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2006:14 Work and Family Roles and How They Are Combined in the Lives of Czech Parents: Plans versus Reality

Alena Křížková (ed.), Hana Maříková, Hana Hašková, Jana Bierzová

A sociological study of parental strategies for combining work and family was conducted in 2005 as part of the project ‘Combining Work and Family Life from the Perspective of Gender Relations and Social and Employment Policy in the Czech Republic’ (supported by grant no. 403/05/2474 of the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic for 2005-2007). This study is the outcome of an analysis of a questionnaire survey that focused on the degree to which Czech parents develop individual and family strategies for combining work and family life, and the objective was to examine the situation and strategies of parents currently living with dependent children. The study is based on the assumption that every type of family household and each age of a child involve different levels of costs (financial, emotional, social and in terms of time) for the parents (mothers and fathers), and the pressure these costs put on efforts to combine work and family change in relation to the child’s age (family cycle) and the family’s situation, and also that the problem of combining work and family usually exists in families with children aged 18 or under, who (usually) are not yet independent, especially economically. Ideas, plans, and strategies, on the one hand, and labour market conditions and stereotypical notions about the family and employment roles of women and men, on the other hand, are mutually influential and the aim of this study is to describe this conflict and draw attention to certain dimensions in these dynamics in relation to parenthood. The first two chapters by Hana Maříková and Alena Křížková trace how plans and ideas about work and the family clash with the realities of gender roles and the conditions and obstacles to the fulfilment of such plans for women and men in Czech society and look at the resulting strategies contemporary parents adopt to combine work and family life. The next two chapters focus on the current issues of the formation of parental roles and strategies in contemporary Czech society. Hana Hašková looks at reproduction plans and early childcare in connection with the socio-demographic changes in society since 1989. Jana Bierzová compares the time that mothers and fathers invest in caring for their children, in household work, and in paid work.

Keywords

Combining work and family life, family strategies, work strategies, reproductive strategies and plans, gender inequalities, the division of labour and care in the family.

Summary

This study Work and Family Roles and How They Are Combined in the Lives of Czech Parents: Plans versus Reality presents the results of qualitative sociological research on parental strategies for combining work and family life, which was conducted in 2005 as part of the research project ‘Combining Work and Family Life from the Perspective of Gender Relations and Social and Employment Policy in the Czech Republic’ (supported by grant no. 403/05/2474 of the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic for 2005-2007). The target group of the quantitative research discussed in this study are men and women parents in families with children aged 18 and under. Quantitative research on the conditions and factors that dynamically affect the ability to combine work and family revealed the growing variability of types of households and cohabitation with children, the family cycle, and partly also the changing conditions of the labour market and their impact on the family. A questionnaire survey was carried out in 2005 by the Public Opinion Research Centre at the Institute of Sociology AS CR on a representative sample of 1998 parents (men and women), who live in the same household with children aged 18 and under. The main characteristics that the selection of parents was based on were: gender, age, education, region, and type of family (two-parent, lone-parent, gender of parental head of household). The base assumption was that each type of family household and each age of the child involve varying levels of costs (financial, emotional, social and in terms of time) for the parents (mothers and fathers), and the pressure these costs put on efforts to combine work and family change in relation to the child’s age (family cycle) and the family’s situation. It was also assumed that the problem of combining work and family usually exists in families with children aged 18 and under, who (usually) are not yet independent, especially economically. Among some families with children aged 18 and under it was possible to assume both the burden of having to care for children and the burden of having to care for elderly family members (the sandwich generation). The objective of the research was to identify the strategies and methods of combining work and family in different types of family according to the socio-economic position of the parents and according to the different stages in the life cycle.
The results of the research show that it is not always possible to speak about men and women as a homogeneous, monolithic group. Within these categories there are numerous differences, which in the case of parenthood are particularly evident in the female population. It can even generally be said that perhaps it is these obstacles and demands affecting the combination of work and family life that women especially face that result in women being a much more internally diversified category than men with regard to living conditions, plans, choices, and strategies. Women are differentiated not just on the basis of age and significantly also on the basis of education (as is often in the case also among men) but also in terms of the number of children they have and socio-economic background.
This study is divided into five thematic chapters, each of which analyses a selected aspect of contemporary Czech parenthood from the perspective of the demands, conditions, and strategies for achieving a work/life balance.
In the chapter on Parents in the Labour Market – Real Options and Hypothetical Choices, Hana Maříková focuses on the work strategies and the significance of work roles in the lives of contemporary parents. From a gender perspective she examines on the one hand the conditions and barriers affecting the fulfilment of work plans and aspirations and on the other hand the significance of individual aspects of work and satisfaction with them in the lives of parents in relation to their socio-economic status, family cycle, and type of family. The aim of the chapter is to answer questions about the nature of the barriers to work fulfilment faced by parents, how they perceive the conditions and obstacles affecting the fulfilment of their work aspirations, and how working life intervenes in their ability to devote themselves to their family and children. The real options and preferences of women and men differ entirely and do so along the lines of gender stereotypes. Having a family is still reflected to a significant but varying degree in the ways men and women arrange and organise their lives. Men put greater emphasis on work performance and results, while women – mothers – always take into account their family situation and the possibilities it allows them.
The responses of parents with higher education overturn general stereotypes and show that personal fulfilment through work and satisfaction with work performance need not automatically be achieved at the expense of the family. They often cite the positive influence that work has on their ability to devote themselves to their children. At the same time, under certain circumstances, the ‘general’ (gender) pattern or prescription does apply in the sense that there exists ‘a type who provides care in the family’ and ‘a type who provides for the family’s material security’, which in the majority of cases corresponds to the ‘simple’ division along the axis of ‘gender’, but in the case of lone-parent families there occurs a shift – men begin to put greater emphasis on work conditions that correspond to the ‘caring type’ (part-time work, etc.) and women emphasis being able to materially provide for the family (i.e. longer working hours, etc.), thus breaking the ‘simple’ (gender) pattern.
In the chapter on How Contemporary Parents Organise and Manage Work and Family Life, Alena Křížková focuses on the topic of how parents combine work and family life and inquires into the nature of parental ideologies in terms of parents’ ideas about the division of care and paid work between partners. These ideas are compared with real involvement in care and work, and the two, mutually influential dimensions are set in the framework of the family cycle. The basic question in this chapter is how contemporary parents perceive their ability to combine work and family in their lives, what strategies are employed by those parents who manage to combine work and family, what are the main sources of the difficulties with integrating work and family responsibilities, and what strategies are regarded as effective by those who have trouble combining the two spheres of their lives. The primary source of problems with combining work and family in the lives of contemporary parents is the lack of men’s participation in the household and in raising and caring for the children, and the fact that these responsibilities fall to women, given the frequent unavailability of relevant services, the assistance of others, or, especially, money. The evaluation of the ability to combine work and family depends strongly on economic circumstances, in part directly, because a lower standard of living contributes to a reduced sense of being able to cope with this task, especially on the part of women, and a lack of money is the most important factor behind problems with combining work and family, and in part indirectly, because a substantial work burden (motivated largely by the need for a second income or economic independence) combined with caring for children tends more often in the case of women to lead to the feeling that they are only coping half way with their work and family responsibilities. The most important strategies contemporary parents adopt in order to manage to combine work and family is the division of work and responsibilities between partners. Men rely more on the division of work and care with their partner, and women on an accommodating employer, the use of services, and assistance from other people. The use of flexible forms of employment is regarded as a strategy for solving the problems with combining work and family primary by those who are unsuccessful in their efforts, either because they were unable to take advantage of this possibility or because it did not significantly help them. At the same time this points to the very limited availability of alternative forms of employment that would suit parents trying to reconcile work and family responsibilities.
In the chapter on Reproduction Plans and the Reality of Early Childcare, Hana Hašková focuses on the early stage in the family cycle in connection with socio-demographic changes in Czech society after 1989. The author analyses the individual dimensions of planned-parenthood and especially the impact on the family of two current changes in the Czech population’s reproductive behaviour: the increase in extramarital fertility and the postponement of parenthood to a later age. The author analyses the division of parental roles in families with small children, the reality of maternity and parental leave, the use of public childcare services, and the effects of the interaction of these factors on motherhood and fatherhood. The reproductive behaviour of the Czech population, which was previously rather homogeneous, has considerably diversified. On the one hand there is an identifiable group of women (especially women with lower education) that are still starting families at a relatively young age, and on the other hand there is an increasingly larger group of women (especially women with higher education) that are postponing childbirth until after their 30th birthday. Although the percentage of single mothers is growing (single mothers raising children on their own or living with a partner) in every educational category, it is more often women with lower education who are at the head of lone-parent families. The increasing number of unmarried mothers, and especially the biggest increase in the number of single mothers in lower age groups, thus cannot be interpreted as just one manifestation of the Czech population’s orientation towards a ‘West European style of family’, a part of which is also the greater popularity of consensual unions. The data from the research also indicate that returning to the labour market after parental leave is becoming increasingly more complicated for mothers. Fewer than one half of those who took parental leave returned to their original employer upon completion of their leave, and an increasing proportion among them have found themselves unemployed when they returned to the labour market after leave. At the same time it was found that almost 70% of parental leave-takers who either become unemployed or began working for a different employer were women who returned from parental leave sometime within the first three years of leave and thus were probably entitled by law to return to their original employer and to obtain a job corresponding to their initial work contract.
In the chapter on The Distribution of Housework and Childcare in the Family, Jana Bierzová compares the time mothers and fathers invest in caring for the children, housework, and paid work. She analyses the distribution of individual household tasks and the activities connected with caring for and raising the children, and notes the degree to which public childcare services are used and the involvement of other people in care, especially members of the wider family. It was found that the established patterns and traditional model of the division of roles still clearly applies in Czech society. Men in families with children often leave the responsibility for the household to women and their care for the children focuses on the children’s free time and on important decisions in their lives, especially in the case of older children. Parenthood is manifested primarily as a mother’s concern, and fathers are to a certain degree still more removed from children. In questions of work and care in the family Czech society is relatively conservative; this applies both to the division of roles in the family and to the matter of placing children in public childcare facilities or private paid care. Only a minority of families use private paid childcare services, but, on the other hand, leaving the child in the care of a grandmother for at least a few hours is for many families an everyday occurrence. This study should show how entrenched gender roles are in the family and in the labour market, but it also should draw attention to another problem that is directly related to combining work and family life: the term ‘maternity/parental leave’. The authors believe that however established the use of the term ‘leave’ is, in the Czech language its meaning is very straightforward (in Czech the term used for this kind of leave, ‘dovolené’, connotes the enjoyment of free time from work, doing nothing, relaxation, etc.), and it devalues and entirely ignores the care and work that this period involves (still performed mainly by women). The use of the term expresses the indifferent and condescending stance of society and even the state (because this is the officially established term) towards the tasks of raising and caring for children. This is connected with the higher value that Czech society places on paid work and work performance and the undervaluation of the (unpaid) work and care performed (primarily by women) in the family. The authors use the term throughout the study in quotations marks to express their disagreement with its meaning and use and to draw attention to the need to redefine this concept.