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Work–Family Arrangements and Parenting: Are “Family-Friendly” Arrangements Related toMothers' Involvement in Children's Lives?Author(s): Sarah Beth Estes ,Reviewed work(s):Source: Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Fall 2005), pp. 293-317Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/sop.2005.48.3.293 .

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Sociological Perspectives

, Vol. 48, Issue 3, pp. 293–317, ISSN 0731-1214, electronic ISSN 1533-8673.© 2005 by Pacific Sociological Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photo-copy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, athttp://www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.

WORK–FAMILY ARRANGEMENTS AND PARENTING: ARE “FAMILY-FRIENDLY”

ARRANGEMENTS RELATED TO MOTHERS’ INVOLVEMENT IN CHILDREN’S LIVES?

SARAH BETH ESTES*

University of Cincinnati

ABSTRACT:

Previous research has examined the impact of work–familyincompatibility and policies designed to address this incompatibility on bothorganizational and employee outcomes, including productivity and dis-tress; yet no research has systematically related “family-responsive” arrange-ments to parenting to assess how these arrangements may be “friendly” tothe family. In this article, data is used from a regional sample of employedmothers to investigate this question. Mothers almost uniformly reportedthat work–family arrangements facilitated their parenting abilities, yetresults from a multivariate analysis show that associations between work–family arrangements and parenting are neither large nor widespread. Quan-titative findings are augmented by qualitative data on mothers’ perceptionsof how arrangements affect various aspects of family life. An analysis ofmothers’ responses to open-ended questions indicates why quantitativeanalyses might fail at locating relationships between work–family arrange-ments and standard parenting measures and illuminates aspects of parent-ing that are facilitated by work–family arrangements.

During the past twenty-five years, as women—including mothers of young chil-dren—have committed increasingly more of their time to the labor market (Hoch-schild 1989; Jacobs and Gerson 2001; Spain and Bianchi 1996), scholars havedrawn attention to how this trend contributes to incompatibility between thesocial institutions of work and family. A large body of research addresses thiswork–family incompatibility as well as efforts within the institutions of work andfamily to address it. One such effort involves workplace arrangements that recog-nize employees’ family responsibilities. These arrangements, some being formalpolicies and some informal aspects of workplace culture, are often promoted asfamily-responsive, or family-friendly. But the extent to which these arrangementsare friendly to the family is not yet known. Past research on work–family arrange-

* Direct all correspondence to: Sarah Beth Estes, Department of Sociology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH

45221-0378;

e-mail

: SarahBeth.Estes@uc.edu.

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294 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 48, Number 3, 2005

ments has focused on how these are related to workplace productivity and employeewell-being (see Glass and Estes 1997 for an elaboration of this point), and on whyorganizations adopt formal work–family policies (see, for instance, Kelly 1999),but not on whether work–family arrangements are associated with parents’ abili-ties to care for their children. In this article, I investigate whether work–familyarrangements are quantitatively related to aspects of parenting considered to beimportant in promoting children’s well-being, including parenting behaviors andtime spent with children. Mothers’ responses to open-ended questions are thenexamined to demonstrate that a focus on standard parenting measures obscuressome relationships between work–family arrangements and aspects of parentingthat are important to mothers.

THEORETICAL FOUNDATION

Early research on the link between work characteristics, parenting practices, andchildren’s outcomes was conducted by Kohn and associates (Kohn 1977; Kohnand Schooler 1983), whose influential social structure and personality studiesdemonstrated that occupational characteristics (such as routinization, autonomy,and substantive complexity) affect parental values and, in turn, influence howparents socialize children. This insight led sociologists to further consider the rela-tionship between specific work characteristics, parenting practices, and child out-comes (see, e.g., Parcel and Menaghan 1994) and led to the development of the“stress” approach to the work–family intersection, which focuses on how moodspillover from work mediates the relationship between these work characteristicsand parenting (Greenberger, O’Neil, and Nagel 1994).

A third perspective on the work–family interface proposes that work influenceschild rearing not only by influencing the worldview of employees and throughdaily stresses that influence parents’ emotional states, but also in the way it fash-ions opportunities and constraints for parents’ abilities to balance the time, effort,energy, and activities involved in work and child rearing (Crouter and McHale1993). This perspective is oriented to how parenting is influenced by working

con-ditions

(e.g., work hours, flexibility, supportiveness of the work environment, etc.)rather than work

characteristics.

The theoretical framework for the present investigation is rooted in this multiple-roles approach to the work–family intersection. Some research shows that multiple-role–holding is beneficial for individuals (Barnett and Baruch 1985; Barnett andHyde 2001; Barnett, Marshall, and Pleck 1992), whereas other research focuses onhow demanding roles—such as those of parent and employee—can conflict witheach other, sapping energy and causing distress (Greenhaus and Beutell 1985).The spillover model, which posits that stressors in one arena may spill over tocause stress in another area, suggests that if aspects of multiple role enactmentare distressing to parents, this impaired well-being will “spill over” into otheraspects of life, with negative effects. In other words, this perspective holds thatthe organization of work, including both work structure (e.g., work schedulingand flexibility) and work culture (e.g., level of support for families), is associatedwith family life, both through stress processes and through the simple structural

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Work–Family Arrangements and Parenting

295

constraints on parents’ time arising from multiple role-holding. From this per-spective, we can derive the expectation that parenting will be facilitated by work–family arrangements that allow parents to attend to their family responsibilities.

1

WORK–FAMILY ARRANGEMENTS

Work–family arrangements can be organized into three categories according tohow they address structural and/or interpersonal dimensions of work and family(Glass and Riley 1998; Silver and Goldscheider 1994). The first category includesarrangements that address the structure of work by allowing flexibility in worktiming (e.g., schedule flexibility) and location of work (e.g., working at home).The second contains arrangements that reduce work hours, thereby also address-ing the structure of work; these arrangements include part-time hours and leavefor a sick child, a work arrangement that is used not just for care of sick children,but also for ferrying children to medical appointments and for other personalneeds (Lovell 2004). Finally, a third set of work arrangements provides workplacesocial support, both formally (e.g., employer assistance with child care), and infor-mally (e.g., supervisor support for employees’ family responsibilities). Some ofthese arrangements allow parents to care

directly

for their family responsibilities(i.e., work reduction arrangements and flexibility arrangements), whereas others

free

parents from family responsibilities so that they can more easily attend to paidemployment (i.e., employer provided child care). This study focuses on arrange-ments allowing direct care, because these should be most likely to be positivelyrelated to parenting time and behaviors.

Most studies on the “effectiveness” of work–family arrangements have focusedon employee well-being (Bedian, Burke, and Moffett 1988; Higgins, Duxbury, andIrving 1992; Hughes and Galinsky 1994; Matthews, Conger, and Wickrama 1996;Ross and Mirowsky 1988; Thomas and Ganster 1995; for reviews, see Glass andEstes 1997, Hammer and Thompson 2004, and Perry-Jenkins, Repetti, and Crouter2000), and have used theoretical models positing that the role overload and roleinterference emerging from multiple-role–holding is distressing to parents (Cover-man 1989). These studies have yielded consistent findings that work–family arrange-ments are associated with higher levels of employee well-being.

Despite (or perhaps because of) a presumption that employee well-being willbenefit families (Lerner and Noh 2000), research relating work–family arrange-ments to family life is sparse. The research that exists typically focuses on the rela-tionship between one work–family arrangement and general family time, to theexclusion of other important aspects of the parent–child relationship. For instance,Ralston (1990) found that the lack of workplace flexibility was associated withmothers’ perceptions of inadequacies in family time. A quasi-experiment showedthat flextime increased respondents’ evening time with their families (Winnet,Neale, and Williams 1982). Another study found that mothers who worked solelyfrom home spent more time in child care than those who did not (Silver 1993).Also, some research has shown that mothers who work part-time spend moreleisure time with their children than mothers who work full-time, but less timehelping children with homework (Richards and Duckett 1994). Finally, qualitative

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296 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 48, Number 3, 2005

research examining mothers in real estate sales showed that this occupation offeredmothers flexibility and the ability to work at home, which mothers thought allowedthem to attend to the concerns of their children (Wharton 1994). This article con-tributes to this body of research by examining how several work–family arrange-ments are related not just to the amount of time mothers spend with children, butalso to the kinds activities mothers conduct with their children and the ways inwhich mothers interact with their children.

Parenting

In the debate over the “time squeeze” faced by dual-earning parents, parentaltime spent with children has been given much attention (Hochschild 1997; Jacobsand Gerson, 2001; Nock and Kingston 1988). Research on work hours and sched-ules suggests that time with children—both “quantity” time (i.e., total time withchild) and “quality” time (i.e., child-focused activities)—may be compromised orfacilitated by the structure of work (Garey 1999; Presser 2003). Even if time withchildren is somewhat intransigent in the face of conflicting work and familydemands (Bianchi 2000), Hochschild (1997) suggested that the structure of workmay play a role in what kinds of activities mothers and children define as mean-ingful. For example, Galinsky (2000), in her study of children’s perceptions of par-ents’ jobs, found that relatively mundane events, such as sharing meals with parents,were often momentous for children of employed parents (see Hofferth and Sand-berg 2001 for evidence that time spent in family meals enhances children’s socio-emotional well-being). Moreover, the time binds resulting from long work hoursand the timing of work have implications not just for family time, but also for civilsociety, as parents who are strapped for time are less likely to participate in com-munity activities (Coleman 1988; Hochschild 1997; Jacobs and Gerson 1998). To theextent that mothers’ community activities are compromised by work responsibili-ties, so too is the ability of mothers to transmit skills and attributes that affect thewell-being of their children. Indeed, structural constraints on parents’ time maydetract from strong parent–child community relationships (Coleman 1988). In thisresearch, the relationships among work–family arrangements and the amount oftime mothers spend with their children, the activities they perform with their chil-dren, and mothers’ and children’s community activities are investigated.

In addition to placing structural constraints on family time, the timing andextent of work may also be related to the ways in which mothers interact withtheir children. In their study of how employment is related to the socializationof children, Greenberger and Goldberg (1989) postulated that positive parentingstyles—those emphasizing warmth and responsiveness in parent–child interac-tion and firm and flexible discipline (i.e., a discipline style emphasizing children’sunderstanding of the basis for rules of conduct)—likely require the most time andenergy of all parenting styles because they require constant effort and consistentenactment. Accordingly, time shortages, scheduling problems, and parental dis-tress stemming from work-family incompatibilities may reduce parents’ opportu-nities and abilities to engage in high-quality parenting styles. Indeed, Green-berger, O’Neil, and Nagel (1994) found that time urgency in parents’ jobs decreased

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Work–Family Arrangements and Parenting

297

firm and flexible parental control. Moreover, Repetti demonstrated in two differ-ent samples—one of male air traffic controllers (Repetti 1994) and one of employedmothers of preschoolers (Repetti and Wood 1997)—that short-term daily job stresswas associated with parents’ emotional withdrawal. This withdrawal entailed adecrease in both positive and negative parental behaviors and emotions. Stressarising from work constraints on family life might also be related to these kinds ofparenting behaviors in similar ways. Here, I focus on two aspects of parentingstyles—warmth and responsiveness and firm and flexible discipline—that Green-berger and Goldberg (1989) have identified as primary dimensions of the parent–child relationship.

The general premise of this investigation is that parenting will be facilitated byworkplace arrangements that allow parents to attend to their family responsibili-ties. Yet some research suggests that associations between specific arrangementsand outcomes may be more complex than this general expectation connotes. Forinstance, research has shown that mothers with flextime who work some hours athome reported being better able to intersperse work and family responsibilities(Wharton 1994). These same mothers, however, explained that family interrup-tions into work were distressing. Similarly, a study comparing IBM employeeswho telecommuted with those who worked in a traditional office showed thatalthough employees who worked at home experienced positive work outcomes,family outcomes (e.g., perceptions of work/life balance and personal/family suc-cess) were less enhanced by this arrangement (Hill, Ferris, and Martinson 2003).Thus, these findings suggest arrangements offering parents time to attend to fam-ily matters may at the same time make it harder for parents to emotionally juggletheir work and family responsibilities, which may have negative feedback impli-cations for parenting.

DATA AND METHODS

The data came from a fourth-wave subsample of a midwestern longitudinalsample of pregnant and postpartum women (both primi- and multiparous) col-lected in the early 1990s. Respondents were recruited using prenatal hospitalrecords in northern Indiana in 1991 and 1992. Area hospitals served an approxi-mate sixty-mile radius, including southwest lower Michigan and north centralIndiana, providing an exhaustive sampling frame. The survey had a response rateof 70 percent of those in the initial sampling frame, and 81 percent of those weresuccessfully contacted for an interview. The first three waves of this originalstudy—the first prenatal, the second at six-months postpartum, and the third attwelve-months postpartum—yielded 304 complete records.

2

Two hundred ten ofthe original 304 respondents in the complete longitudinal file were contactedagain over the summer of 1998. Fourteen of these original respondents declinedparticipation, yielding 196 mother interviews. The current analysis uses data fromthe Time 4 subsample.

3

At Time 4, mothers were interviewed about their workand family lives, with a focus on parenting. Fathers and cohabiting partnerswere also interviewed about their work and family lives, but there was a highincompletion rate for fathers, making the father data less usable. Thus, I focus

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298 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 48, Number 3, 2005

here on the 158 employed mothers for whom there was complete data in the Time4 subsample.

4

Measures

Specific information about the construction of variables is given in the Appen-dix. Measures assessing parenting time and behavior refer to the child born dur-ing the initial wave of data collection, who was approximately seven years of ageat the time of the fourth-wave interviews.

Parenting

A

total-time

measure taps the amount of time a mother is available to her childon school days when the mother works.

Shared meals

counts the number of break-fasts and dinners a mother shares with her child on a weekly basis.

Mother/childactivities

assesses how often a mother and her child engage in several activitiestogether. The

community activities

measure is an index counting a mother’s monthlychild-centered volunteer activities and her child’s community activities. The behav-ior measures, both scales, tap aspects of a mother’s sensitivity to her child’s needs.The first scale assesses

firm and flexible

discipline style (

�

�

.72); the second assesses

warmth and responsiveness of mother-child interactions

(

�

�

.62). High scores on thesevariables indicate more positive parenting.

Work-Family Arrangements

Flexibility in location of work

is assessed with the number of regular weekly workhours worked at home. A

flexible scheduling

dummy variable indicates whether amother used schedule flexibility at least once a week.

5

Reduced hours

are assessedin two ways.

Voluntary part-time work hours

(in which mothers chose to workfewer than thirty hours per week) taps the reduction of standard weekly workhours, and

leave for sick child

assesses a mother’s ability to take time off to care fora sick child.

Supervisor support

is measured with a scale assessing supervisors’accommodation of mothers’ family responsibilities in the workplace (adaptedfrom Greenberger 1989) (

�

�

.65).

Control Variables

Research has suggested that the need for and effectiveness of work–familyarrangements may depend on the work and family demands on parents (Kossak1990). For this reason, work, family, and background demographic variables mustbe included in the analysis.

Family Resources and Constraints.

Family-related variables that represent poten-tial resources or extra demands in the struggle to balance work and family includefamily income, marital status (assessing the status of mothers as either married ornot married), and presence of preschool children. Higher incomes and being mar-

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Work–Family Arrangements and Parenting

299

ried both represent resources in the effort to balance work and family responsibil-ities. Preschool children are constraints in the effort to balance work and family, asthey generally require a great deal of time and energy from parents.

6

Work Status, Resources, and Constraints.

Research has shown that one reasonwomen pursue self-employment is to aid in work–family balance (Boden 1999).Thus, the inclusion of a self-employment dummy variable disentangles the rela-tionship between some work–family arrangements (e.g., working at home orinformal flexibility) and other unmeasured benefits of self-employment, allowingfor estimation of unique relationships between these arrangements and parentingtime and behaviors.

7

An overtime variable, coded 1 if mothers work over forty-five hours a week, is designed to assess extra work constraints that place addi-tional demands on mothers’ time. I also include a nonstandard shift variable, whichis coded 1 if mothers work rotating, split, evening, or overnight shifts. This vari-able takes into account the scheduling of work hours. Controls for managerial/professional occupational category and mother’s wage allow an examination ofthe relationships between arrangements and parenting net of class status.

Background Variables.

The mother’s education is used as a control for parentingpractices and behaviors associated with education. A dichotomous measure of thechild’s grade, kindergarten versus other, controls for the differences in time avail-ability of kindergarten and elementary schoolchildren. A child sex variable (coded1 for females and 0 for males) is included to control for differences in parentingpractices by child sex.

Analytic Strategy

Quantitative Analysis

Ordinary least squares regression is used to assess the relationship betweenwork–family arrangements and various aspects of parenting. Although a regres-sion approach assumes causality, it is plausible that some arrangements may be atleast somewhat endogenous to aspects of parenting. For instance, perhaps motherswho practice more firm and flexible discipline pursue workplace arrangementsthat allow them to do so. Testing for endogeneity would require an instrumentalvariable correlated with policy measures but not with parenting (Kmenta 1971).Because no such variable exists in this data, this potential endogeneity could notbe modeled. The results of the analysis should be viewed with this in mind. How-ever, whether these arrangements

cause

differences in parenting or whether differ-ences in parenting lead some mothers to choose work arrangements that accom-modate their parenting goals (or a recursive combination thereof), the identificationof relationships between arrangements and parenting is an important first step inthis line of research.

8

Analysis of Open-Ended Responses

Mothers who used any work–family arrangements, including schedule flexibil-ity, working at home, reduced work hours, leave for sick child, or supervisor sup-

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300 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 48, Number 3, 2005

port (154 of the 163 mothers in the sample used at least one policy), were askedopen-ended questions about whether they thought these arrangements affected(either positively or negatively) various aspects of their family lives, includingtime with their children and their own abilities to attend to daily tasks. Mothers’responses to these questions are examined following the quantitative analysis,for further insight into the relationship between work–family arrangements andparenting.

RESULTS

Quantitative Analysis

Descriptive statistics for variables in the analysis appear in Table 1. Correlationsfor variables in the analysis (available on request) indicate that multicollinearityis not a problem in the data. The correlations between different work–family

TABLE 1

Descriptive Statistics for Variables in Analysis,

N

�

158

M SD Range

�

PoliciesInformal flexible scheduling 0.39 0.49 0–1Hours worked at home 2.15 8.04 0–66Part-time hours (

�

30) 0.21 0.41 0–1Sick leave 0.74 0.44 0–1Supervisor support 3.34 1.29 .00–5.00 .65

Dependent variablesTime availability 4.55 1.73 1–14Mother/child activities 5.50 0.42 4–6Shared meals 10.44 2.87 4–14Community activities 3.43 1.79 0–8Firm and flexible discipline 2.78 0.43 2.00–3.83 .72Warmth of interaction 3.28 0.34 2.20–3.80 .62

Control variablesMarried 0.90 0.30 0–1Cohabiting 0.05 0.22 0–1Presence of preschool child 0.50 0.50 0–1Focal Child in kindergarten 0.06 0.25 0–1Sex of focal child (0

�

male, 1

�

female

)

0.37 0.48 0–1Family income 69,675.51 34,231.16 2,295.00–255,000.00Years of education 15.01 2.41 10–25Self-employed 0.08 0.27 0–1Overtime hours 0.16 0.37 0–1Nonstandard shift 0.60 0.90 0–4Tenure 4.42 4.15 .02–19.00Managerial or professional occupation 0.47 0.50 0–1

Mother income

16.63

8.56

1.19–58.67

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Work–Family Arrangements and Parenting

301

arrangements range from

r

�

.03 (correlation between supervisor support andpart-time hours) to

r

�

�

.3 (for supervisor support and hours worked at home).Table 2 displays the associations between work–family arrangements and parent-

ing time and behaviors net of family, work, and background variables. All controlvariables are included in each of these models, but only significant control vari-ables appear in Table 2. Because the small sample size detracts from statisticalpower, results at probability levels of .10 or less are considered to be significant.

Results for model 1 show that of all work–family arrangements, only hoursworked at home is associated with time availability; the more hours a motherworks at home, the more time a mother is available to her focal child. Results formodel 2 show that use of flexible scheduling is related to mother/child activities.Mothers who use flexible scheduling at least once a week also engage in morechild-centered activities with their focal child. No other work–family arrangementis related to these activities. One arrangement from each set—flexibility, reducedhours, and social support—is associated with shared meals (see results in model 2of Table 2). Not surprisingly, the arrangement associated with time availability—hours worked at home—is also associated with shared meals, as are working part-time and having a supportive supervisor. Results for model 4 show that only onework–family arrangement (indeed, only one variable) is related to social-capital–building community activities. Part-time hours is associated with approximatelyone community activity (

b

�

.84) per month.Relationships between work–family arrangements and parenting behaviors are

shown in models 5 and 6 of Table 2. Both sick leave and supervisor support areassociated with more firm and flexible discipline, whereas flexible scheduling isnegatively related to this discipline style (see column 5). Finally, results for model6 show that flexibility in place is related to warmth of interactions. Regular hoursworked at home is positively associated with warmth of mother/child interac-tions, but the magnitude of association is rather small.

These findings comport with the expectation that work–family arrangementswould be generally positively associated with parenting—an expectation thatallowed for directional differences between arrangements and various aspects ofparenting. Indeed, we see evidence of directional differences in the case of flexiblescheduling; such scheduling is positively related to mother/child activities, butnegatively related to firm and flexible discipline. Yet this is the only relationshipin which an arrangement is positively related to one aspect of parenting and neg-atively to another. In every other significant relationship, arrangements are posi-tively related to parenting. Even so, each arrangement is related to only one ortwo aspects of parenting (except hours worked at home, which is related to threeparenting variables), and the magnitudes of association is often small. Do we con-clude from this that work–family arrangements are largely irrelevant to parent-ing? Why do we not see more—and more consequential—relationships betweenthese various arrangements and parenting?

Several possibilities exist. First, because the sample is relatively small, the riskof committing Type II errors (i.e., failure to reject the null hypothesis of no rela-tionship) may be inflated from lack of statistical power. To determine the reliabil-ity of the null findings of this investigation, power analyses were conducted. It

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Work–Family Arrangements and Parenting 303

was determined that the sample size is sufficient to detect contributions to explainedvariance of as little as 4 percent, but generally not powerful enough to detect con-tributions of less than 2 percent (analyses available upon request). Second, asothers have noted, mothers may go to extreme lengths to protect their relation-ships with their children, even in the absence of work–family arrangements (Bian-chi 2000). Third, the quantitative measures used to assess parenting time andbehaviors may not capture the nature and salience of the activities related towork–family arrangements. These last two issues can be addressed with the qual-itative interview data provided by mothers who used work–family arrangements.

Analysis of Open-Ended Responses

Mothers in this study who used any of the arrangements investigated here, includ-ing flexible scheduling, working at home, part-time hours, sick leave, and/or hav-ing supportive supervisors, were asked open-ended questions about whether theythought these arrangements affected (either positively or negatively) their abilitiesto attend to family life, including time with their focal child. Specifically, motherswere asked: “Compared to what life might be like without them, do you thinkthese work arrangements help you accomplish daily chores or tasks? Do you thinkthey affect the time you spend with [focal child]?” This question focused motherson issues of parenting time and not on the character of parent/child interaction,so the analysis of open-ended questions is necessarily focused on time outcomes.

Frequencies in Table 3 demonstrate that mothers almost uniformly perceivedthat policy use enhanced their abilities to attend to family responsibilities. Indeed,many comments by mothers corroborate the quantitative findings. For instance,numerous mothers claimed that flexible scheduling allowed them to engage inactivities with their children that they might not otherwise be able to, qualita-tively illustrating the quantitative finding of a positive relationship betweenschedule flexibility and mother/child activities. Yet findings of the quantitativeanalysis do not bear out mothers’ perceptions that arrangements aided them inmeeting their family goals. Thus, in investigating mothers’ responses to open-ended questions, I focus not on illustrating the quantitative findings but onexploring why it might be that we do not observe more relationships betweenarrangements and parenting among mothers.

A review of mothers’ responses to these questions yielded three emergent themes.One category is consistent but unmeasured outcomes, the second is infrequent outcomes/latent abilities, and the third is washouts. These themes suggest that traditionalparenting measures do not capture the range of parenting issues that are relatedto work–family arrangements. Before turning to the data, these three categoriesare explained.

First, many mothers professed that their work–family arrangements were quitehelpful to their abilities to accomplish domestic and parenting tasks—but manyof the particular tasks they mentioned (e.g., coordinating transportation for chil-dren) go undetected in the quantitative measures. Moreover, many mothersdescribed how arrangements made it easier for them to accomplish tasks theywere committed to doing no matter what their work situation. In sum, many of

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304 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 48, Number 3, 2005

the consistent objects or outcomes of work–family arrangements are likely unde-tectable with the general time and behavior scales used in much family research.

Second, even when mothers did associate these arrangements with activitiesassessed by the quantitative measures, the way they talked about these outcomesindicated that they were facilitated too infrequently to be captured by these mea-sures (e.g., attending a yearly school event). In fact, many mothers emphasized theirlatent, but often unused, ability to take care of family responsibilities if the need arose.

Finally, many mothers with schedule flexibility, location flexibility, and reducedhours said they were certain that these arrangements increased the time they wereable to spend with the focal child. These comments only partially correspond withfindings of the quantitative analysis. The third emergent theme offers at least apartial explanation for the disjuncture between mothers’ perceptions that arrange-ments increased aspects of parenting time and the mostly null quantitative find-ings associated with time availability. Several mothers indicated that the use ofsuch arrangements sometimes produced “washout” effects, or nonsignificantrelationships that result from positive and negative relationships with the sameoutcome (e.g., flextime that allows a mother to work early in the morning so shecan be home when children return from school, with no net gain in time). In thenext section, I present data to illustrate these points.

Consistent but Unmeasured Events

The consistent but unmeasured events category comprises events not targetedby typical quantitative parenting measures. One such event is transportation. Thefollowing comment is characteristic of how mothers related work–family arrange-ments, especially flexibility, to the daily transportation of their children:

The informal flextime . . . allows me to take him to school in the morning so Ican see how he’s adjusting to being at school. This year . . . he’ll be used to it alittle bit, but—first grade—I just wanted to be there more. (Registered nurse,mother of three)

TABLE 3Number of Positive, Negative, and Neutral Perceptions about How Work–Family

Arrangements Are Related to Family Lifea

Arrangement (No. of users)

Effect on DailyFamily Life

Effect on Timewith Focal Child

Positive Negative Neutral Positive Negative Neutral

Flexible schedule (n � 56) 69 0 12 75 3 10Work at home (n � 23) 3 0 2 5 0 1Part-time hours (n � 31) 25 0 2 31 1 2Supervisor support (n � 84) 19 0 7 9 2 2

Note: Each aspect of family life mentioned by respondents was counted as a unique event. Therefore, numbers incells may be greater than the frequency of work–family arrangement use.a No mother specifically mentioned sick leave as an arrangement that facilitated aspects of family life.

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Work–Family Arrangements and Parenting 305

Other consistent but unmeasured events include being home for children at oneend of the day or the other:

Because of the informal flextime, I get to spend time with him in the morningat breakfast, getting ready to go to school, and on the way to school. (Paralegal,mother of one)

I’m always home when he gets off the bus. A lot of the parents that work full-time don’t have that luxury. (Aerobics instructor, mother of two)

If I couldn’t do my [work] at home . . . if I had to actually be at my office morethan I am, I wouldn’t be home when the kids come home from school. That’san important value to me, being home when the kids come home from school.(Professor, mother of two)

Finally, in one of the largest subcategories of daily events, mothers explainedthat various arrangements allowed them to accomplish what they would do any-way, but at a slower and more comfortable pace:

I get my kids to school on time. I can get home and get supper and get theirhomework done before it’s past bedtime and I’m still trying to get suppergoing. . . . It very much allows me to have a schedule in my family life that’snecessary for my sanity and the kids’ sake as well. They need some routinesand I want to stick with them. Reduced days is a great benefit but even moreso, I think I value the flexibility of the days I have to work. Because I know Ichose reduced hours and I can schedule around that. But if something comesup unexpectedly, to me the most important benefit is that flexibility. (Regis-tered nurse, mother of two)

[B]eing able to go into work later in the morning allows me to get a few morethings done [at home] and it allows [child] to stay here a little bit longer andnot be woken up at six o’ clock in the morning and hauled out at seven a.m. orwhatever. (Dental assistant, mother of one)

Another mother, speaking of schedule flexibility and supervisor support, cred-ited these arrangements with allowing her the daily lifestyle that she preferred:

There’s a certain lifestyle that I probably wouldn’t have if I had to get a differ-ent type of job. It helps me get this house in a decent order without scrambling.If I had to be someplace, if I had to punch in at eight o’clock, I wouldn’t lastvery long there because during school, for me to arrive at work at eight o’clockis nearly impossible. . . . The flexibility is probably the best thing. If I had torate them, that would be the top. Second would be supervisor support. Everytime something comes up you’re not going in there cringing, “I have to take offagain” worrying about what they’re thinking. (Market researcher, mother of one)

These comments support Bianchi’s (2000) contention that when mothers do nothave adequate supports for mothering work or when paid work interferes withmothering work, mothers complete mothering work anyway, perhaps stealing lei-sure and sleep time from themselves to do so. This perspective helps account formothers’ enthusiasm for arrangements in the face of limited quantitative relation-ships between some arrangements—especially schedule flexibility—and parent-ing time. These arrangements appear to make it easier for some mothers toaccomplish that which they would do anyway.

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306 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 48, Number 3, 2005

Infrequent Outcomes/Latent Abilities

In addition to accommodating daily scheduling problems, parents face unex-pected schedule changes, emergencies, and intermittently scheduled events suchas doctor appointments. Many mothers in this category explained that supervisorsupport, in particular, was crucial in allowing them to attend to these infrequentevents. For instance, this mother claimed that the supportiveness of her supervi-sor, combined with the flexibility of her schedule, allowed her to cope with infre-quent events:

[If] I’m running late [at work] and I am just like “I’ve got to go.” Or if a teachercalls and says, “Well, he stepped out of line at lunch and I gave him detention.”Well, a lot of places aren’t going to tolerate that kind of thing. (Bank teller,mother of two)

Another mother illustrated how her supervisor’s flexibility helped her handle aschedule debacle:

One day we thought she didn’t have school so I took her to work, and then shedid end up having school. So I had to take her to school later, but I got to spendpart of the morning with her at work. They didn’t care. I don’t even have to askabout something like that, I just do it. (Insurance claims worker, mother oftwo)

The following comment is representative of how temporarily increased or unusualfamily needs could be accommodated with flexible scheduling and supervisorsupport:

If there was something going on in his [child’s] life and he needed more atten-tion than normal, I’d make sure that I could do it and it wouldn’t affect my job.(Cashier, mother of two)

The ability to schedule and keep medical appointments ranked high in the listof infrequent events that mothers reported were facilitated by work–family arrange-ments. Forty-eight mothers made comments similar to these:

[T]he way it’s set up for doctor appointments, I would never be able to get mykids in to a doctor. My doctor is only open until five o’clock. If I have to workuntil five, I’m never gonna get there. Dentist appointments, that kind of thing.And even just running them back and forth to school because they go to a pri-vate school, they don’t go to public so they don’t even have a busing system.So, if I didn’t have that [combination of flexibility and supervisor support], Iwould be in a world of hurt. (Salesperson, mother of two)

If I wasn’t allowed to arrange my schedule around her, things such as takingyour child to the doctor, taking your child to the dentist appointment—thingsthat are considered a mom’s job—would be done by somebody else. Or if she’ssick—kids want to be home with their mom. But knowing that if she wantedme to or if I needed to, then I’d be able to do it is a great comfort. (Manager,mother of one)

Just as the ability to see to a child’s daily school transportation goes unmea-sured by traditional parenting measures, so too does the ability to see to this

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Work–Family Arrangements and Parenting 307

transportation occasionally. The ability to see to this transportation should the nor-mal mode of transportation fall through appears quite salient to mothers. Indeed,when speaking about how work–family arrangements occasionally affected theirfamily lives, twenty mothers specifically mentioned the need or desire to provideoccasional transportation to or from school.

If I’m using comp. time in the morning, it’s ’cause I’m taking him to school inthe morning, which, in a way, that’s a nice thing to be able to do. What the nor-mal situation is, is I . . . have to be at work [before his school starts] so I drophim off at his daddy’s house on the way and his daddy feeds him breakfastand takes him to school. And I wish I could be the one taking him to schoolevery day. So I guess in a way when I do get to do that it is nice. Sometimes Iuse the comp. time because the babysitter can’t pick him up after school. Andthat’s nice. I wish I could do that every day. (School counselor, mother of one)

If I get up and start doing laundry, I can go in later . . . and like transportation.If the kids miss the bus, I can take them to school without worrying aboutbeing late. (Office supervisor, mother of three)

I’ll say to my boss, I’ll call him in the morning and say, “Gosh, I need to get thekids on the bus, my husband just told me he has a meeting. . . . You know, so Ijust leave a voice mail or say, you know, I’ll be in at nine and work late or skipa lunch hour.” (Human resource specialist, mother of three)

And as the following quotes reveal, mothers’ abilities to occasionally see to chil-dren’s transportation to and from school is believed by mothers to be important tochildren:

I have a very limited amount of time that I get to spend with him. . . . He liter-ally told his teacher a couple of months ago, “My mommy never plays with mebecause she’s always got so much work to do.” If I didn’t have any flexibility atall, then it would be harder. It would be harder because obviously I’d have lesstime to spend with him. [Interviewer: does the flextime affect the kind of activi-ties you do with him?] Sometimes yes. I know there have been a couple oftimes during the year that he’s asked me to pick him up from school. Every-body else’s mommy picks them up from school, but he has to ride the bus. AndI say, “You’re the only child on the bus. Are you telling me that? The only one.The bus driver drives around town and you’re the ONLY child on the bus.”But yes, that type of flexibility, to be able to leave work early one day becausehe’d like me to pick him up from school. (Insurance sales, mother of one)

It’s kind of nice because I’m able to be home with her once in a while to see herget on the bus. She likes that, getting on the bus when Mom’s here. Or I wentout and met her for lunch one day and we just walked around the playground.That was kind of nice. I’ve never been able to do that before. (Registered nurse,mother of three)

Finally, many mothers talked about how arrangements allowed them to modifywork constraints so they could attend the occasional school function. The quanti-tative measure of community activities used here accounts for parental and childactivities on a monthly basis. Thus, this measure misses much more infrequent—yet as the quotes show, not unimportant—school involvement on the part of mothers.

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308 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 48, Number 3, 2005

[A] couple of weeks ago, [child] had a special week at school where they hadone day where the parents could come and take the kids to lunch, take themout to eat. That was a long lunch hour for me because it was a two-hour thingand my supervisor said, “Sure, that’s fine. Go ahead and do it.” Where if Iwould’ve been working for somebody unsupportive, I wouldn’t have beenable to do that and have that special time with him. . . . I think those things areimportant. (Personnel trainer, mother of three)

You know, moms remember those things that dads sometimes miss. And [I cango to] some of those school parties. I can make an appearance at school. That’sanother thing I think that’s real important to me. To plug in every once in awhile in their day. (Registered nurse, mother of four)

I’m still getting up and working until five o’clock, but I have the flexibility totry and make the programs at her school. They have parent days where youcan go in for lunch once a year . . . and we’ve been able to make those things. Ilike being able to do that. (Salesperson, mother of two)

Washouts

Finally, some mothers also explained that their use of work–family arrangementsimproved aspects of family life but also came at some expense to family life. Whenasked if her part-time schedule had any effect on the amount of time she spent withher child or the kinds of activities she could do with her child, this mother explainedthat her part-time schedule sometimes detracted from time with her child:

There are two days that are my long days that do [affect time spent with child].My half days don’t because I’m home by the time he gets off the bus. (Dentalhygienist, mother of two)

In other words, this mother had more time with her son on her half days, butless time with her son on her long days, resulting in a net gain of nothing for timespent overall. Another mother with a similar schedule related her long versusshort days to housekeeping, but the implications for time with her children areclear from this statement:

When I work ten hours . . . if I get home at seven and the kids go to bed ateight-thirty or nine, [spouse] is pretty much it for the household work. But onthe other hand, the house is really clean on Mondays and Fridays, because I’moff all day. (Clinical pharmacist, mother of four)

The following mother explained that the schedule of her part-time hourshelped her do daytime child-centered activities, but prevented her from joining insuch activities at night:

Because I work evenings, she’s in school all day so by the time she gets homefrom school, I’m going to work, so I never see her during the week. I can go onfield trips and help out at school during the day, but I can’t do any of her activ-ities that she has at night. (Laboratory technician, mother of two)

Finally, this mother juxtaposed the positives and negatives of her flexiblescheduling:

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Work–Family Arrangements and Parenting 309

During the winter hours and school hours I have chosen to work nine to six. Ifind it easier to do the nine-to-six because I’m sure the kids are out the door,dressed, looking normal, you know. . . . When I have chosen to work nine-to-six I don’t get home until seven in the evening. He typically needs to be in thebed by eight, eight-fifteen, so that’s a very short time frame to spend with him.It’s a good thing if you want to look at it [that way], but to me seven is verylate. (Administrative assistant, mother of two)

This mother’s flexibility allowed her to attend to aspects of morning family life,but at the cost of what she considered quality time with her child.

The concept of a washout effect may be useful in squaring some of the nullquantitative findings with the overwhelming number of positive responses mothersmade regarding their perceptions of the relationships between arrangements andfamily life (shown in Table 3). The preceding quotes indicate that some mothersare aware of trade-offs, but these quotes, insofar as they recognize trade-offs, arenot representative of mothers’ comments in general. The very nature of some ofthe work–family arrangements investigated here, however, suggests that wash-out effects should be quite common. Schedule and location flexibility give parentslatitude in the scheduling and location of their work, but they do not decreasethe amount of work that parents must do. Therefore, although these arrange-ments allow parents the discretion to prioritize family considerations overwork considerations, a prioritization of work considerations over family consid-erations often must follow so that work–family balance will be restored (Wharton1994).

The qualitative data suggest that these arrangements allow parents to attend toaspects of family life that they prioritize, perhaps at a “cost” to family life ofaspects that they value less. For instance, schedule flexibility may allow a motherto put her child on the bus each morning, but at the cost of staying an hour later atwork in the evening so she can complete all work responsibilities. But if thismother values her role in morning transportation more than the time at which shereturns home at night, this is perceived as a net gain, even though quantitativedata on family time shows no net gain. This finding squares with Garey’s por-trayal of mothers who work the night shift because it “allows them to be the kindof mothers they want to be” (1999:109). These mothers mostly arrived home fromwork after children were readied and off to school, but were home in the after-noons and evenings, just as are “stay-at-home” mothers.

Summary

I undertook this investigation to explore how work–family arrangements mightbe related to aspects of parenting that are consistent predictors of children’s well-being. The quantitative results suggest that some arrangements may be related tochildren at least indirectly through parenting time, activities, and behaviors.However, as qualitative data suggest, when arrangements are used only occasion-ally to facilitate the smooth functioning of family life, typical parenting measuresare unlikely to suffice in assessing the impact of work arrangements on parenting.When these arrangements are used on a more consistent basis, they often involve

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310 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 48, Number 3, 2005

small adjustments to daily schedules that go unmeasured in quantitative form, orthat wash out in quantitative analyses.

Even so, the qualitative data show that mothers believe aspects of their chil-dren’s lives (as well as their own) are improved by these arrangements. Not allsuch aspects are captured by the quantitative data, but they do represent localesof family life valued by mothers, in part because mothers think children are faringbetter with relatively small adjustments (e.g., being home to put a child on thebus) or additions (e.g., having mother take child to the doctor, or having motherdo something out of the ordinary). In the following comment, one mother elo-quently explained how work–family arrangements (in this case, flexibility) canfacilitate these relatively small but, as she thinks, not inconsequential adjustments:

There have been times when I was working the full-time hours and I remem-ber just knowing that she was getting out of school and I was just done—Icould go to another store, or I could just take off for the day. I chose to take offand go pick her up and spend time with her. I couldn’t do that if I worked anyother job. I couldn’t look at my watch and think: it’s three-thirty. I’m going toget my child and knock off for the day. Nobody cares that that’s what I did, buther. (Display designer, mother of three)

DISCUSSION

This research provides a starting point for thinking about the relationship betweenfamily life and workplace arrangements that recognize employees’ caregivingresponsibilities. In general, findings show that the use of workplace arrangementsby employed mothers is positively related to parenting time and parenting behav-iors, although not all relationships are positive. For instance, schedule flexibilitywas associated with more mother/child activities but less firm and flexible disci-pline. In contrast, location flexibility (i.e., hours worked at home) was positivelyassociated with several aspects of parenting. Mothers who worked some hours athome were more available to their school-aged child, ate more meals with theirchild, and parented their child more warmly and firmly. Although working part-time was not associated with the amount of time mothers spent with children, itwas associated with shared meals and community activities. These findings sug-gest that reduced time commitment to work does not necessarily imply moreoverall time with family, but part-time schedules may facilitate specific activities(or mothers who want to engage in certain activities may choose part-time sched-ules to accommodate them).

Supervisor support was associated with two aspects of parenting—one timeaspect (shared meals) and one behavior aspect (firm and flexible discipline). Thatthis support was significantly associated with parenting net of all other workplacearrangements is meaningful. This finding indicates that supervisors may beimportant aspects of family-friendly workplaces not only because they encourageor discourage employees from using formal work–family arrangements, but alsobecause they can allow the blurring of work–family boundaries when familyresponsibilities bleed into work. Finally, a less-than-intuitive finding showed thatmothers who were allowed to take leave for a sick child reported more firm and

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Work–Family Arrangements and Parenting 311

flexible discipline styles. It is not clear why this would be the case. The theoreticalframework employed here suggests that each of these relationships is due to eithertime or stress mechanisms or both, a perspective that merits more explicit attentionin future research.

Despite these several associations, the relationships between arrangements andparenting are neither large nor widespread. It would be premature to concludethat work–family arrangements are only marginally related to parenting, how-ever. In part, this is because mothers’ responses to open-ended questions suggestseveral ways in which these arrangements might be related to aspects of parent-ing unmeasured here. In addition, it is also important to note the demographics ofthe children in this study. These children are in school, meaning there are struc-tural constraints on children’s time as they are away from home for the school day.Children’s time constraints may affect the potential relationships between work–family arrangements and general aspects of parenting time. Just as parents’ fam-ily responsibilities change over the life cycle of their children (Kossak 1990), theassociations between parenting and work arrangements may differ accordingly(Presser 2003).

Although there are few quantitative relationships between arrangements andparenting, mothers perceive that arrangements help them accomplish tasks impor-tant to their children and, subsequently, to them. Mothers’ comments show thateven given ideal data for quantitative modeling procedures, researchers may notfind strong relationships between work–family arrangements and typical quanti-tative aspects of parenting. Indeed, in the analysis of mothers’ open-endedresponses, this study identified several reasons that family outcomes of mothers’policy use may go undetected by standard parenting measures. However, thisanalysis also brought to light other quantifiable outcomes of mothers’ policy use,including children’s transportation and appointments, aspects of the work–familyintersection that future research should consider.

There are some limitations of this study that future researchers should attemptto address. For instance, as with much other social research, this line of inquirywould benefit from longitudinal data, which would allow for causal modelingand would also allow the use of fixed effects models that control for unmeasuredheterogeneity. Experimental methods, in which parenting could be assessed pre- andpost-arrangement use, would be ideal (Perry-Jenkins, Repetti, and Crouter 2000).Moreover, because the analysis is limited to mothers, it yields only a partial pic-ture of how work–family arrangements are related to family life. It would be instruc-tive to know how arrangements and parenting are related for fathers, how fathers’policy use is related to mothers’ parenting, and vice versa. Especially in light ofMoen’s and Yu’s (2000) finding that couples, together, construct responses to workand family responsibilities, the omission of fathers leaves questions about howcouples’ coordination of work–family policy use might be related to parenting.

CONCLUSION

Although the term “family-friendly policies” has entered the common lexicon, untilnow little empirical work has addressed the connection between work–family

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312 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 48, Number 3, 2005

arrangements and parenting. Accordingly, this study makes a unique contribu-tion to our understanding of work–family arrangements and family life. By usingdata including a range of arrangements in combination with detailed informationabout parenting, this study has been able to show that arrangements are related toseveral aspects of parenting time and behaviors net of other arrangements. More-over, it shows that, to the extent that work–family arrangements are associatedwith these aspects of parenting, relationships are mostly positive. Yet in the quali-tative analysis, these arrangements could result in washouts, situations in whicharrangements yielded more time in one area of family life but less in another. Thisconcept fits with the perspective that work–family arrangements are not uni-formly related to family life. Future researchers should bear in mind the possibil-ity of competing positive and negative relationships between arrangements andparenting.

Findings from the analysis of mothers’ open-ended responses suggest that theends to which mothers apply work–family arrangements are quite varied andoften depend on their own or their children’s desires. Thus, instead of relying on apriori notions of “positive” aspects of parenting and family life, researchers needto consider how both parents and children prioritize various aspects of family life(Hochschild 1997) and how the community environment in which families residemay impact these priorities (e.g., do children take the bus to school or walk toschool or are they driven by a parent?). To fully understand the role of work–family arrangements in the daily lives of families, researchers should begin byasking parents for what purposes they use policies. My analysis has shown thatunless researchers pay particular attention to the ends to which parents applywork–family arrangements, we are likely to overlook the nooks and crannies offamily life in which arrangements may make the biggest differences.

APPENDIX: VARIABLE CONSTRUCTION

Firm and flexible discipline1 � not true; 2 � sometimes; 3 � often; 4 � very often(a) How often do you allow child input into setting rules?(b) How often do you take into account child’s preferences in making family

rules?(c) When you make rules, how often do you explain your reasoning?(d) How often do you take child’s desires into account before asking child to

do something?(e) How often do you wait to decide punishment until you hear what your

child has to say?(f) How often is child allowed to express negative feelings toward you with-

out getting into trouble.Warmth

1 � never; 2 � sometimes; 3 � often; 4 � very often(a) How often do you praise child?(b) How often do you hug child?(c) How often do you yell at child when he or she misbehaves (reverse coded)?

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Work–Family Arrangements and Parenting 313

(d) How often do you show disappointment in your child by turning awayfrom him/her (reverse coded)?

(e) How often do you argue with child (reverse coded)?Community activities

Sum of mothers’ community activities in the past month, including parent-teacher organization or other school activity, religious youth group, communityyouth group, or team sports/youth athletic clubs, and children’s extracurricu-lar activities, including Boys’/Girls’ Club, religious groups, YM/WCA, sportsteams, 4-H club, or any other community-based group.

Mother/child activities1 � not at all; 2 � once a year; 3 � a few times a year; 4 � once a month; 5 �once a week; 6 � several times a week.How often do you spend time with child:(a) in leisure time away from the home(b) at home working or playing together(c) having private talks(d) helping with reading or homework; and(e) going for bike rides, or walks or to parks or playgrounds.

Total time available to childMother’s estimates of how much time they spend in the same location as theirchild on school days when employed mothers work.

Hours worked at homeContinuous measure of regular hours worked at home per week.

Informal flexibilityHow often do you use flexible scheduling?1 � daily, 3–4 times a week, or 1–2 times a week; 0 � otherwise.

Part-time hours: 1 � � 30 hours/wk.; 0 � otherwise.Sick child leave: 1 � R can use sick leave to care for a sick child; 0�otherwise.Supervisor support

1 � strongly agree; 2 � agree; 3 � neither agree nor disagree; 4 � disagree; 5 �strongly disagree.To what extent do you agree that:(a) My supervisor is flexible about my scheduling so that I can meet my family

needs (e.g., take a child to the doctor, go to a school function) (reverse coded).(b) My supervisor is tolerant when I receive phone calls from home while I’m

at work (reverse coded).(c) My supervisor has let me or would let me bring my child to work in an

emergency (e.g., the babysitter doesn’t show up) (reverse coded).(d) My supervisor lets me come in late or leave early to meet my family needs

(reverse coded).Family income

Sums mother income from all jobs and father income from all jobs.Marital status

1 � married; 0 � all else.

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314 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 48, Number 3, 2005

Presence of preschool child1 � child under 6 in home; 0 � otherwise.

Kindergarten child1 � kindergarten; 0 � first grade or above.

Self-employed1 � self-employed; 0 � otherwise.

Overtime1 � work hours are � 45 hours a week; 0 � otherwise.

Nonstandard work scheduleSum of yes (1) and no (0) responses to five questions regarding nontypical workarrangements. These arrangements include evening or night shift work, rotat-ing shift work, split shift work, and mandatory overtime (over 40 hours a week).

Manager/professional3-digit occupation codes were aggregated according to the 1980 Dictionary ofOccupational Title categories for managers and professionals.

Mother wageEstimate of mothers’ hourly wages based on division of mother’s yearly incomeby mothers’ total yearly work hours.

Acknowledgments: Thanks to Annula Linders, Jennifer Glass, Steve Carlton-Ford, Stacy De Coster, Tor Wynn, and Jennifer Malat for helpful comments on pre-vious drafts. Thanks also to Vicki Dryfout-Ferguson for research assistance. Datacollection was supported by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improve-ment Award (SBR-9810953), a Midwest Sociological Society Dissertation Grant,and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This research was also supported by aCharles Phelps Taft Memorial Fund Summer Faculty Fellowship at the Universityof Cincinnati. A grant from the University Research Council at the University ofCincinnati aided coding and analysis of qualitative data. Earlier versions of thisarticle were presented at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation/Business and Profes-sional Women’s Work and Family Conference, San Francisco, CA, March 2000, andthe Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Sociological Society, St. Louis, MO 2001.

NOTES

1. The theoretical position here is that work–family arrangements facilitate or limit (in otherwords, they do not cause) aspects of parenting that have been shown to be held in highesteem by parents in general (see, for instance, Galinsky 2000).

2. Comparisons of demographic and work characteristics between women in this regionalsample and women in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) who borechildren in 1991 show few differences (see Glass and Riley [1998] for discussion of thiscomparison).

3. Attrition analyses (available on request) show that at Time 1, the fourth wave subsamplewas in large part similar (with respect to age, marital status, hours worked per week,and income) to the comparable sample from the 1991 NLSY, but that women in this sub-sample were more likely to be in professional occupations than both the NLSY mothers

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Work–Family Arrangements and Parenting 315

and those who attrited from the study between Time 1 and Time 4. This attrition resultsin a sample that overrepresents professionals with above-average educations and earn-ings. Importantly, however, these data are an improvement over those used in most pre-vious explorations of work–family arrangements, which have been predominantlyintraorganizational and/or intraoccupational (Glass and Estes 1997).

4. Data was imputed where there were missing values for independent variables, includ-ing tenure, education, family income, and supervisor support (ten cases in all). Therewere a total of five cases with missing data spread across the dependent variables.Because imputing data on the dependent variable introduces measurement error thatmay bias results, I dropped the cases for which information was missing on these vari-ables, resulting in a sample size of 158 mothers.

5. This flexibility measure should be distinguished from more formal flextime policy mea-sures. Labor force statistics from the May 2001 Current Population Survey show thatonly 11 percent of full-time wage and salary employees worked flexible hours as part ofa formal employer-sponsored flextime program (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2002). Only 6percent (N � 11) of the current sample used formal flextime scheduling, most likelybecause this sample is drawn from a nonmetropolitan area characterized by smallerworkplaces that are less likely to offer formal flextime programs (Glass and Fujimoto1995). Because so few workers used flextime policies, I do not employ this specific mea-sure in the analysis. Instead, I rely on a broader measure that gauges whether motherschange their work schedules to fit their needs at least once a week. This measureincludes formal flextime policy-users, but also counts informal flexibility use.

6. Although greater numbers of children also represent a constraint on families, results ofmodels that control for number of children are robust to this specification, and numberof children is not related to parenting time or behaviors (see Silver 1993 for a similarfinding); therefore, I do not include a control for number of children in the analysis.

7. Supervisor support, which is unavailable to self-employed women, is coded 0 for thesemothers. The inclusion of the self-employment dummy cancels out the effect of this cod-ing scheme.

8. Because the number of independent variables included in the analysis is in excess of thatrecommended, it is important to note here that the results of this analysis are robust tovarious specifications including both more and fewer variables.

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