6/05/2020

Who Deserves the Balance? Investigating People’s Attitudes Towards Work Life Balance of Voluntary Childless People: a Cross Country Comparison

Silvia Filippi, M. Yerkes, & J. de Wit (Utrecht University)

A recent subject in science and a new policy priority in European Union is work-life balance (WLB), defined as “an individual’s ability to meet their work and family commitments, as well as other non-work responsibilities and activities”. In current research on work-life balance, the majority of existing studies focus on heterosexual couples with children and little space is given to less traditional families or people that have voluntarily decided to not have children. Though, work-life needs of childfree people are increasingly important, especially in the context of low fertility rates and growing diversity in family structures. Furthermore, the evidences highlight that care (for children and dependent) is not the only reason for employee’s work-life conflicts, suggesting that the need of work-life balance is broad, and not restricted to a specific group of people. Despite what the literature provides, it is quite common in workplaces that parents still make greater use of work-life benefits than non-parents, that work more hours and are expected to do so. Indeed, childless professionals living alone feel their work‐life needs are seen as less legitimate than those of colleagues with children because of assumptions that their non‐work time is entirely leisure‐based. Our study aims to analyse the concept of perceived deservingness, seen as a precursor to the perception of legitimacy, in the context of work-life balance arrangements of childfree men and women. We intend to measure perceived deservingness through an experimental paradigm and determine the relation between this construct and other variables such as: gender, level of education and gender roles beliefs. Moreover, we propose to do a cross-country comparison, analysing the cases of Italy and the Netherlands, specifically.