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The purpose of this study was to explore low-income women’s perspectives of the shared meaning of work and employment values in their intergenerational family context from a critical and systemic lens. Participants were rural and urban women from low-income contexts (N = 14). Semi-structured interviews were designed to elicit thick description of lived experiences of work and family. Analyses were conducted using Van Manen’s hermeneutic phenomenology coding process (1990).

Four emergent categories (Purpose to Work, What Work Is, Motherhood and Work, and Loss, Resilience and Work) with 16 themes described work–family integration. These narratives evoked a deep interconnectedness of work, family, and life. Because participants were recruited in locations where they were either already employed or seeking employment, these findings may not represent other women.

Effectiveness of programs and policies could be expanded by incorporating women’s values and motivations for employment and targeting family-level interventions. Programs could better empower women to seek employment and skills training for lasting financial sustainability, rather than just getting any job. Because participants distinguished between careers and jobs based on college education, many felt they could never obtain a career. Additionally, participants described work–family integration, not the prevalent idea of “work–life balance.” Participants described fighting to provide a better life for their children.

This study highlights under-represented perspectives of low-income women about work. Understanding the experiences of low-income women is essential for designing programs and services that will be practical and useful.

The growing demands of work and life have shifted the concept of work-life balance to work-life integration (WLI). The success of integration depends upon the flexibility to perform the duties. This paper aims to explore the factors that affect WLI and the role of flexible work arrangements (FWAs) in the process of WLI.

Systematic literature review was used to explore the concept of WLI and FWAs. A bibliometric analysis was carried out with Bibexcel and VoSviewer.

This paper explained the organizational and personal factors that create the demand for WLI. The FWAs, perceived flexibility, technology and self-efficacy have important roles in WLI. The result of WLI can be enrichment or strain, depends upon how effectively the work-life domains are integrated.

This paper explores the work-life from both personal and organizational views. The findings of this paper will be useful to design the organizational policies and work arrangements that match the requirements of employees and organizations. This paper helps to develop the future research agenda of investigating the relations of WLI to performance, organizational policies and personal factors.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the interplay between fathers’ perceptions of the workplace and how they enact fatherhood. Data were derived from qualitative in-depth interviews with seven elite, professional fathers employed at multinational manufacturing corporations in Detroit, Michigan. Fathers are highly educated, have a significant income and all but one have wives in the paid labour market. This study shows how the persistence of the ideal worker norm and penalties for using work-family policies (WFP) perpetuate the gendered division of paid and unpaid work. First, fathers who are ideal workers are rewarded; fathers who do not face criticism and obstacles to promotions. Second, management and supervisor’s discretion results in uneven access to WFP, penalizing fathers for asking and preventing most from using them. Third, fathers express desire to be ‘involved’, but their engagement is largely visible fatherhood.

This study extends our theoretical understandings of work, WFP and fatherhood from a distinct departure point – the elite fathers highlighted here have been parenting for at least three years, and live and work in circumstances that seemingly would allow them to disrupt normative expectations of work and family. The United States provides a unique backdrop to examine the navigation of competing work and family demands because reconciliation is largely left to employees and their families. Public and individual company policies are not enough; there must be a corresponding supportive family-friendly culture – supervisor support and penalty-free WFP – to disrupt gendered work and family.

The rates of direct paternal care vary greatly across human cultures and primate species. Prior research reveals important hormonal differences between average fathers and non‐fathers in the same population, such as higher levels of prolactin and oxytocin and lower levels of testosterone. This evidence raises the question of whether rates of aggression would be lower in populations with higher paternal care. This study aims to test this hypothesis.

Analyses of correlation and χ²‐tests were applied to data from the Standard Cross‐Cultural Sample, a database of 186 pre‐industrial societies chosen for their independence for cross‐cultural research, to test the hypothesized relationship between paternal care and societal aggression.

High infant‐father closeness was found to be significantly associated with low levels of aggression towards other societies (external war), as predicted. There was not a statistically significant finding between infant‐father closeness and aggression inside a given society.

This study only reports a correlational effect owing to the nature of the data. More research is needed to determine causality and to better understand the mechanisms underlying the found association. One future direction of research is to examine a similar question across difference nonhuman primate species.

This paper reports a previously unknown association between father closeness and low external warfare. It might inspire future research that could lead to interventions intended to reduce aggression.

It's been three years since my previous survey in RSR. Superb reference books in pop music have been appearing so frequently that I've been having trouble keeping up. Let's hope “next year's” survey will only be 12 months in the making and not 36.

An overview of the various selection tools currently available for building a better jazz recording collection on compact disc. Evaluative guides, select discographies, general reference works, reviews in periodicals, and World Wide Web sites are suggested to aid in this process. Together, these resources can aid librarians and media selectors in building well‐rounded collections that cover different styles and movements of jazz over the last century, from the latest reissues of albums of historical importance to the best in contemporary recordings. The author concludes with a list of 30 (or so) sound recordings that should be found in any core jazz collection.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the ways in which gender is socially constructed through transnational adoption.

Feminist methodologies and reflexivity are put into practice. Life histories of women who participate in transnational adoptions are presented.

Life history narratives shed light on how these particular women, through the process of transnational adoption, experience gender differently and in more complex ways. Adoptive mothers’ negotiations (and renegotiations) of their own gender contribute to our understandings of how motherhood (and, thereby, womanhood) is constructed in broader society.

Life histories provide rich, thick descriptions of social life. However, they are limited in terms of reliability and making generalizations about larger populations.

This chapter engages the reader, scholars, students, practitioners, and policy-makers in contemplating the processes of motherhood and womanhood.

The chapter is a building block for future research on this topic and challenges our understandings of “motherhood” and “womanhood.”

This chapter is unique in that I include my own life narrative and story of becoming a mother through transnational adoption. Through reflexivity, the researcher becomes the subject and vice versa. These life history narratives offer insight through their expressions of “everyday knowledge” (Hill Collins, 2000) and bring new dimensions to the study of gender as these women’s experiences are situated within the intersections of the global economy, specific political systems, and individual identities.