New working conditions and new
demands for childcare: atypical working
hours and vulnerability
Claude Martin
Research Professor at the CNRS
Director of the Research unit on political action in Europe
CNRS, Rennes
Main objectives
• Work and family life balance is a main issue in many
European countries
• This « conciliation » is even harder for parents
concerned by atypical working timetables, and
mainly in countries where no specific childcare
solutions has developped
• Our objective is threefold:
– To identify different aspects of atypical times of work
– To analyse the childcare needs of parents confronted to
them
– To present some experimental solutions developed in
France to face these specific needs
Structure of the presentation
I.
II.
III.
IV.
The sample
Impact of non standard working hours on every
days’ life
The care arrangements
The subjective variables of the pressure
I. The sample
Three main variables
• Family configuration: bi active couples and lone parents.
• At least one children under 12 years old
• Non standard working hours in 10 different sectors of activity. The
common element is the staggered characteristic of these working
hours (compared to the opening hours of childcare services and
school). The interviewees worked at least 28h/week
– Fragmented hours
– Shift hours
– Night hours
– Early mornings and late evenings
– Week end
Most of the interviews have been made with women and some of them
with both spouses.
How can we define atypical times of work?
•
•
•
This notion refers to very different working conditions.
The common point is that these hours are staggered which means not in phase with
the standard hours of work, or with the normal opening of many public and private
services
variable or invariable hours
– Louisia is a shopkeeper in a creperie. She works everyday from 5:00 to 13:00 and from 16:00
to 20:00. These hours are invariable, but staggered.
– Eric is a sales representative; his hours are changing every day.
•
regular or irregular hours.
– Laure is a nurse; her hours alternate from one week to another. She works on mornings
(6:30 to 14:15) or on evenings (13:45 to 21:30).
– Béatrice is a busdriver; her hours are always changing.
«We have different time schedules each week. I work full-time. Some services correspond to
7h24 a day, others to 6h59 a day. It depends. This morning, I began at 6:28 and finished at
14:24 with a pause of one hour and 10, more or less (…) It changes all the time… Our
timetables are never the same. Some weeks, our service is changing every day; some others,
it is stable all the week. (…) You see, for example, it’s different, on the 21st, I finish at 15:30,
the next day, I begin at 6:30, and then two days after I begin at 11:56 and stop at 20:30 and
then I have a day off. »
Table no. 3: Characteristics of the working hours of the persons met.
Variable hours
Regular
Predictability
+
Léa (local
police)
Patricia
(manufactur
ing worker)
Pierre
(fireman)
Laure
(psychiatric
nurse)
1 month
3 months
All year
long
1 month
Predictability
-
Eric (sales
representative vente)
3 weeks
Invariable hours
Irregular
Mathilde
(nurse)
Béatrice
(bus driver)
Audrey
(administra
tive
employee)
All year
long
6 weeks
1 month
Anne (sales
repreesentative)
1 week
Louisia (shopkeeper)
Séverine (cashier)
Paul (cook)
Sandrine (retail
department supervisor)
Fabienne (delivery
agent)
Jean (policeman) –
many hitches
Morgane (training for
nurse assistant) – many
hitches
Main factors which impact on family life and parental
responsibilities
• Predictibility of the timetables
– Mathilde, a nurse, explains about these variable and irregular hours of work: « It’s
extremely complex… and even myself, I frequently feel lost even after 3 years in
that job. I don’t catch my own planning. I can’t plan anything… I know what will be
my planning during the current week; I know for the next week, because I will
work three following evenings, but in 15 days, I can’t say anything. »
• Negotiable hours
– Bernard teaches at the university. He divorced and has the custody of two
daughters half of the week. The flexibility of his times of work gives him the
opportunity to group his teaching in the beginning ot the week and to care for his
daughters the second part of the week. Atypical times of work for him doesn’t
mean constraints, but choice and flexibility
• The worth situation concerns families whose parents are working with
variable, irregular, unnegotiable and unpredictable hours.
II. Impact of non standard working
hours on every day’s life
1. Hardness of non working hours
2. Impact on the care arrangement:
unpredictability and negociability
1. Hardness of non standard working hours
•
The hardness of non standard working hours is a first element of pressure .
– « I sleep when I can. This morning, I slept two hours and woke up for my young
daughter. I slept again this afternoon. Some days I sleep only 5 hours, others 7h …
but always in two times, because I have to wake up for my young daughter. »
(Gabriel)
– « What is really hard, is that if I start at 12 am, I’m not gone wake up at 5 am, I
wake up at 7 or 7.15 to bring the children to school. And then, in the evening, at 9
pm, I don’t want to sleep, and I go to bed around 11h-11h30. And if I start early, I
have to wake up very early, at 5 am, and I don’t want to get up. In fact, I always lack
sleep ». (Patrick)
•
A staggered rythm
– « It’s very difficult to rest. As I have only my sundays, I don’t have the impression to
be on week end. I am always under pressure. I come back home on Saturday
evenings, rather late and it’s difficult to rest. If we are invited at some friends, it’s
very difficult to let go. I feel sleepy at 11 pm. And then sundays passes so fast! »
2. Predictability and negociability
• The staggered characteristic of non standard hours is a
main difficulty. Parents work when childcare services and
schools are closed (after 6.30 pm in France and before 8
am)
• The unpredictability of these working hours is a major
difficulty for the parents who can not anticipate the
organisation of the care arrangements
• The difficulty to negociate these working hours is
another problem.
III. The care arrangements
3.
1. Formal care resources
2. Unformal care resources
The stability of the care arrangements
1. Formal resources
• The importance of childcare services in
France: it is possible to have one’s child cared
for from 8 am to 6.30 pm.
• The lack of flexibility of formal services
• The cost of flexible solutions
– The ideal solution: an employee at home
– But an expensive childcare solution
• The development of innovative services
2. Informal resources
• Shift parenting system: some couples of our
sample manage to have different staggered
hours of work. There is always one of the
parents with the children. Non standard
working hours can even be presented as
positive.
• The importance of the grand- parents: many
families appeal to the grand-parents to care
for the children.
3. The stability of the care arrangement
• A variety of care arrangements combining formal and
informal resources
– Natacha and Gabriel: shift parenting
– Elise, nursing auxiliary, lone parent, irregular and fragmented
hours of work: the care arrangement is based on school facilities
and her parents.
• The importance of the stability of the care arrangement :
– Mathilde and Claude: contract workers in the entertainment
industry.
– Béatrice: bus driver, lone parent.
IV. The subjective variables of the
pressure
•
•
The satisfaction of the parents
Two main subjective variables
•
To find the good balance
1. A care arrangement which is not always
satisfactory
• The case of Samantha and Christian:
– Samantha is hair dresser and Christian works is
employee in a pharmaceutical firm
– Two daughters: 7 years old and 1 year old
– Shift parenting
• The grand parents’ solution
– Elise is nursing auxiliary, lone parent. She has a 5
years old son. It is her parents who care for him
after school.
•
2.
Two
main
subjective
variable
The conception of the role of parent and of family life
– Some parents consider that collective child care is not a good
solution, others that informal care (grand parents is not
satisfactory)
– A wish to spend as much time as possible with the children
– The gender division of roles
• Isabelle and Bertrand
• Marie and Pierre
• The investment in one’s professional life
– Unsatisfaction at work: Mathilde
– Satisfaction at work: Magali, Lucie and Laure
3. To find the good balance between work and
family life: Christine and Gaetan
• They are manager of a mini super market.
• They have a 1 year and a half daughter.
• Priority given to the time with their daughter
and family time
• The care arrangement:
– Reduction of their hours of work
– Recruitment of 3 employees to help them in the
minimarket
– Shift parenting
– Family time on Sunday and Monday
What does pressure mean?
•
•
No direct (causal) links between constraints and
pressure, or between non standard work schedules and
feeling of time pressure
There are objective variables like:
–
–
–
•
Level of financial resources
Level of informal resources (social network)
Level of formal resources (offer of services)
But also subjective variables (feelings and perception)
Feeling of time pressure 1
•
•
•
American literature gives some confirmation of our
results
USA : the 24/7 society with high level of employment
flexibility (Presser, 2003)
« In one fourth of dual-earner married couples and one
third of those with children, at least one spouse works
other than a fixed day shift… Almost half of dual-earner
couples have at least one spouse who works weekends »
Feeling of time pressure 2
• Some lessons of american research
– Mattingly & Sayer (2006): more free time doesn’t mean less feeling
of time pressure.
• «the changing cultural context of work, leisure and parenthood all
suggest that objective indicators of time use incrisingly decoupled
from subjective feelings of time pressure ».
• To explain this paradox, they refer to the evolution of the
representations of parental role, to the model of « intensive
mothering » and « involved fathering ». More and more parents
consider that they are not enough involved in their caring and
educational role.
• There is also a gender aspect: female free time is often time for
children, when male free time is personal
• Third aspect, time pressure is not linked to the nature of the time
(paid-work, leisure, care, household) but to the satisfaction linked to
the activity
Feeling of time pressure 3
• Roxburgh (2005) psychological distress is frequently higher for inactive or
part-time female workers than for full-time employed women.
– « Women who work full-time in the paid labor market may feel less
stressed by parenting strains than their part-time or at home
counterparts, because they have other roles that provide self-efficacy or
give them a sense of relief from their anxieties about children »
– These working women generally receive more support from their partner
(which reduce pressure
– Parenting role may be in itself a strong source of stress
• Lemke & al (2000) underline the importance of the stability and quality of
their care arrangement (formal and informal), which help to feel
comfortable with one’s own parental and professional responsibilities
Work satisfaction
•
•
•
•
•
•
A main point concerns the ambivalence of the relation to working conditions
(Baudelot & Gollac, 2006).
The adequacy between work expectations and work achievement is a main
factor of satisfaction and vice versa
The importance seems to be: to find one’s own place in « l’espace social »
Three different positions linked to social conditions and positions but not
exclusively: investing, withdrawing and suffering
This gives an individualist dimension (and not only a collective dimension) to
this link between working conditions and satisfaction: factor of pressure or not
One last point: This is different from Hakim’s position concerning choice and
constraints, and her theory of preference. We don’t speak about preferences,
but about the very variable impact of working conditions and constraints on
each family configuration and personal feelings of pressure