Muestra y proceso de análisis

A family4 _{can be understood as a couple, with or without children, or one parent with children,}

usually living together in a household (Families & Whanau Status Report, 2014). Two aspects of family life can have an influence on career decisions, family of orientation – commonly known as one’s natal family, and one’s family of procreation – the family one creates with a life partner (Parkin, 1997).

Work and family represent relatively distinct yet interconnected domains of a person’s life (Kanter, 1977; Voydanoff, 2001). Families may enhance positive meanings of work by offering a supportive and relaxing environment, and by giving such assistance as money, labour or guidance (Brief & Nord, 1990). Positive relationships have been observed between the social support received from a family member and career success (Adams, King, & King, 1996; Friedman & Greenhaus, 2000; Voydanoff, 2001).

Moreover, families are important as work-family enrichment is thought to be bi-directional. Seligman (2002) has shown that experiences and material resources gathered in one role, work or family, can also affect performance in the other role. When individuals receive extensive resources from a role performance, their positive affect in that role is increased, which, in turn, is likely to facilitate their functioning in other roles (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006).

A defining trend of the 2000-2010 decade has been identified as the increasing diversity of families and workplaces. Families increasingly diverged from the two-parent, two-child family with a male breadwinner to divorced parents with joint custody, and single parent families (Bianchi & Milkie, 2010). For example, according to New Zealand Census 2013, 40.9 per cent of families were without children. Of the 59.1 per cent families with children, 41.3 per cent were couples with children, and the remaining 17.8 per cent one parent with children (2013 Census, 2014).

Family of orientation

A comprehensive overview of research on children’s career development presented by Watson and McMahon (2005) highlighted the need to understand more holistically the influences on and processes of career development learning in children. Psychologists and sociologists have

4 _{The Statistics NZ definition of family is two or more people living in the same household, who are either a} couple with or without children, or one parent and their children. The definition of family excludes parents and children who live in different households.

emphasised the important role played by the early childhood environment, mainly comprising family of origin and school, in forming career pathways (Brown, 2002). As noted above, the family of orientation refers to the family into which one is born or adopted (Parkin, 1997), and includes mainly parents, as well as all those relations who play an active role in the individual’s development. It is often cited as the most significant influence on primary career development constructs. This notion has been confirmed by several theorists; clearly vocational development begins during childhood and that family contextual factors affect the child's and adolescent's vocational development (Bryant, Zvonkovic, & Reynolds, 2006; Hartung, Porfeli, & Vondracek, 2005; Higgins, Vaughan, Phillips, & Dalziel, 2008; Savickas, 2002; Schulenberg, Vondracek, & Crouter, 1984; Whiston & Keller, 2004). The family of orientation plays a significant role because a young person spends his or her formative years in this family (Whiston & Keller, 2004), and it serves as the context of socialisation of the individual. The family’s influence on vocational development thus lies along two dimensions: by providing opportunities, and through socialization (Schulenberg et al., 1984). As part of the socialisation process, vocational development begins much earlier in the life span than generally assumed, before adolescence, and what children learn about work and occupations has a profound effect on the choices they make about their occupational careers (Hartung et al., 2005).

Moreover, family plays an important role in terms of parental encouragement in the pursuit of knowledge, intellectual discipline, and introducing children to career opportunities (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). Families have also been found to have a powerful influence on career pathway choices, as family relationships are the mechanisms by which young people craft identities. Family members are therefore typically the key to this, as trusted sources of information, and by offering emotional and financial support in relation to career decisions (Higgins et al., 2008). To sum up, family of orientation plays a major role in creating a career, and as a consequence must be recognised as a part of the process of further career development.

Family of procreation

Family of procreation as the name suggests, is the family an adult creates with his/her partner, it also includes their children if any. It has been affirmed that individual lives are vastly influenced by the distinct institutions of work and family (Mesmer-Magnus & Viswesvaran, 2005). Largely, it is likely to be quite demanding with a heavy impact on one’s work and family through having to manage demands for time, energy and economic resources. As a result, relationships between work and family are characterized by both, conflict and support (Adams, King, & King, 1996). People can be seen as border crossers who make daily transitions between the physically and temporally separate worlds of work and family (Clark, 2000).

Children have a major impact on career development as seen in the discussion below. Child-care forms the nucleus of what much work-family conflict is about – the question of how to care for children adequately when parents need or want to work outside the home is a very powerful one (Bianchi & Milkie, 2010). Dalziel and Saunders (2014) asserted in their book Wellbeing Economics that the most obvious issue in creating well-being is the capability of people to balance their time committed to the care of children and their time devoted to earning income and advancing careers in market employment. Thus, managing interactions between different life domains and investigating their mutual influence is a paramount concern for the present effort.

It has been observed that despite the increase in fathers’ involvement in the home, child care has remained much more the purview of mothers than fathers. As a consequence, work and family obligations exact large allotments of time from women, and the time pressure they feel is a

particularly important type of conflict for both work and family (Bianchi & Milkie, 2010). Bianchi and Milkie further comment that this is especially so, as the low-control tasks, defined as the traditional “female” jobs, must be done on a daily basis and often at specific times. This is likely to leave the woman with little or no personal control over her work life.

It has been suggested that when examining the impact of one’s personal life on work, it must be recognised that each individual has fixed amounts of physical and psychological resources (e.g. time, mental energy, etc.). Thereby, conflicts from one direction, i.e. work; are likely to be coupled with expressions of conflict from the other direction, i.e. personal life (Netemeyer, Boles, & McMurrian, 1996). Therefore, one’s spouse in particular has been found to play a vital role in terms of sharing responsibilities and offering support, as explained below.

Role of the spouse

It has been identified that an individual’s work and family trajectories are often linked to those of their spouses. Spousal support theory has long suggested that a spouse provides additional resources for job performance (Kanter, 1977). Specifically, women’s participation in paid labour has been found to be positively associated with the egalitarian gender role attitudes of their partners (Bolzendahl & Myers, 2004). It has been documented that women consider support at home as vital, even if they have access to other support sources (Coyne & DeLongis, 1986), and husbands/partners play an important role in career decisions of women (Corrigall & Konrad, 2007). Moreover, spouses provide a sense of stability at home, help with child care, alleviate work-life conflict and hence, are critical for working individuals (Gordon & Whelan-Berry, 2004; Janning, 2006; Rao, Apte, & Subbakrishna, 2003). Thereby, a person’s career development is tied to the career decisions of the spouse (Bianchi & Milkie, 2010).

Furthermore, it has been observed that the three dimensions of status – marital, parental and spousal employment – are arguably the most relevant to career success (Schneer & Reitman, 2002). Spousal employment status appears to be an especially important dimension of family structure, as for example, having a child has very different career implications if one is married with a stay-at- home spouse versus married with an employed spouse. It has been documented that both men and women clearly benefit from having a non-employed and supportive spouse (Kirchmeyer, 2006). A study on gender role attitudes and domestic division of labour suggests that a sustained rethinking of the family division of labour might result in improvements to satisfaction for both men and women (Crompton & Lyonette, 2005). Crompton and Lyonette’s multi-country study revealed that congruent liberals, that is, men and women with liberal gender attitudes and a less traditional division of domestic labour reported significantly lower levels of work-life conflict than either inconsistent respondents or congruent traditional with less liberal gender attitude and a traditional division of domestic labour.

Thus, as identified above, spouses play an important role in terms of offering support. Ezzedeen and Ritchey (2008) have specified six spousal support categories that can have significant effects on career pathways. They are emotional support, household help, help with children, esteem support, career support, and overall support. These are adapted later in Chapter 4 on analysing career pathways to categorise the support the research participants have received from their spouses. A more equal sharing of caring and domestic work is clearly a personal issue, and can likely be worked out with negotiation. The increased participation of women in the workforce has brought about a reduction in the time available for the work of families, and has created the necessity of balancing the demands of the workplace with those of family and household labour (Bartley,

Blanton, & Gilliard, 2005). As the proportion of women in the work force and rise of women to higher positions in organisations increase, their earnings are likely to influence the division of labour within households. In particular, it has been documented that women’s ability to bargain over the

household tasks is enhanced when their earnings are relatively larger compared with their spouse’s earnings (Cunningham, 2007). Thus, this has resulted in a shift in the roles men and women play. This is further examined below.

Paradigm shift in spousal support

One of the major changes in the past few decades is the clearly defined traditional roles of husbands as breadwinners and wives as homemakers have been replaced by new roles required by the rise in dual career couples. This has resulted in another significant change that has happened on the family front – a notable shift in the culture of fatherhood.

The paradigm shift in the way that traditional roles are viewed has meant breaking down old- fashioned roles for fathers as well. This has resulted, in some cases, in fathers taking up the role of a primary caregiver. Though mothers still bear the vast majority of responsibility for young children, and parental care by fathers still remains a fraction of that of mothers (Wall & Arnold, 2007), this relatively new phenomenon – the stay-at-home-father or “house-husband” – has developed in more recent years (Doucet & Merla, 2007). As indicated by Benko and Weisberg (2007), this has been possible mainly because modern societies have reached a point where behavioural expectations for roles have widened and previously exclusive roles played by men and women can be performed by either partner, signalling this change.

These kinds of employment-family-related gender role changes have been documented for some time. Research provides several often cited reasons for men becoming full-time fathers. These include a man’s lack of attachment to and participation in the paid workforce and issues reflecting household economics, a general shift to less traditional gender role attitudes, the state of the job market (particularly the loss of full-time jobs for men), and the growth of female participation in different occupations. Other explanations for this change in gender roles are women’s increasing influence in terms of earning power, a shift in attitudes toward gender equality, positive views on increased parental involvement by both mothers and fathers, and non-availability of government support for the family and childcare (Doucet & Merla, 2007; Fisher & Anderson, 2012; Grbich, 1995; Kildare, 2007).

This has also resulted in the identification of new challenges for full-time fathers, including the negative social perception of this new and different non-traditional role. Research reveals that it may sometimes result in strong feelings of social isolation, social stigma from their role as full-time fathers, lowered confidence, exclusion from established networks of mothers, difficulty in re- entering the workforce and demands to justify their absence from the workforce (Doucet & Merla, 2007; Kildare, 2007; Rochlen, Suizzo, McKelley, & Scaringi, 2008).

Sinno and Killen (2009) conducted a study of children from traditional (with working fathers) and from unconventional (with full-time house husbands) families. In general, children from both the groups perceived mothers as better in household jobs like cooking, than their fathers. However, the traditional nature of the family clearly played a big part in their opinions about working

arrangements. It was an interesting revelation of the survey that a large proportion of children from traditional families judged it as unacceptable for the father to stay at home, but as acceptable for the mother.

It is also interesting to note reactions of the wider families, as one of the female participants of this study who has a stay-at-home partner stated, “Yes, and working occasionally, he does bits and pieces

here. That’s since we’ve got married, that’s always been like that, much to my mother-in-law’s

disgust (emphasis added).”

House-husbands in New Zealand

At this point, it is pertinent to refer to the scenario in New Zealand. It is difficult to gain a robust view of the number of full time fathers as neither the Census nor other surveys clearly specify a figure. However, available information is indicative. The New Zealand census from 2013 provides

information about families and households, with information on the fathers’ job status: 7.4 per cent of fathers were not in paid work, compared to 32 per cent of mothers (2013 Census, 2014). Another major statistical source, Statistics New Zealand's Time Use Survey (2011) presents data on the work statuses of parents in three categories – both parents in full-time employment; mother part-time and father full-time; and mother not working, father working. Note the lack of comment on a “mother working, father not working” category. However, it also presents information about caring for children. For example, when couples have a young child (under five years), "mother-only" care comprises 59 per cent of the parental childcare time on weekdays, compared to 6 per cent of "father-only" care and 34 per cent of "shared parental care". Thus, the proportion of father-only carers is about 6 per cent5_{, which is not a high per cent but certainly indicates the emergence of a}

new statistical category where fathers are primary care-givers.

Thus, to summarise the role of family it can be said that family of orientation plays a prominent role primarily in early career decisions and forming of career choices. Family of procreation, formed later in adulthood, understandably plays a major role in terms of support and responsibilities in the later years of career development.