Working time and work–life balance in a life course perspective

The contributions that adult men and women make to households in terms of paid and unpaid work has undergone substantial change, particularly in respect of women’s responsibility for income generation, and have been seen as part of the processes of individualisation. Recent contributions to the literature have suggested that children are now acquiring independence earlier as part of those same processes. The paper uses qualitative methods to explore the way in which parents in two parent families, where both are employed, perceive the risks attaching to children’s exercise of greater independence, how they seek to ‘manage ’ those risks, and how far the perceptions of parents accord with those of children. We find parents ’ perceptions of risk to be strong, but to have little to do with working patterns. In addition, they are often at odds with the actual behaviour of the child. Risks are managed by negotiation, in which

For the past 30 years, there has been a sustained surge in academic interest in work-family issues. However, despite the increase in scholarly studies about work-family relationships and the explosive growth in work-family publications, until now there has not been any single handbook that compiled the work of scholars across the disciplines and also compared and contrasted their approaches to the study of work-family phenomena. This handbook, the cul-mination of efforts of 63 leading work and family researchers, fills that gap and offers an overview of the major insights, challenges, and opportunities present in the work-family field. But, what exactly is the “work-family ” field, when did it emerge, and why? Kathleen Christensen, author of the last chapter in this handbook, has often remarked that the work-family field may be the only field of study best known by a hyphen—the hyphen that is placed between the words “work ” and “family. ” As editors of this handbook, we have come to believe that the hyphen is important, because it symbolizes the field’s focus on the connections between work experiences and family issues. These connections have been conceptualized as “relationships, ” “interactions, ” and “interface. ” As Rosabeth Moss Kanter cogently observes in her Foreword to this volume, if work and family are considered as “separate spheres ” in policy and cultural action, our understanding of both institutions suffers. 1

France is in a very peculiar situation concerning fertility. Contrarily to many other European countries, France is facing a significant fertility recovery during the past five years and maintains a 1,9 fertility rate. No clear and uncontested explanation justifies this relatively positive situation. The more convincing argument, from our point of view, could be the permanent public investment to facilitate conciliation between work and childcare responsibility. In this contribution, we propose to come back on three main issues: the main trends of family policy over the past century; the demographical background of the French situation these last years and the main orientation of the childcare policy. We will conclude by some reflections about the main challenges for the future and their links with intergenerational issues. 1. French investment in demographical issues: A permanent investment French family policy is generally considered as one of the most explicit and intensive one in Europe [2]. It is even stated that the “family issue ” could be the basis of the French social security system, just as poverty was a cornerstone of the Anglo-Saxon Welfare State and workers ’ status that of Germany’s Sozial Staat. Family