Work, Family, and Community

Exploring Interconnections

Patricia Voydanoff

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317824268
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Labour Economics
• Index: Economics

Research in recent decades has proven that the seemingly disparate worlds of family life and the workplace are in fact closely intertwined. Moreover, scholars have begun to recognize the extent to which community life influences the work-family interface, for instance, the lack of fit between school hours and work hours, and assistance provided by community-based child care services. Work, Family, and Community is the first to provide a comprehensive review and analysis of the theoretical and empirical research that has examined the complex interconnections among these domains.

This book integrates literature from several disciplines, including sociology, industrial-organizational and occupational health psychology, human development and family studies, management, gender studies, and social work. It documents significant patterns and trends in the economy and looks at the health of communities and neighborhoods, exploring the level of social integration, availability of community services, and the extent to which such services meet the needs of working families. Author Patricia Voydanoff takes an important step in conceptualizing the components and processes that comprise the work-family-community relationship, and provides direction for future theoretical and empirical work on the topic.

This volume speaks to scholars, researchers, and students who address the theoretical, empirical, and policy-relevant issues associated with the work-family-community interface.

1

A Conceptual Model of Work, Family, and Community

Work, family, and community are major domains in which individuals live out their lives. The ways in which these domains are interrelated varies over time according to the structure and organization of the economy and society. For example, recent reviews of American history (Piotrkowski, Rapoport, & Rapoport, 1987; Skolnick, 2001; Wallen, 2002) reveal dramatic economic and societal changes from preindustrial times through the industrial revolution to the current transition to a postindustrial economy and society. During preindustrial times, the economy wasmainly agrarian with no physical separation between work and family life. The division of labor was such that men worked mainly in the fields while women performed household chores such as cooking and weaving. Children also were active participants in economically based activities. Seasonal activities associated with farming such as planting and harvesting organized and integrated community life. The emergence of craftsmen and tradesmen maintained the home as the place of work but began the shift to industrialization.

The rise of industrial production in factories created a physical separation between the home and the workplace. This separation was accompanied by a greater distinction between the activities of married men and women, especially within the middle class. Husbands went to work in factories and offices while wives worked at home raising children and maintaining the household. This was accompanied by the “cult of domesticity,” which considered work outside the home inappropriate for middle-class wives and mothers and imbued work in the home with moral value. This cultural norm was dominant despite the inability of most working-class and nonwhite families to attain it. Activities such as education and health care shifted from the home to institutions within the community. Many families moved from rural to urban communities.

Within this broad time frame referred to as the industrial era, several important events introduced deviations from the major themes associated with the period. The Depression of the 1930s created high levels of unemployment among men, who were expected to be major providers. The need for increased production and lack of available male workers during World War II led to increased employment among women who previously had stayed at home and the provision of day care programs for some of their children. The postwar period resulted in the return of many employed women to the home and economic prosperity that resulted in a growing middle class and the movement of families to the suburbs. These developments affected the nature and texture of communities by changing the physical and social environment associated with home and community life.

Recent decades again have revealed major economic and societal shifts that have important implications for the interrelationships among work, family, and community. Several important structural trends are evident in the realm of the economy and the workplace, for example, the shift from a manufacturing to a service and information economy, globalization, downsizing and restructuring, job loss and insecurity, changes in the psychological contract between workers and employers, and the development of information technologies, a contingent workforce, and a long-hours culture (Lewis & Cooper, 1999; Major & Germano, 2005). Increases in the employment of married women and mothers have created greater numbers of two-earner families. This has resulted in changes in gender norms and the division of labor among husbands and wives and a shift of some child care and food production out of the home. Increases in the divorce rate and childbirth outside of marriage have created higher numbers of single-parent families. The basis of community relationships has become broader and more diffuse and less focused on neighborhood and kinship. For example, workplace and virtual communities have become more important foci of community life.

Until the last few decades, behavioral scientists considered these three life domains as separate spheres that operate relatively independently of each other. However, recent widespread changes affecting families have challenged the myth of separate worlds (Kanter, 1977). Structural unemployment and job insecurity have taken a high toll on the quality and stability of family life. Strains and conflicts experienced by two-earner and single-parent families have become more apparent as these families increase in number. These changes have exposed weaknesses in the assumptions underlying the myth of separate worlds and have illuminated the connections between work and family. This recognition has led to an explosion of research on the multiple ways in which the work and family domains influence each other. This research has demonstrated that the demands and resources associated with one domain have important effects on the role performance and quality of life in the other, either directly or through mediating mechanisms.

More recently, it has become apparent that the analysis of work and family should be expanded to include community. Broad-based analyses have indicated that work and family life are embedded in the context of the communities in which they operate. Working families' participation in community organizations and informal neighborhood and friendship relationships provides important resources in their efforts to coordinate their work and family responsibilities and activities, whereas the lack of adequate community supports hinders participation in work and family activities (Bookman, 2004). Recent research is documenting that the characteristics and processes associated with one domain influence the ability of individuals to perform their responsibilities in other domains, the quality of life experienced in other domains, and individual well-being.

These relationships are becoming more pervasive as the boundaries among the three domains become less distinct. Several scholars have observed a blurring of boundaries among work, community, and family, as indicated by a lack of geographic separation between home and paid work and overlapping networks and obligations, for example, the development of social ties at work rather than in the neighborhood (Lewis & Cooper, 1999; Poarch, 1998). Social processes such as changing divisions of labor, trade-offs between time and money, patterns of reciprocity and obligation, and the quest for economic security in an unstable world cross the preconceived boundaries of work, family, and community (Thorne, 2001).

This book uses an ecological systems approach as a general framework to begin the conceptual integration of work, family, and community. This approach suggests that aspects of each domain occur at multiple ecological levels. The ecological model of human development articulated by Bronfenbrenner (1979, 1989) focuses on four ecological levels, each nested within the next according to their immediacy to the developing person. The most immediate level, the microsystem, consists of a pattern of activities, roles, and interpersonal relations experienced by a person in a network of face-to-face relationships, which occur in settings such as the family, the workplace, and the community. The mesosystem is the interlinked system of microsystems in which a person participates-for example, linkages between family and school. The external environments in which a person does not participate but which exert indirect influence on the person are referred to as exosystems. An example is the work setting of a family member. Finally, the macrosystem is the overarching pattern of the culture or subculture in which the micro-, meso-, and exosystems are nested. They consist of the institutional patterns and broad belief systems that provide the context for human development.

WORK, FAMILY, AND COMMUNITY AS MICROSYSTEMS

From the perspective of ecological systems theory, work, family, and community are microsystems consisting of networks of face-to-face relationships. The settings in which these relationships occur, that is, the workplace, the family, and the community, are characterized by factors such as place, time, physical features, activity, participants, and roles (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Research on work, family, and community as microsystems incorporates a wide array of such structural and psychological aspects of the work, family, and community domains. This diversity has advantages and disadvantages. It may reflect a lack of theoretical focus that derives from the multiplicity of disciplines that conduct research on the work, family, and community microsystems. These include sociology, psychology, organizational behavior, family science, human development, social work, gerontology, family therapy, law, and occupational health. This lack of focus makes it difficult to develop comprehensive yet manageable theoretical frameworks for research. However, it is useful in documenting the complexity involved in understanding the work-family-community interface. Eventually, this complexity needs to be embraced to create meaningful theories.

Six broad categories of work, family, and community characteristics are used here as a framework for examining relationships among work, family, and community. These categories are derived from an analysis of the dimensions of work, family, and community used in previous empirical research. They include structure, social organization, norms and expectations, support, orientations, and quality. Structure, social organization, and norms and expectations operate at the structural, organizational, or group level, whereas support, orientations, and quality are individual-level categories (Voydanoff, 2001a, 2001b).

Characteristics of Paid Work

Themost general definition of work refers to it as physical or mental activity that is intended to provide goods and services or to produce something of value for others. This definition encompasses both paid and unpaid work. More specifically, work has been considered as a set of prescribed tasks that an individual performs while occupying a position in an organization. This definition focuses on paid work or employment (Zedeck, 1992). This book views the work domain as the realm of paid work. Unpaid work performed within the family and the community is considered as part of the family and community domains.

Structure describes the basic organization and boundaries of a domain. Structure in paid work encompasses organizational characteristics, extrinsic characteristics, timing, and spatial location. Organizational characteristics delimit the basic structural characteristics of a work organization in terms of its size (e. g., the number of employees), composition (e. g., the types and diversity of job tasks being performed), and complexity (e. g., the number of organizational levels or extent of hierarchy). Extrinsic characteristics deal with the context in which work is performed, for example, pay, benefits, job security, and opportunities for advancement. Timing includes how much time is spent in paid work (i.e., number of work hours) and when the work is done (i.e., scheduling of work hours). Spatial location addresses where paid work is performed (e.g., in the workplace, on the road, or in the home) and incorporates work-based changes in spatial location (e.g., job-related moves and transfers).

The social organization of work encompasses the demands and content of a job. Job demands place limits on an individual's work behavior that must be accommodated such as heavy work loads, role ambiguity and conflict, health and safety hazards, tight deadlines, and responsibility for the safety and well-being of others. Job content includes intrinsic characteristics that tend to focus on the content and tasks involved in doing a job and opportunities provided on the job for self-expression and self-actualization. Intrinsic characteristics commonly include the kind of work done in terms of responsibility, self-direction, and decision making; variety, skill, challenge, and autonomy; opportunities for personal growth and development; and feelings of pride and accomplishment.

Norms and expectations include the explicit and implicit rules and guidelines that govern behavior in a domain. Norms and expectations associated with paid work are incorporated in formal job descriptions and duties (e.g., performance and productivity standards), employment policies (e.g., regulations and procedures regarding taking time off), and workplace culture (e.g., workplace climate, informal norms regarding interactions within the workplace, and the amount of flexibility associated with implementing employment policies).

Individual-level categories of workplace characteristics include support, orientations, and quality. Support encompasses the provision or receipt of instrumental and emotional social support. Workplace support generally consists of support received from supervisors and coworkers. Orientations include an individual's sense of involvement in a domain as well as the perception of cohesion associated with a given domain. Orientations to work consist of salience, involvement, commitment, attachment, and aspirations, as well as a sense of community in the workplace. Quality is an affective component that includes subjective evaluations of and satisfaction with multidimensional aspects of role domains. Work role quality includes overall job satisfaction and satisfaction with various job components such as aspects of the work itself, supervisors and coworkers, the work organization, and pay and benefits. Behavioral indicators such as absenteeism, turnover, job performance, and productivity are sometimes included.

Family Characteristics

Definitions of family are of two types. One is based on membership, that is, a family consists of persons who are related by biological, marital, or adoptive ties. In some cases the definition focuses on persons sharing a household, whereas others include persons not living in the household, such as extended kin and nonresidential children. In the second type of definition, a family is defined as those who share relationships based on affection, obligation, dependence, and cooperation. Thus, a family can be viewed in terms of its membership or as an emotional unit based on love and affection whose members provide and care for one another (Rothausen, 1999).

Family structure refers to the basic organization and boundaries associated with the family domain. It encompasses the size, age distribution, and gender composition of families. Usually, it consists of the number and marital status of adults and the number and ages of children in the household. However, sometimes extended kin, former spouses, and children living outside the household are included. Family social organization consists of the ways in which family members interact with one another in their daily activities, that is, the family division of labor. This division of labor incorporates the time spent in and the scope of activities involved with paid work and its associated earnings; household chores; personal, spousal, and parental activities; care for dependent members such as children and the ill and elderly; and community involvement. Family norms and expectations are the roles and expected behaviors assigned to each family member, the sanctions that guide the behavior of family members, and the power held by various family members. These norms generally are based on a gender ideology that incorporates beliefs regarding appropriate behavior for men and women.

Family support encompasses the instrumental and expressive social support provided to and received from family members. It includes the exchange of informal social support among relatives, for example, financial aid, advice, and services such as transportation or child care. More intensive support also is provided to ill and elderly family members. Family orientations consist of salience, involvement, commitment, attachment, and aspirations as well as family cohesion. The quality of family life involves overall marital and family satisfaction, satisfaction with various aspects of marital and family life, quality of the parent-child relationship, and child development outcomes such as psychological adjustment and academic achievement.

Community Characteristics

Definitions of community refer to two aspects: territory and social relationships. The territorial definition focuses on a community as a group of people living in a common territory who share a history, values, activities, and sense of solidarity. The relational definition emphasizes social relationships independent of territory that are characterized by consensus, shared norms, common goals, and sense of identity, belonging, and trust (Voydanoff, 2001a).

Structure in the context of community refers to overlapping social networks consisting of relatively enduring social ties, which form a patterned organization of network members and their relationships. The attributes of the networks making up territorial and relational communities include size, composition, heterogeneity, multiplexity, duration, density, forms of interaction, and accessibility. These networks occur within community service organizations, formal supports, churches, schools, neighborhoods, and informal networks. Social organization refers to structural connections and patterns of interaction among individuals and groups. Community social organization encompasses the different ways in which community participation is organized, that is, through formal and voluntary organizations, friendship networks, and social control. It often refers to the ability of neighborhoods to realize collective goals through the activities of an interlocking set of formal and informal networks and organizations. The rules and guidelines that make up norms and expectations within a community consist of cultural processes such as trust and norms of reciprocity. These norms facilitate community activities within social networks and define obligations among community members.

Community support includes formal volunteering and informal help exchanged among members of a network or provided to a community member in need. Formal volunteering is assistance provided through organizations such as professional or fraternal associations, whereas informal helping is assistance given to friends, neighbors, and extended kin. Community orientations include salience, involvement, commitment, attachment, and aspirations, as well as a sense of community. Quality of community life is represented by overall community satisfaction and the evaluation of various aspects of a community, for example, community services, safety, and attractiveness.

Work, Family, Community, and Individual Outcomes

The work, family, and community characteristics discussed above generally are considered as independent variables in relation to work, family, community, and individual outcomes. However, some are used as predictors in some studies and as outco...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series in Applied Psychology
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Series Foreword
• Preface
• 1 A Conceptual Model of Work, Family, and Community
• 2 Problems With the Worker-Earner Role
• 3 Within-Domain Work, Family, and Community Demands
• 4 Within-Domain Work, Family, and Community Resources
• 5 Boundary-Spanning Work, Family, and Community Demands
• 6 Boundary-Spanning Work, Family, and Community Resources
• 7 Work-Family Fit and Balance as Linking Mechanisms
• 8 Directions for Future Research
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index