The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

We were all in it together: managing work from home as dual-earner households with school-age children

We were all in it together: managing work from home as dual-earner households with school-age children
We were all in it together: managing work from home as dual-earner households with school-age children

We examine how professional dual-earner couples, with school-age children, who worked from home during the COVID-19 lockdown, adjusted to the changes it brought to their lives. To do so, we conducted a qualitative study of 28 dual-earner households that had at least one school-age child, resided in China, Iran, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, or the United States, and worked from home during their local lockdown period. In each household, we interviewed the parents (56 total), and we asked at least one child to draw their perception of their parents' work-from-home experience and narrate the drawing (31 total). Informed by work–home interface and family stress scholarships, we outline the resources and demands generated by working at home as a family, as well as the strategies families employed to manage their collective work from home. We extend work-from-home scholarship beyond the individual level by accounting for the roles of all collective members in the work-from-home experience. We complement the research that has studied individual- and couple-level work–family strategies by theorizing the supportive, attentive, relational, delegative, and compromising strategies families adopted to generate changes in resource-demand dynamics. In doing so, we introduce family adaptive capability for the context of adjusting to work from home and define it as a collective ability to initiate strategies to meet remote work demands with resources generated from the new work arrangement. At a practical level, the strategies presented in our work can inform employers of dual-earner couples and families experiencing similar dynamics.

dual-earner couple, family adaptive capability, remote work, work from home, work-family interface
0894-3796
Beigi, Mina
2986037e-5bb3-4ec0-be55-bf291ac17e24
Shirmohammadi, Melika
d0967cb1-0c2b-454a-ba78-d7a4152ab6dd
Au, Wee Chan
d784e090-2936-4010-a963-2d1a27f90472
Tochia, Chira
0e06b413-1436-4455-afeb-22a6583a8d7c
Beigi, Mina
2986037e-5bb3-4ec0-be55-bf291ac17e24
Shirmohammadi, Melika
d0967cb1-0c2b-454a-ba78-d7a4152ab6dd
Au, Wee Chan
d784e090-2936-4010-a963-2d1a27f90472
Tochia, Chira
0e06b413-1436-4455-afeb-22a6583a8d7c

Beigi, Mina, Shirmohammadi, Melika, Au, Wee Chan and Tochia, Chira (2023) We were all in it together: managing work from home as dual-earner households with school-age children. Journal of Organizational Behavior. (doi:10.1002/job.2755).

Record type: Article

Abstract

We examine how professional dual-earner couples, with school-age children, who worked from home during the COVID-19 lockdown, adjusted to the changes it brought to their lives. To do so, we conducted a qualitative study of 28 dual-earner households that had at least one school-age child, resided in China, Iran, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, or the United States, and worked from home during their local lockdown period. In each household, we interviewed the parents (56 total), and we asked at least one child to draw their perception of their parents' work-from-home experience and narrate the drawing (31 total). Informed by work–home interface and family stress scholarships, we outline the resources and demands generated by working at home as a family, as well as the strategies families employed to manage their collective work from home. We extend work-from-home scholarship beyond the individual level by accounting for the roles of all collective members in the work-from-home experience. We complement the research that has studied individual- and couple-level work–family strategies by theorizing the supportive, attentive, relational, delegative, and compromising strategies families adopted to generate changes in resource-demand dynamics. In doing so, we introduce family adaptive capability for the context of adjusting to work from home and define it as a collective ability to initiate strategies to meet remote work demands with resources generated from the new work arrangement. At a practical level, the strategies presented in our work can inform employers of dual-earner couples and families experiencing similar dynamics.

Text
J Organ Behavior - 2023 - Beigi - We were all in it together Managing work from home as dual‐earner households with - Version of Record
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
Download (2MB)

More information

Accepted/In Press date: 18 September 2023
Published date: 8 November 2023
Additional Information: Funding Information: we thank Idaho State University for supporting this study with an internal small research grant. We thank Azadeh Hashemian, a nonfiction writer and translator, who helped us with data collection from our Iranian participants.
Keywords: dual-earner couple, family adaptive capability, remote work, work from home, work-family interface

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 484964
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/484964
ISSN: 0894-3796
PURE UUID: 675cbd49-7fb2-41ca-9edf-b4f807c40483
ORCID for Mina Beigi: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-4866-7205
ORCID for Chira Tochia: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-8025-5991

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 27 Nov 2023 17:33
Last modified: 06 Jun 2024 01:59

Export record

Altmetrics

Contributors

Author: Mina Beigi ORCID iD
Author: Melika Shirmohammadi
Author: Wee Chan Au
Author: Chira Tochia ORCID iD

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×