Long Hours and Longings: Australian Children's Views of Fathers' Work and Family Time

• Date: 01 August 2017
• Author: Jianghong Li,Lyndall Strazdins,Jennifer A. Baxter
• Published date: 01 August 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12400

L S The Australian National University

J A. B Australian Institute of Family Studies∗

J L Berlin Social Science Center∗∗

Long Hours and Longings: Australian Children’s

Views of Fathers’ Work and Family Time

Using two waves of paired data from a popu-

lation sample of 10- to 13-year-old Australian

children (5,711 father–child observations), the

authors consider how the hours, schedules,

intensity, and exibility of fathers’ jobs are

associated with children’s views about fathers’

work and family time. A third of the children

studied considered that their father works too

much, one eighth wished that he did not work

at all, and one third wanted more time with

him or did not enjoy time together. Logistic

regression modeling revealed that working on

weekends, being time pressured, being unable

to vary start and stop times, and working long

hours generated negative views in children

about fathers’ jobs and time together. The time

dilemmas generated by fathers’ work devotions

and demands are salient to and subjectively

shared by their children.

National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health,

Research School of Population Health, 62 Mills Road, The

Australian National University,ACT 2601 Australia

(Lyndall.Strazdins@anu.edu.au).

∗Australian Institute of Family Studies, Level 20, 485 La

Trobe Street, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia.

∗∗Berlin Social Science Center (Wissenschaftszentrum

Berlin für Sozialforschung, Reichpietschufer 50, 10785

Berlin, Germany.

KeyWords: child well-being, families and work, fathers, time

use, work–family balance, work hours.

Even as mothers’ employment rates have risen,

expectations on fathers to remain employed

and be successful have changed little. Yet

new framings of fatherhood are now in play,

with many fathers also striving to be avail-

able, nurturing caregivers involved in the daily

lives and routines of their children (Cabrera,

Tamis-LeMonda, Bradley, Hofferth, & Lamb,

2000). Providing money is necessary but no

longer sufcient, and a good father “is prepared

to put work second and family rst” (Henwood

& Procter, 2003, p. 343). Being available entails

spending time with children, and being engaged

means attending to and being responsive when

with them. Although time with children is a

marker of love, care, and commitment, earning

income also takes time, and the jobs fathers

typically hold or aspire to embed their own time

devotions (Williams, Blair-Loy, & Berdahl,

2013).

At issue is how the time required for earning

income conicts with fathers’ time for children

and with what consequences for families. Our

article focuses on the consequences as viewed by

children. We investigate how the gendered time

devotions and imperativesof contemporary jobs,

reected by how long and when fathers’ work as

well as their work time intensity and exibility,

are shaping what children experience and hope

for. To achieve this, our analysis combines the

perspectives of children aged between 10 and

13 years with fathers’ reports of their work time

Journal of Marriage and Family 79 (August 2017): 965–982 965

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12400

966 Journal of Marriage and Family

and work–care conicts, drawnfrom a nationally

representative cohort of Australian families.

We focus on fathers’ work time for two rea-

sons. First, fathers’ long hours on the job and

lack of equal involvement in child care are

powerful drivers of gender inequality in the

home and the labor market, underlying gen-

der gaps in participation and pay (Cha, 2010;

Cha & Weeden, 2014; Jacobs & Gerson, 2004).

Understanding the consequences of fathers’ time

allocation and commitments, as reected in chil-

dren’s experience and views, adds an impor-

tant dimension to the debate on working time,

gender, and equality, which has almost entirely

focused on adults’ points of view. This omission

neglects children’s voices and rights and ren-

ders invisible their stake in howeconomies, soci-

eties, gender relations, and care are structured.

It is therefore important to include children’s

voice in the evidence, acknowledging their cen-

trality to the problem of work and care and

their unique perspective (Corsaro, 2005; Polat-

nick, 2002). Second, public policy has typically

viewed fathers’ work time as unproblematic for

themselves or their children; family friendli-

ness, for example, reects policies and prac-

tices that usually target mothers’ work time

(father-focused policies generally concentrate

on leave; e.g., O’Brien, Brandth, & Kvande,

2007). This is surprising because there is more

than a decade of scholarly research document-

ing new expectations for fathering. Employed

fathers can experience work–family conicts at

rates comparable to or greater than those of

employed mothers (Milkie, Kendig, Nomaguchi,

& Denny, 2010; Tang & Cousins, 2005). Indeed

some scholars argue that contemporary fathers

have developed a “temporal conscience” center-

ing on time–or a lack thereof–with their children

(Daly, 1996, p. 469).

We therefore suspect that in countries such

as Australia, many fathers are facing powerful

work–care dilemmas that are salient to their chil-

dren. We link children’s reports back to their

fathers’ job and work time imperatives to under-

stand, through children’s experiences, the way

the workplace may be shaping contemporary

fathering. To date, much of the research on chil-

dren’s views has been qualitative, yielding rich

insights and underscoring the different view-

points children may have, yet this research does

not connect such experiences to structural pro-

cesses in labor markets. Little research has tested

the way the requirements of fathers’ jobs are

shaping family time through children’s eyes. We

further extend theory and work–family schol-

arship by considering multiple dimensions of

time, not only the number of hours. As well as

long work hours (especially a problem for privi-

leged fathers), we consider a wider range of work

time conditions characteristic of contemporary

jobs. Working on evenings, nights, or week-

ends is commonplace given the global exchange

of services, and work intensication is widely

reported, driven by new technologies and com-

petition for jobs, whereas the ability to change

start and stop times is an entitlement available

only to select groups of men and is rarely used

(Williams et al., 2013). Similar to work hours,

these other dimensions of work time are neither

xed nor a given, but subject to wider social,

economic, and political imperatives. As Ferree

(2010) argues, the work–care nexus in families

is simultaneously a site that shapes how children

are raised and how gender and power relations

are produced. By connecting theory on fathers’

work time devotions (Williamset al., 2013) with

sociological analysis of contemporary fathering

and children’s agency(e.g., Corsaro, 2005; Daly,

1996), our study seeks to show this nexus from

the perspectives of children and fathers.

F’ W T: D

 D

Jobs vary in how their time imperatives oper-

ate, but in competitive labor markets typical of

liberal market economies, they can be roughly

grouped into two. There are “good” jobs that

deliver high pay and privilege, and they usu-

ally include some control over time, so the

hours tend to be more exible. However, they

also require long hours and high effort. These

jobs are characterized by intense time pressure,

with employees expected to work fast, manag-

ing multiple demands and extending hours to

get the job done (Williams et al., 2013). Career

success, and in some instances holding onto

a good job, reects a tournament that aligns

with long hours and high effort imperatives, but

career tournaments also occur in lower paid,

lower status jobs (O’Neill & O’Reilly, 2010). In

these jobs, success and security does not typ-

ically center on how long or how intensively

fathers work, but the contest is over availabil-

ity and when they work (Williams et al., 2013).

Although (somewhat) shorter hours might free

up time for caregiving, a lack of predictability