Work and Family— Allies or Enemies? This page intentionally left blank Work and Family— Allies or Enemies? What Happens When Business Professionals Confront Life Choices Stewart D. Friedman Jeffrey H. Greenhaus OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 2000 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar cs Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sao Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin I bad an Copyright © 2000 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PubUcarion Data Friedman, Stewart D. Work and family—allies or enemies? : what happens when business professionals confront life choices / Stewart D. Friedman, Jeffrey II. Greenhaus. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1SBNO-19-511275-X 1. Work and family—United States. 2. Industries—Social aspects—United States. I. Greenhaus, Jeffrey H. II. Title. HD4904.25.F754 2000 306.3t6'0973—dc21 00-020663 135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To Audrey Bernstein Kessner, a cherished friend, who in her too brief time on this earth, showed how to live a full life. —SDF To my family, who have always been my allies in work and life. —JHG This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii 1. The Changing Dynamics of Work and Family 3 Six Major Themes How Work and Family Affect Each Other The Great Divide Between Men and Women The Changing Face of Careers 2. Choosing Work or Family... or Both? 19 Life Role Priorities Shaping Life Role Priorities HOID Gender and Family Structure Affect Our Involvement in Career and Family Inequities in Our "Available" Choices Four Conclusions About Choice and Involvement 3. How Family Affects Career Success 41 Two Questions What Is Career Success? What Leads to Career Success? Family: Bonus or Penalty? What Conclusions Can We Draw? 4. Having a Life 55 Where Our Career and Life Values Lead How Time Matters Looking Beyond Time How Gender Matters Balance and Boundaries viii Contents 5. Children: Unseen Stakeholders at Work 69 A Model for Understanding Work's Effects on Children What Affects Parenting and Child Outcomes? Summing Up 6. Support from Our Partner 85 When Do Partners Receive Support? Are There Benefits to Partner Support? Four Conclusions About Partner Support 7. Support from Our Employer 103 What Do We Mean by Family-Friendliness? Why Are Some Employers Family-Friendly? Benefits of Employer Family-Friendliness Employer Support + Partner Support Summing Up 8. What Have We Learned? 121 A Model of Work-Family Relationships Resources and Their Impact The Effects of Involvement The Dynamics of Emotional Gratification What Causes Conflict Between Work and Family? Recurrent Cycles of Influence In Praise of the Career + Family Focus Summing Up 9. What Can Be Done? 143 Benefits Three Principles for Creating Allies of Work and Family An Action Agenda Summing Up Appendix One: Design and Methodology of Our Study 175 Appendix Two: Personal Life Beyond the Family 193 Additional Tables 197 Notes 223 References 247 Index 257 Preface Our book provides new evidence and ideas that help us understand the choic- es we make as individuals and employers, about life's two central domains, work and family. We must understand the consequences of those choices, and what we can do to make allies of work and family. The research evidence comes from our study of the values, work lives, and family lives of business professionals, graduates of two business schools in Philadelphia. We've taken this evidence, interpreted it, and written about its practical implications for action in a way that we hope will be useful to any- one seeking insights about the increasingly difficult challenge of balancing work and family. We've got some good news, and we've got some not so good news. Some of what we show will confirm what many readers already suspect about how work and family affect each other. Other findings will be surprising—and provocative. We've taken a fresh look at an enduring dilemma by examining in considerable depth both the work and the personal sides of the work-fami- ly story. In recent years there has been a spate of management books on the work-family connection. Many of them focus on women and how they cope with the obstacles they face as they try—often with great difficulty—to com- bine productive careers with satisfying personal relationships and family lives. Researchers in a variety of other disciplines have also addressed work-family issues. But in each case, the focus is on only a small slice of this complex subject. Some treat family dynamics as a function of a narrow range of career and work factors. Others concentrate on the impact of work and careers on limited aspects of family life. We've found something lacking: research into the details that are crucial to understanding the tensions experi- enced at the nexus of work and other life roles. Work and Family—Allies or Enemies? addresses this gap. Our hope is to make a lasting contribution to the literature in the work-family field—not just on the business or organizational side, and not just on the family side, but for both domains. We're convinced that if society is to achieve greater inte-