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This paper aims to look at the multiple embeddedness of male self-employment by focusing on entrepreneurship of men supported by female breadwinners.

Following a qualitative research design, the paper presents three case studies drawn from a research project, where 40 narrative interviews were conducted with female and male business starters.

The concept of embeddedness that was developed for female business founders can also be applied and specified for business startups of men. Creating and conducting a business or becoming self-employed is for men closely related to and interwoven with gender norms, household and partnership dynamics. Men who are not the family breadwinners benefit from the male connotations of entrepreneurship. Male self-employment, even if of precarious or low pecuniary relevance, allows them to fulfill the norms of masculinity and employment.

Given that this is a qualitative study only based on three case studies, more research is needed to estimate the frequency of this type of male self-employment.

The importance of the context for the decision on starting-up and conducting a business is shown for male entrepreneurs. The study demonstrates how on the household level the male entrepreneurship norm is transformed into everyday lives and fits into gender arrangements. In emphasizing the non-economic dimensions of entrepreneurship, the paper opens the discussion about the interconnections between gender and entrepreneurship for men as well.

Work–family research has mainly focused on nuclear families, neglecting other types of families, such as single self-employed parents. To what extent does the freedom and flexibility attached to being single and self-employed hinder or enhance single parents' work–family balance? Using role theory as a theoretical lens, this study examines single-self-employed parents' work–family balance.

Drawing on the accounts of 25 single self-employed parents in Nigeria, the article uses semi-structured interviews to examine how this group achieves work–family balance.

We found that the freedom and flexibility associated with being single and self-employed form a double-edged sword that increases the spate of singlehood and intensifies commitments to work, altogether preventing the participants in the study from achieving work–family balance. The findings also indicate that singlehood and a lack of spousal support cause and exacerbate work–family imbalance for this group. The findings further indicate that the reconstruction of functions, and the recreation of the traditional masculine gender role overwhelm single self-employed women in their entrepreneurial activities, thereby causing a lack of time and the energy required to function well in a family role, thus creating imbalance between the different spheres of life.

The extent to which the findings of this research can be generalised is constrained by the limited sample and scope of the research.

While literature espouses freedom and flexibility as important ingredients needed to achieve work–family balance, this study shows that they enhance inter-role role conflict. The study suggests creation of private or family time, devoid of work or entrepreneurial engagements, for single female entrepreneurs. This will ensure quality time and energy for the family and for fresh relationship – all of which will impact business positively.

Rather than enhancing work–family balance, the freedom and flexibility attached to being single and self-employed remain the main source of work–family imbalance for Nigerian single self-employed parents.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how professional men in dual-career relationships craft and enact their fatherhood role ideologies during the transition to fatherhood. In particular, the authors focus on the impact that the development of a more involved approach to fatherhood has on the mother's ability to combine career and family.

This study utilizes a longitudinal, qualitative methodology. Pre- and post-natal interviews were conducted with 18 professional men in dual-career heterosexual relationships.

Although the traditional mode of fatherhood that is rooted in breadwinning continues to be the dominant approach among working fathers in the US, new modes of more involved fathering are emerging. The results of the study indicate that a general shift away from a strict, gendered division of household labor is taking place in today's dual career couples, and this is leading to an increase in men's involvement in childcare. Further, although much of the extant research conceptualizes fatherhood as a role typology, the results reveal that all fathers are involved in caring for their babies, though to varying degrees. Thus the authors propose a continuum of involvement. Finally, the authors discovered how men are finding creative ways to use official and unofficial workplace flexibility to be more involved at home.

The findings offer novel insights into the factors that encourage involved fathering. The authors encourage organizations to create more supportive environments that foster involved fathering by extending paid parental leave benefits to men and providing more access to flexibility.

The Nordic welfare model is known in the literature for its explicit support of the equal treatment of men and women in both family and gender equality policies as well as its achievements in these policy areas. Policy arguments have to promote gender equality and act in the best interest of the child, ensuring that the child access to care from both parents as well as to early childhood education and care. However, the knowledge of how the Nordic welfare states frame and promote active fatherhood remains fragmented.

The chapter asks whether the five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) have developed similar policies on fatherhood or have taken different paths. Hence, the chapter examines three main policy areas affecting fatherhood: family law, family cash benefits and paid parental leave. Comparative perspective is applied and the chapter asks how the policies frame and promote active fatherhood while also looking into how fatherhood is shaped in interaction between policies, cultures and the daily practices of fathers.

Results show that while all Nordic governments promote a dual-earner/dual-carer social democratic welfare state model emphasizing the active participation of fathers in the care of their children, variations exist in policy and practices. Care policies and entitlements to a father quota of paid parental leave are a defining factor for enhancing fathers’ role in care of their children and the findings show that Nordic fathers are making use of their quota and gradually increasing their share in taking leave for the care of young children.

The purpose of this paper was to develop an indigenous understanding of work-family interface (WFI) that reflects the drastic changes and evolving social context in China over the past three decades and challenge the existing conceptualizations of WFI and identify societal impact of the changing nature of the WFI.

We conducted literature review, content and thematic analyses.

The core idea of prioritizing work for family (PWF) is that Chinese employees, especially Chinese male employees, tend to integrate work and family roles as well as deal with WFI issues at the family level. Thus, Chinese employees can be strongly committed to the family while simultaneously prioritizing work performance.

The proposed indigenous perspective of PWF may furnish a contextualized theory for future research. The proposed measurement approaches may help developing indigenous scales for the perspective of PWF for future empirical studies.

Although Chinese employees tend to be more tolerant of work-family conflict (WFC) than their Western counterparts, such tolerance may be combined with the expectation of long-term returns to their families. Managers may assist employees with career planning and realistic goal setting to compensate for their endurance of WFC.

As a cornerstone of the society, the family plays an important role in building a “harmonious society” promoted by the government. A perceived balance of work and family is a significant factor for family harmony. We bring to the attention of policy makers the changing nature of the Chinese employees' WFI. A corresponding policy may be formulated to help Chinese employees balance their lives.

We challenge the existing conceptualizations of WFI by proposing and elaborating a perspective of PWF for context-based conceptualization.

The purpose of this paper is to understand: how and why do experienced professionals, who perceive themselves as autonomous, comply with organizational pressures to overwork? Unlike previous studies of professionals and overwork, the authors focus on experienced professionals who have achieved relatively high status within their firms and the considerable economic rewards that go with it. Drawing on the little used Bourdieusian concept of illusio, which describes the phenomenon whereby individuals are “taken in and by the game” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992), the authors help to explain the “autonomy paradox” in professional service firms.

This research is based on 36 semi-structured interviews primarily with experienced male and female accounting professionals in France.

The authors find that, in spite of their levels of experience, success, and seniority, these professionals describe themselves as feeling helpless and trapped, and experience bodily subjugation. The authors explain this in terms of individuals enhancing their social status, adopting the breadwinner role, and obtaining and retaining recognition. The authors suggest that this combination of factors cause professionals to be attracted to and captivated by the rewards that success within the accounting profession can confer.

As well as providing fresh insights into the autonomy paradox the authors seek to make four contributions to Bourdieusian scholarship in the professional field. First, the authors highlight the strong bodily component of overwork. Second, the authors raise questions about previous work on cynical distancing in this context. Third, the authors emphasize the significance of the pursuit of symbolic as well as economic capital. Finally, the authors argue that, while actors’ habitus may be in a state of “permanent mutation”, that mutability is in itself a sign that individuals are subject to illusio.

Purpose – Interest in work/family management among professors has lead to a plethora of research about female professors with children. Very little research exists about professors who are fathers. What does exist is comparative in nature. In this chapter, the author takes an in-depth look at such men's work/family management.

Methodology/approach – This chapter presents research from a qualitative study with 25 fathers who are untenured tenure track assistant professors at research universities.

Findings – Most men state a commitment to and valuing of family above all else. Yet the two fatherhood ideologies of breadwinning and involved fatherhood privilege these men by allowing them substantial flexibility in their day-to-day lives and an affirmation of masculinity. At the same time, many struggle to minimize their work involvement to be involved with the day-to-day care of their children.

Originality/value of chapter – This study demonstrates how prevailing ideologies about fatherhood allow men a structural double privilege when constructing their work and family lives.

The purpose of the paper is to focus on personal and social background factors as potential channels for the transmission of work related attitudes in young adults. The paper aims to examine the extent to which gender, parental job type, job status, and education, as well as school experience, influence the development of attitudes towards work and family life.

The study comprised a quantitative (questionnaire based) survey with a sample of 782 final year undergraduate students attending various third level institutions in Ireland and the USA.

The results indicated that individuals who had grown up in traditional mixed families had more positive attitudes towards balancing work and home roles than did those who had grown up in traditional single earner families. Father's educational level also emerged as a significant factor in the career‐family attitudes of the participants.

The results of this research indicate that young people have developed attitudes towards managing the work/family interface on entering the workforce, which they acquire through a social learning process. Limitations included the cross‐sectional nature of the design and future longitudinal research is needed.

Organizations and managers need to be aware of the well‐developed attitudes of new entrants in order to address early issues of psychological contract and person‐organizational fit, which have an impact on career success and career management.

The findings of the paper break new ground on the role of social learning on the formation of attitudes towards managing the work‐family interface. Such attitudes proceed to inform behavioral patterns and decisions in the harmonious management of the two domains.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate gender differences in the relationships between job demands, job control and distress with the moderation effects of family status (i.e. marriage and parenthood) in the patriarchal cultural context of Korea.

The authors formulated hypotheses on the grounds of stress and role theories and tested them using a hierarchical regression analysis. A sample of 403 Korean employees (230 males; 173 females) was used for the analysis.

Family status moderated the relationship between job demands and distress for both males and females, whereas family status significantly moderated the effect of job control on distress for only males. Regardless of gender, marriage and parenthood were associated with distress affected by job demands, while only males exhibited significant distress in interactions between family status and job control.

This exploratory study is one of few that explicitly addresses the concepts of the job demands-control model dealing with the unique characteristics of demographic groups. By incorporating data from the single, the married and parents, this study identified applications of the conservation of resources and role theory for various family statuses in a non-Western culture. Particularly, this study is meaningful in that it highlighted the impacts of family roles on distress that can be observed in any culture, but is salient in a highly hierarchal, patriarchal and work-centered culture, like Korea.

In the last decades, migration of domestic workers and, in particular, care workers has grown into a significant part of movement from the global South to the global North. This phenomenon is referred to as the “new international division in social reproductive work” – outsourcing domestic chores to (mostly) migrants enables families in the global North to escape from the tensions arising from balancing productive and social reproductive work. This paper seeks to address these issues.

Considering two empirical examples of stereotypically male and female migrant domestic work – Polish handymen and elderly care workers – this paper puts the phenomenon in the context of the broader feminist debate on care work, global care chains and social policies.

It attempts to analyze how the employment of Polish handymen or elderly care workers in Germany results from and recreates social inequalities based on gender, class and ethnicity/citizenship.

For this purpose, it looks at both “ends” of this specific European “care chain” – the employing families in Germany as well as the migrant's families in Poland.