Gender Differences in Restricting Work Efforts Because of Family Responsibilities

In egalitarian families, we might expect that men and women similarly prioritize work and family obligations. Yet, prior research examining gender differences in work-family priorities often use measures that imperfectly reflect those priorities. Drawing two samples of full-time married workers from the 1992 National Study of the Changing Workforce, this article analyzed the determinants of placing restrictions on work efforts (reducing work hours, refusing to travel, etc.) for the sake of family life. Results showed that women imposed more job tradeoffs in response to husband's work efforts, whereas men's work restrictions were largely unresponsive to familial characteristics. In conclusion, prioritizing work and family obligations is governed more by gender traditionalism than by egalitarianism. Key Words: employment, families and work, gender. Over the past three decades, a large body of research has examined changes in men's and women's family roles and their effects on the work-family nexus (for overviews, see Bianchi, 2000; Perry-Jenkins, Repetti, & Crouler, 2000). A central concern of this research is an assessment of whether men are more focused on family life as women have increasingly pursued careers. This question takes on added salience as the perception grows that employers are now more willing to allow employees to use company time to attend to family needs (Fried, 1998; Hochschild, 1997). In reviewing these trends, Williams (2000) argued that contemporary adults can realistically strive for marriages in which each partner is both a caregiver and a provider. If so, this would represent a dramatic shift in work-family role performance. Indeed, Presser (1989, p. 531) summarized research findings from the 1970s and early 1980s in this way: "Women generally are the adapters who arrange their work hours around those of their husbands rather than vice versa.... Men are accepters: they are willing to care for children when mothers are employed." Although Presser was synthesizing research that linked children's care with parental work schedules, her assessment pointed to an enduring traditionalism in American family life in which men's work efforts were privileged over women's. For many, shared nurturing and providing roles is the standard of egalitarianism against which contemporary family life is measured. This study contends that restricting work efforts (e.g., by refusing a promotion or limiting work hours) out of a concern for family life reveals a person's priorities regarding work and family roles. As such, the purpose of this study is to examine gender differences in making job trade-offs for the sake of family life. (Although the terms, work restrictions, job trade-offs, and limiting work efforts may be analytically distinct, they are used synonymously in this article.) BACKGROUND Evidence for Egalitarianism Some evidence for egalitarianism in work and family roles can be found in studies that examined temporal trends in attitudes and behaviors. For example, survey data showed that with time, women increasingly desired careers (rather than devoted themselves full time to homemaking), and men increasingly supported matemal employment and were less concerned about its effects on children (Brewster & Padavic, 2000). Yet, commitment to egalitarianism is stronger in younger cohorts, and older cohorts tend to be more traditional in their orientations (Carr, 2002). Other studies found that contemporary men exceeded their past counterparts in doing housework (e.g., Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, & Robinson, 2000) and child care (e.g., Sayer, Bianchi, & Robinson, 2004). Of course, a stronger determinant of gender convergence on these indicators is women's declining time in these activities (Bianchi, 2000; Coltrane, 2000). Nevertheless, this body of work generally found that men played a greater role in family life when they supported gender equality and when their wives brought more resources (i. …