, and new constraints. However, the labor-market context in industrialized economies has also changed. Competitive pressures of the global economy have led to a growth in so-called flexible and insecure employment. Families have increasingly become two-earner although, in some cases, no-earner households are evident. The two-earner families have been faced with new issues and time schedules of combining the responsibilities of paid work and caring for both children and elderly relatives. Evidence has been mounting that families are under pressure either from having too much paid work, time poor – money rich, or having too little and insufficient income; time rich – money poor. Caring for children and elderly relatives have been increasing outsourced.This ... log in or subscribe to read full text