Is Self-Employment a Good Option? Gender, Parents and the Work-Family Interface
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Is Self-Employment a Good Option? Gender, Parents and the Work-Family Interface Huong Dinh 1 & Angela Martin 2 & Liana Leach 1 & Lyndall Strazdins 1 & Jan Nicholson 3 & Tammy Allen 4 & Amanda Cooklin 3 Accepted: 28 September 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Self-employment is a career decision that is likely to be influenced by the gendered dynamics of work and care for parents of young children. We test a theoretical model investigating the effect a transition into self-employment (compared to staying organizationally-employed) has on the work-family interface (work-to-family, family-to-work conflicts and work-family enrichment), exploring the key mechanisms of job autonomy, flexibility and work hours for mothers and fathers. We theorize gender differences in this model which we test using national, cohort data of Australian parents’ employment transitions over 5 time points (2004–2012), with n = 4165 observations from mothers and n = 5059 from fathers. For fathers, self-employment yielded longer work hours, higher work-family conflicts, but lower family-work conflicts, and enhanced enrichment. For mothers, selfemployment heralded fewer work hours, lower work-family conflicts, but higher family-work conflicts. Job autonomy was enhanced, and positive for those transitioning into self-employment. While flexibility was positive for fathers, it was not so for mothers, eroding benefits. Results suggest that moving into self-employment ties fathers to ‘breadwinning’ (long hours); and mothers to fitting work more squarely around children’s care needs. Self-employment may entrench gender inequities in paid work opportunities, bringing caution to the current view of self-employment as a ‘solution’ to the work-family dilemma. Keywords Self-employment . Work-family conflict . Parents . Work-family enrichment . Job control . Flexible work . Occupational health . Work and family
For many people, decisions about how they manage their careers across the life course are influenced by the interaction between their work and childrearing roles, which are underpinned by social and gendered norms about work and care. A focus on, and concerns about, the psychological implications of occupying family and work roles simultaneously have resulted in a well-developed literature on the work-
* Amanda Cooklin [email protected] 1
Research School of Population Health, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
2
Institute for Medical Research and College of Business and Economics, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia
3
Judith Lumley Centre, La Trobe University, Melbourne Australia, Melbourne Campus, Kingsbury Drive, Bundoora, VIC 3083, Australia
4
Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA
family interface and on understanding any gender differences in how women and men are affected by combining work and family roles. There is consensus that although combining roles can boost well-being for individuals (i.
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