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The ideal worker norm refers to the belief that employees can and should be singularly devoted to work. Our purpose is to understand the extent to which workers buy into various components of ideal work and how unpopular components of the ideal worker norm persist. We hypothesize they persist, at least in part, because of pluralistic ignorance. Pluralistic ignorance entails situations in which most people privately reject a norm, but incorrectly assume others accept it.

Drawing on original survey data, we examine the extent to which US workers subscribe to a range of factors described in the ideal work literature. We test the pluralistic ignorance hypothesis by comparing workers’ agreement with, and their perceptions of their coworkers’ agreement with, these factors.

We find workers embrace some components of ideal work. Yet, regardless of gender or parental status, they dislike those components that involve working extremely long hours and prioritizing work at the expense of personal or family life. In addition, regardless of gender or parental status, workers experience pluralistic ignorance with respect to those components that involve prioritizing work at the expense of personal or family life.

Our findings suggest that researchers distinguish between different components of ideal work. They also suggest that everyone – not just women or parents – desire work–family balance. Lastly, because people often behave in ways that are congruent with what they mistakenly believe to be the norm, our findings suggest workers may unintentionally perpetuate family-unfriendly workplace standards.

This chapter examines a development of the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) material into a programme designed to empower schools to work in partnership with parents to help children and young people to be happy and successful in school. It provides evidence to suggest that the programme called Family Works has a significant impact on children's learning and consequently their attainment. There is also evidence that children's behaviour improves across all contexts and that there are positive gains in the development of social and emotional skills of the children engaged in the programme. Aspects of the programme are described in action within primary schools.

The relationship between work and family has long been the subject of lively debate in the political, public, and academic arena. Employers in the hospitality industry should carefully consider the work–family balance of their employees because maintaining a good balance will result in lower costs, lower sick rates, and lower staff turnover. The term “balance” refers to the way in which work interferes with life at home and how home life interferes with work. It includes both the positive and negative effects that work has on the family domain and vice versa. As research on the psychological contract approach to the employment relationship is scarce with regard to work–family interference, it became the subject of this study. The results demonstrate that psychological contract measures, in particular time commitment, can explain work–family conflict, while job content can explain work–family enrichment. In addition, the study revealed that with the appearance of gender as a moderator, different additional factors may play a role in work–family enrichment and work–family conflict. Furthermore, it revealed that family structure is not a predictor for work–family interference. This paper discusses managerial implications and offers recommendations for further research.

Realizing gender equality and parenthood still seems to be a contradictory endeavour. In consequence, family policies in Europe focus on paternal involvement and increasing women’s participation in the labour market. Nevertheless, consequences of gender pay gap on family arrangements still set limits to these policies.

This chapter reveals results of qualitative research on paternal leave practices and fathers’ involvement in the family in Austria. The empirical data set includes 36 guided interviews with fathers on paternal leave, 12 with female partners, 16 with human resources managers and 14 follow-up questionings with part-time working men and women. The research investigates effects of long-term leave arrangements on the distribution of family work, gainful employment and individual interests.

Mainly best practice models in undoing gender in family and work arrangements are explored. Subsequently, a high proportion of good earning fathers and couples with tertiary education are represented in the sample. Nevertheless, quantitative studies in Austria confirm higher proportions of fathers aged 40 plus on paternal leave. They take this decision mainly as a ‘tribute to the family’, once or twice in a life-time.

However, long-term care data on work-family-life balancing currently do not show significant changes in gendered patterns. By contrast, gender disparities are still reproduced in the labour market. Theoretically, the chapter shows the impact of gender studies, feminist theories and sociology of the family on realizing gender equality in private and public spheres. It outlines recommendations for family policy makers and for readers interested in relations between realizing work–life balance and gender budgeting.

After summarizing what has been learned so far, the purpose of this review is to suggest several promising avenues for future research on work-to-family enrichment (WFE) and family-to-work enrichment (FWE).

This is a literature review. After reviewing the existing research and searching for gaps in the literature, new areas of research will be proposed to fill these gaps.

While much has been learned about the antecedents and consequences of work–family enrichment in both directions, WFE and FWE, much remains to be learned.

Three important outcomes – job performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and counterproductive work behavior – need to be studied regarding WFE and FWE. Although supervisor support has been studied, the field needs to incorporate leadership theories and models to understand this phenomenon. Additional predictors of work outcomes – including emotional intelligence, leadership, emotional labor, social support, gender, and cross-cultural variables – need to be examined. Experience sampling methods and advanced research methodologies should also be used.

Although prior research has demonstrated the important effects of WFE and FWE, the practical effects on organizations in terms of job performance still need to be investigated.

The literature review conclusively demonstrates that WFE and FWE are both related to job satisfaction and family satisfaction.

This is the first review to summarize the existing meta-analytical research in this area and to propose the particular avenues of research advocated in this article.

This qualitative study explores college students’ gender schemas. Sandra Bem’s pioneering work on sex roles and gender schemata are highlighted.

Over 600 college students at a diverse southeastern university were asked to describe the advantages and disadvantages to men’s and women’s gender. Although the question was framed broadly, students devoted significant attention to issues surrounding work and family, highlighting the importance of these roles to their understanding of gender. Over 6,800 responses were coded in The Ethnograph software.

The results showed a gendered schema among these students, with gendered views of work and family, in which men are associated with work and women largely with family. Some racial patterns are also discussed.

This chapter ends with a discussion on how the gender schemas expressed support and maintained a separation of work and family.

This study explores the interplay between macro- and micro-level predictors of psychological well-being related to work and family. We use nations as the context and investigate how country-level gender equalities and gender norms affect individual well-being and its relationship to micro-level predictors.

Social role explanations suggest that women’s vulnerability in mental health is due to socially assigned gender roles and gendered socialization. We utilize multi-level modeling and data from the International Social Survey Programme 2002, to examine how the societal level gender climate impacts the effects of gender roles on psychological well-being for married and employed men and women in 33 countries.

Gender differences in mental health remain, but larger differences are observed in less egalitarian countries regarding gender. Also, caring roles are negatively associated with women’s psychological well-being to a greater degree than men’s, and the negative impacts are stronger in more egalitarian countries. Furthermore, men show lower well-being regarding work responsibility, but the gender effects are weaker in more egalitarian countries.

Our psychological well-being is affected not only by the actual role behaviors but also by how we each perceive these roles.

This study provides a broader picture of the relationship between gender and psychological well-being related to work and family. It also illustrates complex relationships between macro-level gender climate and individual-level psychological well-being and how structural differences may impact individual outcomes.

The goal of this chapter is to present new ways of conceptualizing family-supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB), and to present a multilevel model reviewing variables that are linked to this construct. We begin the chapter with an overview of the U.S. labor market's rising work–family demands, followed by our multilevel conceptual model of the pathways between FSSB and health, safety, work, and family outcomes for employees. A detailed discussion of the critical role of FSSB is then provided, followed by a discussion of the outcome relationships for employees. We then present our work on the conceptual development of FSSB, drawing from the literature and from focus group data. We end the chapter with a discussion of the practical implications related to our model and conceptual development of FSSB, as well as a discussion of implications for future research.

Changing work/family dynamics and economic developments have made it more likely that an employee might work with a family member or spouse. Such working relationships offer a unique perspective by which to understand the work/family interface; however, relatively little research has explored the implications of working with family for employee stress and well-being. In this chapter, we review the existing research concerning stress associated with working with family. We integrate this research into broader demand/resource perspectives on employee stress and well-being, highlighting the manner in which working with family provides unique demands and resources through differences in work–family linking mechanisms. We conclude with suggestions for future research that might enhance our understanding of the work/family interface by considering the dynamics of working with family.

In this chapter, we review empirical research evidence regarding coping and work–family conflict. Limitations and gaps associated with the existing literature are discussed. Of special note is the finding that there is little systematic research that examines the process of coping with work–family conflict. Building on the general stress and coping literature, we present a theoretical model that is specifically focused on the process of coping with work–family conflict, and highlight presumed personal and situational antecedents. Finally, the chapter concludes with an agenda for future research.