Work, parenting and gender: the care-work negotiations of three couple relationships in the UK

Changes globally mean that there are now record numbers of mothers in paid employment and a reported prevalence of involved fathering. This poses challenges to mothers and fathers as they negotiate care-work practices within their relationships. Focusing on interviews with three heterosexual couples...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Community, work & family work & family, 2016-05, Vol.19 (3), p.362-377
Main Authors: Yarwood, Gemma Anne, Locke, Abigail
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Caregivers
Childrearing practices
Couples
cualitativa
Discourses
discursive psychology
Employment
Fathering
Gender
género
Heterosexuality
Negotiation
parenting
Parents & parenting
paternidad
Power
psicología discursiva
qualitative
Talking
trabaja
Work
Working mothers
Working parents
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Summary:Changes globally mean that there are now record numbers of mothers in paid employment and a reported prevalence of involved fathering. This poses challenges to mothers and fathers as they negotiate care-work practices within their relationships. Focusing on interviews with three heterosexual couples (taken from a wider UK qualitative project on working parents), the paper considers care-work negotiations of three couples, against a backdrop of debates about intensive mothering and involved fathering. It aims to consider different configurations of work and care within three different couple relationships. We found that power within the relationships was negotiated along differential axis of gender and working status (full- or part-time paid work). We present qualitatively rich insights into these negotiations. Framed by a critical discursive psychological approach, we call on other researchers to think critically about dominant discourses and practices of working, caring and parenting, pointedly how couples situated around the world operationalise these discourses in talking about themselves as worker and carers.
ISSN:1366-8803
1469-3615
DOI:10.1080/13668803.2015.1047441