Live to Work or Work to Live

‘Live to Work’ or ‘Work to Live’? AQualitative Study of Gender andWork–life Balance among Men andWomen in Mid-life

Carol Emslie* and Kate Hunt

Many contemporary studies of ‘work–life balance’ either ignore genderor take it for granted. We conducted semi-structured interviews with menand women in mid-life (aged 50 to 52 years) in order to compare theirexperiences of work–life balance. Our data suggest that gender remainsembedded in the ways that respondents negotiate home and work life. Thewomen discussed their current problems juggling a variety of roles(despite having no young children at home), while men confined theirdiscussion of such conflicts to the past, when their children were young.However, diversity among men (some of whom ‘worked to live’ whileothers ‘lived to work’) and women (some of whom constructed themselvesin relation to their families, while others positioned themselves as ‘inde-pendent women’) was apparent, as were some commonalities betweenmen and women (both men and women constructed themselves as ‘prag-matic workers’). We suggest ways in which gender-neutral theories ofwork–life balance may be extended.

Keywords: gender, work–life balance, lifecourse, qualitative analysis

Introduction

This article explores the ways in which men and women in mid-life nego-tiate the intersections between paid work and other areas of life. As

Gregory and Milner (2009) outline in the editorial of this special issue,research in this field has focused on ‘role conflict’, ‘role strain’, ‘work–homeconflict’, ‘work–family conflict’ and, most recently, ‘work–life balance’

Address for correspondence: *Carol Emslie, Medical Research Council Social and Public HealthSciences Unit, 4 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, G12 8RZ, UK, e-mail: [email protected]

Gender, Work and Organization. Vol. 16 No. 1 January 2009

© 2009 The Author(s)Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

mailto:[email protected]

(defined as ‘satisfaction and good functioning at work and at home, with aminimum of role conflict’ by Clark 2000 p. 751). Rather than ‘work’ and‘home’ being conceptualized as separate domains that have no bearing oneach other, it is now recognized that domestic identities and responsibilitiessometimes spill over into the workplace and that organizational identitiesand responsibilities often cross into home life (Halford et al., 1997; Kanter,1977).

Many contemporary studies of work and home life either ignore genderor take it for granted (Gerson, 2004). One example is Clark’s (2000) work–family border theory that aims to explain how people ‘manage and negotiatethe work and family spheres and the borders between them in orderto attain balance’ (p. 750). She compares the domains of work and family todifferent countries with contrasting cultures, and describes people asborder-crossers who move between these worlds. Borders are an appropri-ate metaphor for this process, given that they vary in permeability (theextent to which elements from other domains may enter: this includes psy-chological permeations such as worrying about work when at home, as wellas physical permeations such as a partner or child entering one’s homeoffice) and flexibility (the extent to which borders may expand or contract:this may apply to the flexibility of hours or to the location in which worktakes place). Borders may also operate more strongly in one direction thananother. For example, some employees are expected to work extra hours atshort notice, whatever the consequences for their domestic life, while othersmay have flexibility in their working hours but not in the time they mustcollect their children from school. This is a useful theory for conceptualizingwork–life balance. However, it is largely gender-blind. One of the aims ofthis article is to start to integrate gender into Clark’s work–family bordertheory.

Here, gender is conceptualized as a dynamic set of socially constructedrelationships, rather than as a fixed and binary category. Following West andZimmerman (1987), gender is best understood as a verb (‘an ongoing activityembedded in everyday interaction’ p. 130), rather than as a property ofindividuals, and is continually constructed over the life course. Conceptual-izing gender in this way disrupts the notion that masculine and feminineidentities are the stable characteristics of individuals. Instead, gender identi-ties are constantly renegotiated. Paechter (2003) integrates Butler’s (1990)theories about the performative nature of gender with Wenger’s (1998) ideasof communities of practice to try to discern which masculinities and femi-ninities we perform, when we perform them and how this comes about. Shesuggests that: ‘the learning of what it means to be male or female ... results inshared practices in pursuit of the common goal of sustaining particular local-ized masculine and feminine identities’ (p. 71).

Paechter suggests that masculine and feminine identities are related tothe communities of practice of masculinity and femininity in five key ways:

152 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

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identity as the negotiated experience of self (the ways that we ‘do’ mascu-linity or femininity contribute to how we understand who we are), identityas community membership (competent and convincing performances ofmasculinity or femininity that conform to group norms are central to iden-tity), identity as a learning trajectory (identity is always work in progress, asmeanings of masculinities and femininities constantly change over time,place and institution), identity as a nexus of multi-membership (identityhas to be constructed to encompass the intersections of participation inmany different communities), and identity as an intersection between thelocal and the global (local masculinities and femininities are influenced bythe mass media, popular culture, the law and so on). Here, we explore linksbetween different gendered practices (that is, different ways of doing work–life balance) and constructions of masculine and feminine identities.

Gender is integral to any discussion about intersections between paidwork and family life. The spatial separation of home and work broughtabout by industrialization in the 19th century was closely bound up with theideology of separate spheres — public life for men and domesticity formiddle-class women (Connell, 2005; Smith and Winchester, 1998) — andgender roles continue to be constructed around these masculine/public andfeminine/private dualities. By the mid 1990s the ‘traditional family’ (withone full-time male breadwinner) ceased to be the most common family typein Britain, and dual earner families became the norm (Brannen et al., 1997).While there appear to be signs of ‘growing gender convergence, but notequity, in parents’ contribution to childcare time’ (O’Brien, 2005, p. 4),women are still mainly responsible for domestic labour and childcare (Tangand Cousins, 2005), and also perform most of the emotional work in families(for example, listening to and comforting children, giving emotional supportto partners, doing things to improve or maintain relationships) (Strazdinsand Broom, 2004).

Given these responsibilities, most research has focused on how women(particularly women in high status jobs or in dual career families) have rec-onciled the worlds of family and employment (Guest, 2002). A small body ofresearch has investigated how men perceive the connections between workand home life. Much of this work has taken place in the last decade (forexample, Collinson and Hearn, 1996; Halford, 2006; Hatten et al., 2002; Smithand Winchester, 1998; Speakman and Marchington, 2004), although researchbegan earlier in the USA (for example, Cohen, 1988; Pleck, 1985; Weiss, 1987).Recently, UK government policy documents also seem to be including menby noting that parents (not just mothers) need more choice about how tobalance work and family life (HM Treasury, 2004). However, in practice, thelarge disparity in maternity and paternity leave entrenches traditional genderroles, and the assumption remains that flexible working and work–lifebalance are predominately issues for the working mothers of young children(Smithson and Stokoe, 2005).

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© 2009 The Author(s) Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Research on gender and ‘work–life balance’

Research on work–life balance is complicated by the gendered structure ofthe labour market. In many countries, women work shorter hours andoccupy lower status jobs than men. Quantitative studies have attempted tocontrol for this difference by comparing men and women working in similaroccupations. The results are mixed: some studies have found that womenreport more conflict between work and home life than men (Frankenhaeuseret al., 1989; Lundberg et al., 1994); others have found that men and womenreport similar levels of conflict (Eagle et al., 1997; Emslie et al., 2004a; Hughesand Galinsky, 1994; Swanson et al., 1998; Triplett et al., 1999; Winslow, 2005),while one study (Chandola et al., 2004) found different results for differentcountries. This evidence is hard to interpret and does not tell us anythingabout how men and women understand and negotiate the intersectionsbetween work and home life. In order to do this it is necessary to take aqualitative approach.

Relatively few qualitative studies have set out to compare how men andwomen perceive the intersection of work and home life. Backett’s (1982)study of parental negotiation is unusual in sampling middle-class couples inthe UK at a particular stage in the life course (early family formation), ratherthan employees across a range of ages. Her findings underline the importanceof gender. Mothers who were not in paid employment found it difficultto reconcile the demands of domestic work and childcare, while fathersmanaged to leave domestic problems behind them physically and mentally asthey travelled to work each day. Parents used coping mechanisms to helpmaintain a belief in the fairness of division of labour in the household, despiteevidence that fathers remained peripheral to family life: for example, a beliefthat fathers were willing, and available, to help at home sustained mostfamilies.

Organizational studies have also found gender differences. Loscocco’s(1997) study of small business owners in the USA found that men saw theflexibility of their working hours as a symbol of the control they had throughbeing their own boss, but tended to use it only occasionally, while womenused flexibility as a key resource in trying to achieve a work–life balance. Sheconcluded that women fulfil gender norms when they accommodate work tofamily life, while men fulfil them when they put their business first. Halfordet al. (1997) also noted the gendered dimensions of home and work in theirstudy of UK local government employees. They found a disjuncture betweenthe emphasis employees placed on a shared commitment to work and homelife in partnerships, and their descriptions of daily life in which womencontinued to bear the brunt of domestic work. This made the separation ofhome and work life particularly difficult for women. Similarly, Connell’s(2005) study of public sector workers in Australia found that womenwere accountable both for running the household and for managing the



relationship between the home and the workplace. Connell suggested thatwork–life problems for men and women may be quite different:

Dropping dead from career-driven stress, or shrivelling emotionally fromnever seeing one’s children, is a different issue from exhaustion because ofthe double shift, or not getting promotion because of career interruptions.(Connell, 2005, p. 378)

In contrast, Hochschild (1997) found in her well-known study of an Americancorporation that there were increasing similarities in the way in which menand women regarded work and home life. She suggested that, in the past, thehome was seen as a haven from which (male) workers could escape from theunpleasant world of paid work to relax and be appreciated. Now, both menand women regard home as an additional place of work, while the workplaceis often seen as a haven (indicated by her subtitle ‘when work becomes homeand home becomes work’):

Nowadays, men and women both may leave unwashed dishes, unresolvedquarrels, crying tots, testy teenagers, and unresponsive mates behind toarrive at work early and call out, ‘hi, fellas, I’m here!’ (1997, p. 39)

Aims

Our study aims to make a contribution to the field by taking gender as acentral theme. Gerson (2004) argues that we should understand work andfamily through a gender lens. Rather than assuming homogeneity withingender groups and gender differences between them, she suggests we shouldanalyse diversity among women and among men, and look for convergences(rather than assuming divergences) between men and women. Therefore,in this qualitative study we compare the experiences of work–life balanceamong men and women in mid-life (aged between 50 and 52 years) in orderto explore whether there were gender differences or similarities among therespondents. We also explored whether different gendered practices (that is,different ways of doing work–life balance) were linked to different genderidentities, and thus to diversity among men and women. Through thisempirical work, we hope to begin to integrate gender into Clark’s work–family border theory.

We chose to take a life course approach as it helps us to appreciate the‘larger social contexts in which personal choices and strategies are crafted’(Gerson, 2004, p. 164). We focused on respondents in mid-life partly becausemost studies concentrate on younger respondents (usually the mothers ofyoung children) and partly because of the rapid changes in gender relationsover the lifetime of this cohort. The respondents were born in the early 1950sand so entered adolescence and adult life in the late 1960s and early 1970s,when widespread challenges to social and sexual mores, precipitated by



second wave feminism and other political movements, were changing genderrelations (Walby, 1997). They also entered their working and reproductivelives as significant pieces of legislation were enacted in the UK (for example,the Abortion Act of 1967, the Equal Pay Act of 1970 and the Sexual Discrimi-nation Act of 1975), making them one of the first generations to have morecontrol over their fertility throughout their reproductive lives (Hunt, 1990).However, the fact that a large gender pay gap (Perfect and Hurrell, 2003)remains over three decades after such legislative changes took place is oneillustration of the power and persistence of gender divisions.

Methodology

This article is based on semi-structured interviews with 11 men and 12women born in the early 1950s (and so aged between 50 and 52 at the time ofinterview in 2002–2004) who were sampled from the middle cohort of theWest of Scotland Twenty-07 study (Macintyre et al., 1989). This longitudinalsurvey of the social patterning of health has collected quantitative data fromthree age cohorts in the west of Scotland, aged 15, 35 and 55 when firstcontacted in 1987–1988. The main focus of the Twenty-07 study is on health,but it also has a large number of questions relating to gender and work, andso provides an excellent sampling frame for this qualitative study.

The relationship between gender, work (both paid and unpaid) and healthhas been a major area of interest since the inception of the Twenty-07 study(Hunt, 2002). At a time when few studies systematically compared role con-flict in women and men, a quantitative analysis of data from the middle cohortfound that reports of work conflict were associated with higher levels ofpsychological malaise in both men and women (Hunt and Annandale, 1993).The Twenty-07 study also includes a measure of gender role orientation (theBem Sex Role Inventory; Bem, 1981), which asks respondents to rate theirpersonality according to qualities which have been judged to be stereotypi-cally masculine (for example, dominant, defend my own beliefs, willing totake risks) or feminine (for example, affectionate, sympathetic) (Annandaleand Hunt, 1990; Hunt, 2002; Hunt et al., 2004). While these instruments maybe a fairly crude way of representing how people perceive themselves, theyare useful in selecting respondents with a range of gender role orientations(see also Emslie et al., 2004b).

The aim of this study was to explore experiences of work–life balanceamong men and women in mid-life, and also to explore the ways in whichrespondents with different ways of ‘doing’ gender perceived and experiencedwork–life balance. We therefore wished to include in the sample somerespondents who had conventional biographies and gender role orientationsfor their generation, and others who had less conventional biographiesand gender role orientations. We used self-rated health as another way of



sampling respondents, given that there is evidence that poor health can posea challenge to identity and cause people to reflect on taken for grantedgendered beliefs and behaviour (Charmaz, 1995; O’Brien et al., 2007). Thismethod of purposive sampling is used when the aim is to select people whopossess specific characteristics in order to illuminate the phenomena beingstudied, rather than to select a representative sample drawn from a popula-tion (Mays and Pope, 1995).

From the quantitative data in the Twenty-07 study, we knew that thetypical pattern for this age-group was to get married and have children intheir twenties. We therefore randomly selected 12 ‘conventional’ interviewrespondents who married and had children before the age of 30 (see Table 1).They also had average masculinity scores (according to the Bem Sex RoleInventory) for their sex and perceived themselves to be in reasonable health(that is, their self-assessed health was excellent, good or fair). In addition, 11respondents were identified who had biographies which were less conven-tional (for example, never married, never had children, perceived their healthto be poor, or had extremely high or low Bem Sex Role Inventory masculinityscores). Extreme masculinity scores were defined as those in the top orbottom 10 per cent of the sample, calculated separately for men and womenusing the quantitative data from the Twenty-07 survey. Although our mainfocus was on gender rather than on social class, we wanted to include menand women from a range of socioeconomic positions. We therefore includedboth working-class respondents (defined as those working in manual occu-pations) and middle-class respondents (those in non-manual occupations).All of our respondents, with one exception, were from the ethnic majority(white) population, which reflected the relatively homogeneous ethnic com-position of this age group in this area. Ethical permission for the qualitativestudy was granted by the University of Glasgow.

After an explanation of the study and assurances about confidentiality,all respondents were asked to give their informed consent and were askedwhether their accounts could be tape-recorded. The object was to access therelationships and assumptions that made up the respondents’ world-view sothe interview began with a request for respondents to give a brief overviewof their life. Using this overview as a guide, the interviewer (CE) then con-centrated on particular stages in their biography: childhood; becoming ayoung adult; and work and domestic life as an adult. The respondents werealso asked how they combined work with other aspects of their life and ifthere had been any occasions when this had been problematic. Therefore,respondents were free to decide what aspects, if any, of their work–lifebalance had been problematic (for example, combining childcare and paid-work, or elder-care and other responsibilities) and the period in their lifewhen this had been most difficult.

The interviews were transcribed, and the accuracy of the transcriptswas checked by listening to the tapes. Preliminary analysis began during



Tab

le1:

Sele

cted

char

acte

rist

ics

ofin

terv

iew

resp

onde

nts

Nam

e*(a

ge)

Cur

rent

orm

ost

rece

ntjo

bC

urre

ntm

arita

lst

atus

Cur

rent

hous

ehol

dco

mpo

siti

on(i

nad

dit

ion

tore

spon

den

t)R

easo

nfo

rsa

mpl

ing

‘Con

vent

iona

l’ea

rly

adul

tbi

ogra

phie

sfo

rth

eir

age

and

gend

erM

arri

edan

dha

dch

ildre

nbe

fore

they

wer

e30

year

sol

d,av

erag

em

ascu

linit

ysc

ores

and

inre

ason

able

heal

th

Ron

a(5

2)N

urse

Mar

ried

Hus

band

(chi

ldre

nle

ftho

me)

Mau

reen

(51)

Teac

her

Div

orce

dPa

rtne

ran

dyo

ung

son

Hea

ther

(51)

Secr

etar

yD

ivor

ced

Teen

ager

Mic

helle

(51)

Aux

iliar

ynu

rse

Mar

ried

Hus

band

and

teen

ager

sD

iane

(51)

Info

rmat

ion

tech

nolo

gyM

arri

edH

usba

ndan

dte

enag

erM

ay(5

1)Te

chni

cian

Mar

ried

Hus

band

(chi

ldre

nle

ftho

me)

Ale

c(5

1)A

rchi

tect

Mar

ried

Wif

e(c

hild

ren

left

hom

e)Tr

evor

(51)

Eng

inee

rM

arri

edW

ife

and

teen

ager

Mal

colm

(52)

Ele

ctri

cian

Mar

ried

Wif

ean

dte

enag

erSt

eve

(51)

Post

man

Mar

ried

(2nd

tim

e)W

ife

and

teen

ager

Gar

y(5

1)E

ngin

eer

Mar

ried

Wif

ean

dte

enag

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ill(5

1)O

wn

busi

ness

(join

er)

Mar

ried

Wif

e(c

hild

ren

left

hom

e)

Les

s‘c

onve

ntio

nal’

earl

yad

ult

biog

raph

ies

for

thei

rag

ean

dge

nder

Penn

y(5

1)Se

cret

ary

Mar

ried

Hus

band

No

child

ren,

very

low

mas

culin

ity

scor

eJa

ckie

(51)

Soci

alw

ork

Div

orce

dL

ives

alon

e(c

hild

ren

left

hom

e)Po

orhe

alth

Mar

ilyn

(52)

Soci

alw

ork

Sing

leL

ives

alon

eN

ever

mar

ried

,no

child

ren,

very

low

mas

culin

ity

scor

eG

lori

a(5

2)M

edia

(fre

elan

ce)

Div

orce

dL

ives

alon

e(c

hild

ren

left

hom

e)V

ery

high

mas

culin

ity

scor

eSh

ona

(52)

Soci

alca

reSi

ngle

Part

ner

Nev

erm

arri

ed,n

och

ildre

nR

uth

(51)

Hos

pice

supp

ort

wor

kM

arri

edH

usba

nd(c

hild

ren

left

hom

e)Po

orhe

alth

Ron

ald

(51)

Shif

tm

anag

erM

arri

edW

ife

(chi

ldre

nle

ftho

me)

Poor

heal

th,v

ery

low

mas

culin

ity

scor

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ougl

as(5

0)Su

rvey

orSi

ngle

Bro

ther

Nev

erm

arri

ed,n

och

ildre

n,po

orhe

alth

Geo

rge

(52)

Hou

sing

man

ager

Mar

ried

(2nd

)W

ife

and

step

daug

hter

No

child

ren,

very

high

mas

culin

ity

scor

eJi

mm

y(5

1)C

ounc

ilcl

eans

ing

Div

orce

dSo

n(2

1)V

ery

low

mas

culin

ity

scor

eK

enny

(52)

Ow

nbu

sine

ss(t

rain

ing)

Div

orce

dPa

rtne

rN

och

ildre

n,ve

ryhi

ghm

ascu

linit

ysc

ore

Not

e:*A

llna

mes

are

pseu

dony

ms.



fieldwork, with interviews being conducted in batches and then discussed byboth researchers before further interviews were set up. Some questions weremodified in the light of these discussions. The software package QSR Nvivowas used to facilitate the analysis of interviews and field notes. FollowingMcCracken (1988), the analysis moved from the particular (a detailed analysisof language in each transcript) to the general (a comparison of patterns andthemes across all the transcripts). Hypotheses were formulated, testedagainst the transcripts and, where necessary, reformulated in a cyclicalprocess.

Findings

Looking back over their lives, the respondents who were parents describedhow they had occupied traditional gender roles when their children wereyoung. The men had been the main breadwinners while the women hadtaken time out of the labour market or arranged their paid work around theirfamily life. Apart from brief periods of unemployment, all but one of the menhad been in continuous full-time employment. In contrast, only two women(neither of whom had children) had been in continuous full-time employ-ment. At the time of interview all of the men were in paid work (with oneworking part-time), and 11 of the 12 women were in paid work (with threeworking part-time). Only one woman still had a young child at home; theother respondents’ children were either teenagers or young adults, many ofwhom had left home. More men than women still had children living athome, while more women than men lived alone (see Table 1).

Experiences of work–life balance: revealing gender differences

Almost all the women had experienced difficulties in co-ordinating differentareas of their lives and most of their accounts of these difficulties related tothe present or the very recent past. Penny was an exception. She explainedthat she did not experience problems because she had few commitments, nochildren and worked traditional office hours. The other women found itdifficult to combine roles such as employee, partner, mother, friend anddaughter, and spontaneously used metaphors of juggling and balance toexpress these difficulties (for example, ‘can’t keep all the balls in the air’,‘juggling match’, need ‘more of a balance’). Many discussed caring for grand-children or assisting elderly parents with household tasks. Maureen andHeather spoke about making difficult choices between spending time withageing parents or with their children:

Maureen (51 years): When my father was in hospital ... I [used to] comehome from work, stay with my son for a couple of hours ... and then go



straight to the hospital and stay there overnight.... Well that was interferingwith my family life ... but it was just what you had to do.

Heather (51 years): After my dad died, I maybe spent too much time with mymother when I should have been spending time with the children.... you sitback and you think ‘Oh, maybe I should have done it differently’. But it’stoo late you know?

Many accounts centred on the impact of paid work on women’s lives. Womendescribed how they worried about work tasks while at home (for example,waking up at night to worry about phone calls they had not made anddreaming about work situations) and how their work sometimes left themtoo exhausted for other activities. Some women felt that these stressful situ-ations at work had negatively influenced their health. Indeed, two womenhad recently been signed off sick and prescribed anti-depressants due towork stresses. However, paid work was also described in positive terms.Some women suggested that their workplaces had been a place of refugewhen they had difficulties in their personal life. Comments that work was‘therapeutic’ or prevented them from sinking into depression suggest thatpaid work can help to buffer stresses from other spheres of life.

Socioeconomic circumstances influenced the accounts women gave of howthey managed different roles in their lives. Middle-class women readilydescribed their busy lives and then reflected upon their desire to have more‘time for themselves’ at this point in the life course. This idea was expressedby women both with and without children. Heather gave an eloquent accountof this problem, including a description of the emotional work she still doesfor her teenage son:

Heather (51 years): I’m doing a course at the moment which takes up twonights a week, I go to my mother’s one night a week.... My son still stayswith me.... I have to spend a lot of time listening to him ... I thought by thistime I would have more time for me, to do really what I wanted.

In contrast, working-class women played down the difficulty of reconcilingdifferent roles and emphasized that they were coping or managing. Theirsuggestions that ‘you just got on with it’ served to normalize competingdemands. For example, May said that even when she had to combine caringfor her sick parents with her paid work ‘that didn’t stop me doing anything’:

May (51 years): I never, ever found it difficult ... anything I have wanted todo I have planned ahead and got it sorted but I could do what I wanted todo really.... There was a wee while when my mum and dad were both ill....I was running up and down there, but again that didn’t stop me doinganything.

Men’s accounts differed from the women’s in two important ways. First, mostof the men focused on the way in which paid work dominated their lives,



while the women had discussed the difficulties of balancing a range of rolesat home, as well as balancing home and work life. Secondly, most menthought they currently had a good balance between paid work and otheractivities, although those who continued to work shifts reported that thismade it difficult to organize their social lives. While women discussed recentor current problems, men’s accounts of problems tended to be located firmlyin the past. Many men described working longer hours in the past than theydid now. For example, Kenny was a senior manager and felt he had morecontrol over his career now than he had in the past:

Kenny (52 years): I’ve got quite a healthy balance. When I worked for theCouncil ... I was going home and working at weekends, working at night... and no, I don’t do that (now).

Many of the men who were fathers identified the time when their childrenwere young as the period when they had experienced most conflict betweenwork and home life: working long hours, weekends, overtime and workingaway from home were all problematic. Their accounts suggested they per-ceived this conflict as an individual problem for their family to solve. Alec wasthe only respondent (male or female) who gave a structural analysis of thesituation, emphasizing that there has ‘got to be better ways of organizingfamily life’.

Middle-class men often described the need to work long hours in order toestablish themselves in their profession, or to finish studying for professionalqualifications. Alec, an architect, commented that in order to find time for theaspects of his job that he found interesting (design work), he had previouslyworked extended hours. Working-class men reported that they had oftenneeded to work extra shifts or overtime to bring enough money into thehousehold. Ronald commented that the timing of his shifts had restrictedhis ability to participate in his children’s activities (see Speakman andMarchington, 2004 for similar findings):

Alec (51 years): Any kind of design work ... would have to be done in theevenings and at weekends. Latterly, I kind of regret that, because in theearly days when my children were growing up, I hardly saw them out oftheir pyjamas because I was leaving early in the morning and coming homelate at night.

Ronald (51 years): The wages weren’t brilliant then and to get the extramoney you were doing extra shifts ... your shifts restrict you for certainthings, likes of the kids are in school plays, in pantos and you’re working,you don’t see a lot of these things.

These accounts suggest that men regretted missing important parts of theirchildren’s early years (see also Hochschild [1997]). However, middle-classmen, in particular, balanced this regret with the recognition that the financial



gain had been important. Some of the fathers’ accounts suggested that timespent at work fulfilling their role as breadwinners conflicted with time theirwives expected them to spend at home as fathers. Trevor and Malcolmalluded to past tensions over their working hours:

Trevor (51 years): At that time, the kids were young, so she [his wife] had tolook after them all herself at night. I was working till 10 or 11 o’clock atnight. She’d obviously had a problem doing it. I didn’t realize the fullextent at the time.

Malcolm (52 years): My wife and I were falling out, especially when he [hisson] was younger, because I was never here, I was working.

A few men did not follow this general trend. Steve was the only man who hadnot had any problems co-ordinating different areas of his life. He worked forthe Royal Mail, and so started and finished work by lunch time. He felt thisarrangement had given him lots of free time to see his family and enjoy asocial life. In addition, two men discussed current or recent problems theywere having. Will was unusual as he described how he managed to spendtime at home with his children when they were young. He also discussedcurrently trying to juggle work and family life. Jimmy was the only man whocurrently lived with his (adult) child but without a partner. Like some of thewomen, he described trying to juggle a number of tasks (running the house-hold, looking after his 21-year old son and working):

Jimmy (51 years): It’s only me and my son stay in the house.... I feel as if I’mcoming in here now, and all I’m doing is ironing and tidying up, trying todecorate, oh it’s hellish so it is! [laughs].... And you’ve never got enoughtime.

Work–life balance and the construction of gender identities

After analysis of the interviews, we grouped respondents into the new cat-egories that emerged from the rich qualitative data. (Interestingly, these newcategories did not correspond to our sampling categories: for example,respondents who expressed less traditional attitudes in the qualitative inter-views did not all come from the less conventional group sampled from theTwenty-07 study, using previously collected quantitative data). Some respon-dents constructed fairly traditional gender identities. These men noted thecentrality of paid work in their lives (‘living to work’) while these womenemphasized their caring responsibilities (‘female carers’). Others constructedless traditional gender identities (‘independent women’ and men who‘worked to live’, who underscored the importance of their lives outside paidemployment). A final, mixed-sex group of respondents who had similar class



backgrounds and perceived their jobs as a means to an end (bringing inincome), were categorized as ‘pragmatic workers’. We describe each in turn.

Constructing traditional gender identities: ‘female carers’ and men who ‘live towork’. Ruth, Rona and Michelle (female carers) remarked on their caringresponsibilities in both their home and work lives. All three had caring jobswhich they enjoyed in hospital environments. Indeed, Ruth (a hospicesupport worker) stated that she would continue to do voluntary work in thehospice after she retired. All intended to continue working full-time untilaround the age of 60.

All had been married to their original partner for at least 30 years and hadchildren. They positioned themselves as women whose identities wereclosely bound up with their families. This was despite the fact that theirdomestic situation was not always particularly traditional. Both Rona andMichelle were currently working full-time while their husbands had beenmade redundant. The following quotations illustrate the way this group ofwomen describe the importance of their families to them:

Rona (52 years): We’ve always been an old-fashioned couple and we still are.My husband had his career and I had a job, which actually suited me verywell. I have this lovely boss at work who’s 30, and she is just climbing theladder. All of a sudden she’ll say when she’s 36 or something, ‘Oh, I wanteda family!’ — you know, you can’t have it all.

Ruth (51 years): You could say that I just live for my family.

The accounts of two men (Trevor and Douglas) suggested that paid work hadbeen crucial throughout their lives and that they ‘lived to work’. Theyenjoyed their work and did not intend to retire until at least the age of 65.Their largely unquestioning dedication to work made them more likely toaccept that employment conflicted with other areas of life. Trevor stressedthat he was ‘old fashioned’ because he accepted that paid work conflictedwith family life. Douglas attributed his ability to work exceedingly long hoursto his marital status (single), but admitted he no longer had a social life:

Trevor (51 years): Work did interfere (with family life) but I’m old fashioned:I tend to accept that as part of the job. I wouldn’t say that the job comes first,but ... you’ve got to give your best to your employer.

Douglas (50 years): I don’t have a social life anymore.... Basically the invitesbecome less and less because you’re too busy working and the like.... Butas I say I’m single ... so I can get away with it.

Both of these men had a traditional division of labour at home, despite theirdifferent situations. Trevor was married with children and felt that it was a‘mother’s place to be at home and look after the children’. Douglas had lived



with his parents until recently and his mother had done all the domesticwork. After her death, he paid his niece to take over these chores.

Constructing less traditional gender identities: ‘independent women’ and men who‘work to live’. Unlike the female carers described above, the independentwomen did not position themselves as being dedicated to their families.Almost all these independent women (Marilyn, Maureen, Gloria, Jackie,Heather and Shona) had reduced, or were seeking to reduce, the hours theyspent in paid work in order to have more time for themselves or to developtheir own businesses. They had all worked in non-manual jobs and hadsufficient resources to reduce their hours, either through reasonably well-paid jobs or redundancy money from previous work. Tiredness and worriesabout health had also acted as triggers prompting these women to reconsiderthe balance in their lives. For example, Marilyn, a social worker, decided towork part-time as she wanted more time and energy for other projects and tosafeguard her health:

Marilyn (52 years): I was fed up finding that when I came home on a Fridaynight I was absolutely exhausted.... I’m diabetic and it’s diet-controlled andI have high blood pressure.... so I kind of weighed up the pros and consand decided that I wanted to go part-time and it’s great: I love it!

Gloria was self-employed and made it clear that she had a large amount ofcontrol over which projects she worked on. Like Marilyn, health issues (in thiscase, mental health) influenced her decisions about work. In addition, shelinked her independence at work with her independence in relationships:

Gloria (52 years): We were brought up to be very independent ... and in orderfor you to keep being independent, you have to choose properly, so we justchoose properly, and if you make a mistake then you just walk away from itand that’s it. Same in relationships. If you make a mistake you just walk awayfrom it ... ’cos at the end of the day, you need to keep your mental health.

Gloria’s extract illustrates the importance that all the women in this groupplaced upon their independence. All were divorced or had never married.Those with current partners underscored their independence from thesemen and saw their future plans as an opportunity to fulfil their individualpotential and to do what they wanted, rather than what others wanted.Extracts from Maureen and Jackie’s interviews illustrate this emphasison independence:-

Maureen (51 years): We’re two independent people who have children wholive together.

Jackie (51 years): I’m not just a mother or the job I do. First and foremost I’ma woman.... I’ve got a partner. We don’t live together — that’s somethingwe decided. I like living on my own.



The group of men who constructed less traditional gender identities (Will,Malcolm, Alec, George and Kenny) were generally in high status professionaljobs or ran their own businesses. Most wanted to retire in their mid-fifties, butthis depended upon their finances. All of the men in this group either usedthe phrase ‘work to live’ or emphasized that they thought there was more tolife than work. Some, like Will, attributed this to the influence of their father,while others, like Alec, referred to the context in which they grew up:

Will (51 years): My dad worked and worked and worked all his life....There’s no way I live to work. We work to live and we live well.

Alec (51 years): I don’t consider work as an end in itself. I’m always one forlife.... Growing up in the sixties ... I suppose you are carried along by socialmovements and that does have an influence on you.

All these men had partners, and most stressed the egalitarian nature of theirrelationship. Men with children in this group discussed how they had soughtto keep time free at weekends to spend with their families. For example, bothWill and Malcolm worked long hours during the week, but had a caravan anda boat, respectively, where they spent time with their families at weekends.This also allowed them to get away — physically and mentally — from thedemands of work.

Pragmatic workers. These respondents (Diane, Penny, May, Gary, Ronald,Jimmy and Steve) had either always been pragmatic about their work (seeingit as a means to an end), or felt that it played a less central role in their livesnow they were older. Male pragmatic workers differed from the men wholived to work because they had fewer resources to draw upon, and so theirincome was of greater importance for their families. While paid work did nottake precedence over everything else in their lives, male pragmatic workerswere aware that unemployment was infinitely worse than the everyday prob-lems of paid work. The women noted the practical benefits of their jobs. Forexample, Penny remarked on the proximity of her work to her home and herholiday entitlement:

Penny (51 years): I’ve no bus fares, I’m 20 minutes from the house, I’ve gotlots of holidays through longer service et cetera, so I would have to thinkseriously to move [jobs].

The pragmatic workers were all looking forward to retirement, although themen expressed some concern about being stuck at home and described plansto join clubs, or to continue working a few days a week to ensure they did notgo ‘stir crazy’. This concern has been interpreted by others as an escape fromthe female-dominated space of the home (Wight, 1993).

These respondents occupied similar class positions: almost all the menwere manual workers and all had physically demanding jobs, while the



women were all married to men in physical, manual jobs. Their future plansfor retirement were influenced by financial resources and anxieties abouthealth. Penny commented that her husband would like to retire immediatelybecause his job was so physically tiring, while Diane and May had healthconcerns of their own. Similarly, the men in this group either had concernsabout their own health or indicated that they were aware of the possibility ofearly death amongst working [class] men:

Jimmy (51 years): If I reach 65 and I’m due my retiral [retirement], I’ll lookforward to it.... ’Cos I’ve seen I think four or five guys all retired in thereand they’ve lasted a year, they’re dying.

Ron (51 years): My theory [is] that in six or seven years time I’m off, I am outof there, and that’s it.... Hopefully: if I live that long! If I live that long!

Conclusions

Most research on work–life balance concentrates on the experiences of themothers of young children. However, lack of work–life balance is a problemfor men as well as women, and for the parents of older, as well as preschool,children (Chandola et al., 2004; Emslie et al., 2004a). Our research contributesto the literature in exploring the experiences of men as well as women inmid-life, most of whom had teenage (or older) children. Despite the similari-ties in the current work and family circumstances of these men and women,our data suggest that gender remains interwoven in the business of negoti-ating home and work life. Our methodology meant that respondents werefree to choose the situations and times in their lives when they felt it had beenmost difficult to reconcile paid work and other areas of life. It was notable thatthe female respondents discussed their current and varied concerns aboutjuggling paid work, adult children and ageing parents, while the men tendedto locate problems of work–life balance in the past; often when paid workconflicted with the demands of raising young children. Thus, while the pres-ence of children in the household was associated with a lack of work–lifebalance for both men and women, these difficulties lasted longer, and tookmore complicated forms, for women. Our data suggest that, across the lifecourse, women are seen as being responsible for maintaining smooth, orpreferably imperceptible, transitions between the worlds of home and worklife (see also Connell, 2005). As Loscocco (1997) argues, ‘changes in genderconsciousness are the “final frontier” in the quest for greater gender equalityin work–family linkages’ (p. 223).

Our research also contributes to the body of work which notes the varietyof ways in which men and women do gender (Connell, 1985; Paechter, 2003).Exploring the boundary between the ‘male’ domain of work and the ‘female’domain of home life is a fruitful way to explore how gender identities are



continually (re)constructed (Smithson and Stokoe, 2005). The range of mas-culinities constructed by our sample is illustrated by the contrast, on the onehand, between men who said that they ‘worked to live’, noting the impor-tance of life outside paid work, and on the other, the few men who ‘lived towork’, demonstrating a more traditional version of masculinity (also seeEmslie, et al., 2004b for similar findings for an older cohort of men). Somemen discussed how they had moved from a ‘live to work’ to a ‘work to live’mentality over time, illustrating the way in which gender identities are con-tinually reassessed and reconfigured (Paechter, 2003). Similarly, women con-structed a range of femininities through their narratives; some emphasizedtheir close family ties, while others underscored their independence frompartners.

Our research also points to the importance of socioeconomic positionwhen considering issues of work–life balance. Most research on work–lifebalance concentrates on non-manual (usually professional) employees(although see Collinson and Hearn, 1996; Speakman and Marchington, 2004).Through the analysis of our qualitative interviews, we identified a groupof pragmatic workers (either male manual workers, or women married tomanual workers) who discussed the practical and economic benefits of work.While health concerns often pushed them to consider early retirement, lack ofresources prevented them from doing this. Our study suggests that, for somegroups of employees, securing sufficient income may be a more pressingconcern than balancing work and home life. However, our main focus in thisstudy was on gender rather than social class. Future work should take a morenuanced approach to social class, rather than merely distinguishing, as wedid, between manual and non-manual employees.

In the introduction, we referred to Clark’s (2000) theory of border-crossingas a useful way to conceptualize work–life balance. Our empirical dataprovide some support for this theory and also suggest some ways to extendit. First, Clark’s exclusive focus on the border between the worlds of work andfamily may have more resonance for men than for women: for women thefamily may comprise many worlds with conflicting demands (for example,children and elderly parents) and so women may cross more borders (moreoften) than men. Secondly, the temporal borders between work and familymay vary for men and women. For some men in this sample, their role as afather was associated with attending key family events such as school playsor associated with spending time with their children outside the workingweek as ‘weekend dads’ (Hatten et al., 2002). The women did not discussmotherhood in this way. Finally, the ways that people position themselves inrelation to social structures such as gender has consequences for the waysthey shape the worlds of work and family (and vice versa). For example,female carers had relatively weak boundaries between home and work life asthey integrated these worlds through the identification of similar (caring)aspects in each. In contrast, pragmatic workers — who were manual workers,



or married to manual workers — had stronger boundaries between work andhome life. Collinson and Hearn (1996) refer to the way that working-classmen seek to ‘maintain an impenetrable psychological wall between “public”and “private” life’ as an attempt to distance themselves from organizationalcultures that treat them as second-class citizens (p. 69). Respondents withgreater resources were more able to renegotiate the boundaries between workand home life, through cutting down their hours in paid work (independentwomen) or by physically removing themselves to a place where they couldnot be contacted out of working hours (men who worked to live going to theirboat or caravan for the weekend).

This project raises two methodological issues. Firstly, it is interesting thatour findings cannot be explained simply by our sampling strategy. Therespondents who expressed less traditional attitudes to work and genderroles in the semi-structured interviews (men who worked to live and theindependent women) were not all from the less conventional group ofrespondents (for example, those who never married or never had children,or had very high or very low masculinity scores). Thus changes in maritalstatus, socioeconomic status and resources, and parenting experiences seemas important, if not more important, in influencing gender identities thansimilarities or differences between people in the same age cohort.

Secondly, our study raises some issues about trying to access respon-dents’ accounts of work–life balance. Integrating work and family life isintimately tied to constructions of identities and therefore questions aboutthis topic may be experienced as threatening. Given that it is women whoare expected to balance work and family life (Moen and Yu, 2000), we mightexpect women to find these questions more threatening than men. Our dataprovide some evidence that the working-class women respondents experi-enced these questions in this way. Their narratives suggest that they initiallytried to minimize problems with work–life balance, instead noting that they‘coped’ and ‘just got on with it’. Pill and Stott’s (1982) study of perceptionsof illness amongst working-class mothers came to similar conclusions. Theyfound that their respondents defined a good mother as ‘one who “keepsgoing” and copes with the multifarious demands that her family make ofher’ (p. 50).

In conclusion, while we have reported respondents’ own accounts ofwork–life balance it is important to bear in mind that their individualchoices were constrained by their socioeconomic resources and culturalnorms about family, work and gender (Moen and Yu, 2000). For example,while the middle-class independent women had the freedom to reducetheir working hours in order to enhance their work–life balance, this optionwas not open to those with more limited resources. In addition, it is strikingthat work–life balance was perceived as a personal issue to be dealt withusing individual strategies and not as a structural problem caused by alack of flexibility in the workplace and a lack of affordable childcare and



elder-care in the UK. Indeed, Caproni (2004) suggests that balance may bean unachievable goal because it is built on an individualistic, achievement-orientated model that assumes that people have choice and control overtheir lives.

To the extent that the work/life discourse remains focused on the indi-vidual, power relations will remain beyond the scope of the discourse ...who gets to define what work/life balance is? Who has access to availablebenefits, and who does not? (2004, p. 215).

Future research should concentrate on work–life balance among men andwomen in less privileged class positions in order to further illuminate therelationship between individual choice and structural constraints.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the respondents who participated in this study. Wewould also like to thank Sally Macintyre, the editors and the anonymousreferees for helpful comments on the manuscript. The authors are funded bythe UK Medical Research Council (WBS U.1300.00.004).

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Live to Work or Work to Live

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