Nonstandard Work Hours and Single Versus Coupled Mothers' Work‐to‐Family Conflict

• Author: Vanessa May,Eija Sevón,Marja‐Leena Laakso,Sanna Moilanen,Kaisa Aunola
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12353
• Published date: 01 April 2019
• Date: 01 April 2019

S M  K A University of Jyväskylä

V M University of Manchester

E S  M-L L University of Jyväskylä

Nonstandard Work Hours and Single Versus

Coupled Mothers’ Work-to-Family Conict

Objective: To compare single and cou-

pled mothers’ experiences of time-based

work-to-family conict (WFC) and work-to-

family positive affective spillover (PAS)

in the context of maternal nonstandard work

hours.

Background: Despite having become one of the

central topics of work–family research, stud-

ies examining the relationship of maternal work

schedules and family roles have mainly focused

on North American samples or dual-earner fam-

ilies. Although qualitative studies have high-

lighted the problems faced by European single

mothers in relation to the combination of non-

standard work hours and family life, thereare no

quantitative or cross-national comparative stud-

ies on the association.

Method: Using a convenience sample derived

from the Families24/7 survey of Finnish, Dutch,

and British mothers with children12 years of age

or younger (N=1,106), path analysis was car-

ried out to assess the associations of single

motherhood, nonstandard work hours, and their

interaction with WFC and PAS and to compare

the associations between 3 countries.

Department of Education, P.O. Box 35 (Ruusupuisto),

FI-40014 University of Jyväskylä, Finland. E-mail:

sanna.k.moilanen@jyu..

Key Words: nonstandard work schedules, single moth-

ers, work–family conict, work–family spillover, working

mothers.

Results: The positive association between

the amount of nonstandard work hours and WFC

was found to be stronger among single moth-

ers than coupled mothers in all 3 countries.

However, in Finland, both single and coupled

mothers, and in the Netherlands and the United

Kingdom, only single mothers, experienced

higher WFC when the mother worked more

during nonstandard hours. In all countries, sin-

gle mothers experienced less PAS than coupled

mothers.

Conclusion: Dutch and British single moth-

ers who work nonstandard hours experience

the combination of multiple roles particularly

challenging compared with coupled mothers. In

Finland, both single and coupled mothers report

high levels of WFC when they work more non-

standard hours; hence, a greateramount of work

during nonstandard hours is not an automatic

indication of heightened challenges for single

mothers alone.

Implications: When aiming to improvemothers’

work–family reconciliation via social and work-

place policies, it is important to understand

the circumstances of single and coupled mothers

in different cultural contexts.

The relationship of maternal work schedules

and family life has become one of the cen-

tral topics of work–family research (Bianchi

& Milkie, 2010). Maternal working schedules

characteristic of the 24/7 economy, particularly

Family Relations 68 (April 2019): 213–231 213

DOI:10.1111/fare.12353

214 Family Relations

nonstandard work hours (i.e., evenings, nights

and weekends; Presser, 2003), have been con-

sidered to have both negative (e.g., Tammelin,

Malinen, Rönkä, & Verhoef, 2017) and posi-

tive (e.g., Murtorinne-Lahtinen, Moilanen, Tam-

melin, Rönkä, & Laakso, 2016) impacts on the

combination of work and family life. Negative

aspects include a temporal mismatch these work

schedules have with day care and school hours,

as well as the impact nonstandard work sched-

ules have on family routines, such as family

meals and time spent together (La Valle,Arthur,

Millward, Scott, & Clayden, 2002). However,

research has also indicated that nonstandard

work hours can be benecial in terms of facil-

itating family time and mother–child interac-

tion when, for example, mothers can spend more

time with their children during the daytime (e.g.,

Lleras, 2008; Murtorinne-Lahtinen et al., 2016;

Roeters, Vander Lippe, Kluwer, & Raub, 2012).

Previous studies on the association between

maternal working schedules and family life

have generally focused either on North Amer-

ican samples (e.g., Ciabattari, 2007; Hepburn,

2018) or dual-earner families (e.g., Steiber,

2009; Tammelin et al., 2017), and the European

studies (e.g., Alsarve, 2017; Roman, 2017) that

look at this issue in single-mother families have

been largely qualitative. Up to now, there has

been no quantitative analysis of European single

mothers’ experiences of combining work during

nonstandard hours and family life. Hence, the

present study was designed to compare Finnish,

Dutch, and British single and coupled moth-

ers’ experiences of time-based work-to-family

conict (WFC; Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985)

and work-to-family positive affective spillover

(Edwards & Rothbard, 2000) in the context of

maternal nonstandard work hours. We expect

the demands associated with nonstandard work

hours to be particularly problematic for single

mothers who manage the roles associated with

work and family without a resident partner.More

interestingly, given that the work-to-familyrela-

tionship varies across cultural contexts (e.g.,

Steiber, 2009; Van der Lippe, Jager, & Kops,

2006), we compare mothers’ experiences in

three European countries that differ in relation

to, for example, maternal work-hour cultures

(i.e., part- or full-time cultures) and family

policies that inuence the extent and type of

support available to families to reconcile work

and family life.

L R

Maternal Nonstandard Work Hours in Europe

Some scholars suggest that economic activity is

increasingly taking place outside of traditional

work hours (e.g., Rubery, Ward, Grimshaw,

& Beynon, 2005); a phenomenon known as

the 24/7 economy given around-the-clock

availability of services and products (Presser,

2003) and that necessitates nonstandard work

hours (i.e., evenings, nights, and weekends).

The service and health sectors of the economy

have relatively high rates of nonstandard work

hours (Parent-Thirion, Fernández, Hurley, &

Vermeylen, 2007; Presser, 2003), and both these

sectors have female-dominated workforces.

Nonstandard work hours have also become

commonplace in occupations where overtime

hours and work travel cause the working day

to extend beyond standard daytime work hours

(Moen, Lam, Ammons, & Kelly, 2013).

Specic to the three countries examined in

the present study, the Netherlands stands out in

terms of nonstandard work hours due to its strict

opening hours, high levels of part-time work,

and limited availability of around-the-clock ser-

vices (Mills & Täht, 2010). Conversely, in the

United Kingdom, an increasing number of ser-

vices are available 24hours per day, 7 days per

week. Finland lies somewhere in between after

the deregulation of store opening hours in 2016.

According to statistical information collected by

the European Union (Eurostat, 2017), among

female workers in the three countries, the gures

for Saturday work range from 24.9% in Finland

to 31.3% in the Netherlands; Sunday work is

slightly less common in all three countries. Fin-

land stands out by having a higher rate of shift

work among women (28.9%) compared with

the Netherlands (14.1%) and the United King-

dom (17.7%), whereas evening work is high-

est among Dutch women (31.1%). Night work

is the least common, with gures ranging from

4.6% in the United Kingdom to 7.8% in Fin-

land. In sum, a considerable number of women,

including mothers, are required to work during

nonstandard hours in the three countries. The

most notable difference in the nonstandard work

patterns concerns women’s shift work, which is

most common in Finland.

Research on the relationship between non-

standard work hours and family form, conducted

in the United States, has indicated that nonmar-

ried women and single mothers are more likely