Feeling Rushed: Gendered Time Quality, Work Hours, Nonstandard Work Schedules, and Spousal Crossover
| Date | 01 February 2017 |
| Author | Judith E. Brown,Lyn Craig |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12320 |
| Published date | 01 February 2017 |
L C J E. B University of New South Wales
Feeling Rushed: Gendered Time Quality, Work
Hours, Nonstandard Work Schedules, and
Spousal Crossover
The authors investigated gender differences in
couple parents’ subjective time pressure, using
detailed Australian time use data (n=756 cou-
ples with minor children). They examined how
family demand, employment hours, and non-
standard work schedules of both partners relate
to each spouse’s non-employment time quality
(“pure” leisure, “contaminated” leisure, multi-
tasking housework, and child care) and subjec-
tive feelings of being rushed or pressed for time.
Mothers averaged more contaminated leisure
and less pure leisure and did much more unpaid
work multitasking than fathers. These results
suggest that these differences in time quality
do partially account for mothers feeling more
rushed than fathers. Weekend work was asso-
ciated with mothers having less pure leisure,
but not contaminated leisure. The opposite was
found for fathers. Spousal work characteristics
also related to time use and feeling rushed in
gendered ways, with male long work hours pos-
itively associated with higher time pressure for
mothers as well as the fathers who worked them.
Time scarcity is at the center of signicant con-
cern about the quality of contemporary family
Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South
Wales, John Goodsell Building, UNSW Sydney, New South
Wales 2052, Australia (lcraig@unsw.edu.au).
This article was edited by Jennifer Glass.
Key Words: families and work, family interaction, house-
work/division of labor,time use, work hours.
life (Edwards & Wajcman, 2005). Excessive
time demand and overwork limit opportunity
for recuperative activities necessary to health
and well-being and may diminish the quality of
leisure time (Roger & Amato, 2000; Strazdins,
Broom, Banwell, McDonald, & Skeat, 2011).
Time pressures, both objective in terms of
workload and subjective in terms of feeling
rushed and harried, can arise from both the
public sphere of work and the private sphere
of the home (Kleiner, 2014). Also, time is both
an individual and a family resource; the way
each member of a household spends time has
implications for how others in the family spend
and experience theirs. The time commitments of
each partner in couple families thus potentially
matter to their spouse’s time demand and time
stress as well as their own. Yet little research
has explicitly examined connections between
couples’ time commitments and each partner’s
subjective time pressure. Men and women
experience the demands of work and family
differently, so there are likely to be gender
differences in cross-spousal associations. In
this study we explored this issue, looking at
how family demand, work hours, and work
schedules of both mothers and fathers relate to
the quality of their non-employment time and to
each spouse’s subjective time pressure.
B
A major factor contributing to family time
scarcity is the amount of time spent in market
Journal of Marriage and Family 79 (February 2017): 225–242 225
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12320
226 Journal of Marriage and Family
work. The mass entry of women into the paid
workforce has profoundly changed household
time allocation patterns and represents a major
reallocation of family time to the labor market
(Strazdins et al., 2011). For example, three
decades ago fathers were the sole breadwinners
in most U.S. families, resulting in a family
allocation of just over 44 hours a week to paid
work. By 2000, most U.S. couples with children
were dual earners, devoting more than 80 hours
a week to paid work (Jacobs & Gerson, 2004).
Furthermore, recent research indicates that
in neoliberal countries, including the United
Kingdom, United States, Canada, and Australia,
average individualworking hours have increased
(Gershuny, 2011). This suggests a reversal of
earlier trends toward increasing leisure (Robin-
son & Godbey, 1997). In Australia, for example,
over 40% of full-time employees now work
more than 50 hours a week (Pocock, Skinner,
& Williams, 2012). This applies mostly to men
rather than women (Craig & Mullan, 2009).
However, we would expect both members of
couples in which one partner works long hours
to feel the time pressures they create. Thus, we
investigated how household work hours, arising
both from couples’ combined participation and
long average work weeks, contribute to each
partner’s subjective time pressure.
Potentially adding to family time pressures
are contemporary work schedules. A substantial
proportion of employees in neoliberal countries
work nonstandard hours (Rapoport & Le Bour-
dais, 2008). There is reason to expect that work
timing has additional implications for time pres-
sure over and above amount of hours worked
(Craig & Brown, 2014). A body of research
suggests that nonstandard work schedules have
detrimental effects on employees’ health and
well-being, on their job satisfaction, and on
their work–life balance (Bardasi & Francesconi,
2000; Presser, 2003; Shields, 2002; Tausig &
Fenwick, 2001). The negative outcomes of non-
standard work are thought to arise at least in part
from the constraints it places on how employees
can spend their non-work time, including mak-
ing it difcult to coordinate time with others
(La Valle, Arthur, Millward, & Scott, 2002).
Finding it hard to t activities and social contact
around work schedules may heighten feelings of
subjective time pressure. Like work hours, work
schedules potentially affect not only the individ-
ual who works them but also others in the family.
Nonstandard hours have been connected with a
greater likelihood of marital problems, marriage
instability, and divorce (Kalil, Ziol-Guest, &
Epstein, 2010; Presser, 2000; Shields, 2002),
which may be related to the time pressures
involved. Family psychologists note the advan-
tages of couples spending time together to
promote bonding (Strazdins, Clements, Korda,
Broom, & D’Souza, 2006), but nonstandard
hours lead to “de-synchronization” and reduce
shared couple time (Lesnard, 2008; Wight,
Raley, & Bianchi, 2008). Partners also have to
adjust their time allocation around the nonstan-
dard hours worker’s schedule, for example, by
doing more child care during evenings or week-
ends to compensate for their spouse’s absence
(Craig & Powell, 2011). This may reduce their
leisure quality and mean that both nonstandard
workers and their spouses experience more
subjective time pressure, although this has not
been previously addressed.
As household work hours have gone up and
nonstandard work schedules have become more
widespread, changes in parenting practices have
led to increased time spent caring for chil-
dren (Bianchi, Robinson, & Milkie, 2006; Sayer,
Bianchi, & Robinson, 2004). There have also
been changes in the composition of time spent
with children, in accordance with the ideology
of intensive parenting (Hays, 1998). A greater
proportion of parents’ time with children is now
spent in active child care, in educative activi-
ties, and in child-focused recreation and leisure
activities (Craig, Powell, & Smyth, 2014; Gra-
cia, 2014). In addition to paid work, domestic
demands matter to how time-poor people are and
how time pressured they feel (Jacobs & Gerson,
2004; Kleiner, 2014). The time pressures gen-
erated by family demand are particularly high
when children are young and their care needs are
most pressing (Bianchi et al., 2006).
Thus amount of work, timing of work, and
high parenting expectations all contribute to
time pressures upon contemporary families. It is
important to note that these factors may not only
raise overall workload and compress the quan-
tum of parental leisure time, as previous research
has found (Bianchi et al., 2006; Craig & Mul-
lan, 2012), but also inuence how that leisure
and other non-employment time is experienced
qualitatively. The quality of non-employment
time may in turn be related to higher subjec-
tive time pressure; that is, parents may feel
more rushed and harried if their non-work time
quality, associated with having young children
To continue reading
Request your trial