ISBN
978-1529224962Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressISBN
978-1529224979Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressISBN
978-1529224979Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University Press
Couples at Work
This book offers a unique look into how couples manage paid employment, housework, and childcare. The author explores how employment structures, policies, and practices intersect with individual attitudes to either reinforce or challenge gender inequalities in the domestic sphere through the ‘doing’ and ‘undoing’ of gender.
The book introduces a new typology of fathering as a key mechanism through which policies affect domestic divisions of labour, demonstrating how this typology shapes the tasks men undertake and the impact of this on women’s ability to act on their ‘preferences’ about how to combine paid work and home
By examining couples' negotiations of housework and childcare, the book highlights the disparity between men’s and women’s reports on household duties, revealing distinct gendered differences in how these tasks are conceptualized and measured.
“Couples at Work is one of the most rigorously and generously researched books I have read in over a decade on gender divisions and relations of paid work, unpaid care work, and household work. Emily Christopher’s thoughtfully designed longitudinal and creative qualitative research study with 25 UK heterosexual couples highlights gendered dynamics and challenges in everyday practices, identities, and attitudes to paid work and unpaid work within contexts of poorly resourced childcare, parental leave, and flexible work policies. This book beautifully demonstrates the power of nuanced methodological and theoretical approaches that address the complex, moral, cognitive, and emotional relationalities involved in who does what and why.” Andrea Doucet, Brock University
“Apt, timely evidence detailing how couples combine paid employment and childcare - essential insight for parents, employers, policy makers, and scholars.’ Lynn Jamieson, University of Edinburgh
“Christopher offers a fine-grained analysis of how parents navigate gendered moral pressures of paid and unpaid work, with particular attention to whether and how working in the private or public sector matters. A must read!” Katherine Twamley, University College London
Emily Christopher is Lecturer in Sociology and Policy at Aston University.
1. Couples at Work: An Introduction
2. Policies and Practices
3. Reconciling Paid Work and Motherhood
4. Reconciling Paid Work and Fatherhood
5. Who Does the Childcare?
6. Who Does the Housework?
7. Couples at Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond
8. Conclusion
