Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-7tdvq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-08T17:32:21.805Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Work and Care in the Life Course: Understanding the Context for Family Arrangements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Sue Yeandle
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article develops a case study of the family and work history of an interviewee which is used to illustrate the context in which family arrangements for work, care and support develop. The study uses Finch and Mason's (1993) focus on human agency to develop a ‘family responsibilities account’, and then goes on to explore three aspects of the social structural context in which the life has been lived. These are developed from Connell's analysis (1987) of gender relations: constraints associated with the division of labour, with issues of power and with emotional and personal life (cathexis).

A detailed account of the life in question is given, and this is reanalysed using the four approaches indicated. The result is an overall account which emphasises the complexity of social life and of human decision-making, even at the apparently mundane level of choices about family life, paid employment, domestic work and the care and support of kin. The extent to which constraining factors interweave with individual agency is demonstrated, and the significance of the analysis for policymakers is noted: each change in arrangements for work and care in a life affects others, and policy must be made in an awareness of the complexity of its unintended effects as well as of its objectives.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , October 1996 , pp. 507 - 527
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allatt, P. and Yeandle, S. (1992). Youth Unemployment and the Family: Voices of Disordered Times, Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim, E.. (1995) The Normal Chaos of Love, Polity Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Connell, R. W. (1987). Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics, Polity Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Delphy, C. and Leonard, D. (1992). Familiar Exploitation: A New Analysis of Marriage in Contemporary Western Societies, Polity Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Denzin, N. K. (1989), Interpretive Interactionism, Sage. London.Google Scholar
Dobash, R. E. and Dobash, R. P. (1992). Women, Violence and Social Change, Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Esping-Andersen, G. (1993). ‘Mobility regimes and class formation’, in Esping-Andersen, G. (ed.) Changing Classes: Stratification and Mobility in Post-industrial Societies, Sage, London.Google Scholar
Fevre, R. (1989). Wales is Closed: The Quiet Privatisation of British Steel, Spokesman, Nottingham.Google Scholar
Finch, J. (1989). Family Obligations and Social Change, Polity Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Finch, J. and Mason, J. (1993). Negotiating Family Responsibilities, Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Harris, C. C., Leaver, G. and Yeandle, S. (1988), ‘Women's labour force participation: historical change in the patterns of participation over the life course’, presented to the British Sociological Association Conference on Sociology and History, Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Humphries, S. (1988). A Secret World of Sex. Forbidden Fruit: The British Experience 1900n–1950, Sidgwick and Jackson, London.Google Scholar
Leonard, D. (1980), Sex and Generation: A Study of Courtship and Weddings, Tavistock, London.Google Scholar
Plummer, K. (1994). ‘Sexual stories, social worlds and intimate citizenship’, Paper to the British Sociological Association Annual Conference, University of Central Lancashire.Google Scholar
Times Higher, 24 March 1995.Google Scholar
Toynbee, P. (1995), Independent on Sunday, 2 04.Google Scholar
Walby, S. (1990), Theorizing Patriarchy, Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Walby, S. (1992), ‘Post-post-modernism? Theorizing social complexity’, in Barrett, M. and Phillips, A. (eds.) Destabilizing Theory: Contemporary Feminist Debates, Polity Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Yeandle, S. M. (1984), Women's Working Lives: Patterns And Strategies, Tavistock, London.Google Scholar
Yeandle, S. (1987), ‘Married women at midlife: past experience and present change’ in Allatt, P., Keil, T., Bryman, A. and Bytheway, B. (eds.), Women and the Life Cycle: Transitions and Turning Points, Macmillan, Basingstoke.Google Scholar
Yeandle, S. (1991), ‘Couples in the labour market: an analysis of work histories collected from couples in South Wales’ in Heinz, W. R. (ed.) The Life Course and Social Change: Comparative Perspectives, Deutscher Studien Verlag, Weinheim, Germany.Google Scholar
Yeandle, S. (1993), ‘Intersections of biography and history in couples' working lives’ in Born, C. and Kruger, H. (eds.) Erwerbswerlaufe von Ehepartnern und die Modernisierung weiblicher Lebenslaufe, Deutscher Studien Verlag, Weinheim, Germany.Google Scholar
Yeandle, S. and Leaver, G. (1987), ‘Family and friends: women, ageing and social contacts’, School of Social Studies Occasional Paper No. 16, University College, Swansea.Google Scholar