How do working mothers negotiate the work-home interface?
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the tactics that mid-career professional working mothers use to improve their work-home balance.
Design/methodology/approach
The qualitative study used in-depth interviews with 63 Brazilian professional working mothers aged between 37 and 55, having at least one child under the age of 18, and living in dual-career households. The interviews were content analyzed.
Findings
The study reported four dimensions of boundary work tactics (behavioral, temporal, physical, and communicative) that mid-career working mothers adopted to construct a satisfying level of segmentation or integration between work and home.
Research limitations/implications
The study suggests individual tactics for actively constructing a generalized work-home state that can be adopted by working mothers. Additionally, the authors suggest that HR managers should develop work-home balance programs that provide policies that adjust to the work-home boundary preferences for those mothers who want to integrate and segment these domains.
Social implications
The authors hope this study can help mid-career working mothers to understand how they can interact actively with others in such a way that they can better answer their work and home demands.
Originality/value
This study was the first to use boundary work tactics theory to explore how mid-career professional working mothers improve their work-home balance.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Research for this study was supported by FAPES (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Espírito Santo).
Citation
Araujo, B.F.v.B.d., Tureta, C.A. and Araujo, D.A.v.B.d. (2015), "How do working mothers negotiate the work-home interface?", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 30 No. 5, pp. 565-581. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMP-11-2013-0375
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited