Families in transition and flexible working

Lone mothers and fathers, blended families in which one or both partners have children from prior relationships, amongst other non-traditional family forms such as same-sex parents, have been mostly omitted from flexible working studies and hence policy. While there is a growing awareness that many family forms do not fit into the nuclear family model (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006), the lack of knowledge on how diverse family forms manage their w'ork and family responsibilities remains a critical gap in work-family research (Parasuraman & Greenhaus, 2002; Casper et al., 2007), and can be linked to a lack in policies to support families who function differently. FWAs might be a key source of organisational support for non-traditional family types such as lone-parent-led families and blended families to enable them to successfully manage their work and family commitments, the nature of which might be very different from intact nuclear families.

It has been noted that non-traditional families may face unique work-family pressures while at the same time having less access to support (Parasuraman & Greenhaus, 2002). One issue that might cause work-family conflict for both lone parents and parents in blended families is that they are likely to experience more intensive and complex family demands than traditional families. Due to the nature of their parenting situation, lone parents usually experience heavier parenting responsibilities than coupled parents when they have to manage both work and family demands on their own (Reimann et al., 2019). While parents in blended families might be able to rely on their new partner to support them with childcare arrangements, research has shown that not all step-parents are necessarily highly involved in the upbringing of their step-children and often take on a more auxiliary role while the birth parent takes on the role as primary parent (Cartwright, 2010). While step-parents are often found to assist in activities such as transporting the children to and from school, their engagement in other, more intimate parenting activities such as providing discipline are often limited (ibid.). Hence, re-partnered parents cannot automatically rely on their new partner to become an equal co-parent to their children and are likely to experience heavier parenting duties than do coupled parents in first-order unions. On the other side of the equation, step-parents might struggle with their newfound parenting responsibilities, especially if they do not have children themselves. Research has found that step-parents, and especially step-mothers, experience more parenting-related stress than biological parents (Shapiro, 2014). Major obstacles that step-parents encounter and that might lead to increased stress levels are often related to the co-parenting relationship between their partner and

Lone parents and blended families 205 their ex-partner (Cartwright & Gibson, 2013) and unrealistic expectations by all regarding the parenting role of the new step-parent (Cartwright, 2010).

Moreover, co-parenting relationships are a common challenge for both lone parents and blended families and can result in conflicts related to residency arrangements and lead to a lack of stability in childcare responsibilities (Ganong & Coleman, 2017). Research has shown how both lone parents and parents in blended families often have to navigate volatile relationships with their ex-partners, which can lead to serious obstacles in co-parenting with them. When a lone parent re-partners, co-parenting relationships have been observed to deteriorate, which can lead to increased stress and conflict for all family members (Cartwright & Gibson, 2013).

In connection to this, residency arrangements can be quite unstable as a result of ongoing custody battles (Cartwright & Gibson, 2013). Depending on how co-parents share physical residency of their children, childcare responsibilities for parents in blended families and lone-parent families might diverge significantly. For example, co-parents might agree for their children to live with either parent 50 per cent of the time in which case childcare responsibilities will often be different from week to week. As a seven-day week cannot be fairly divided between co-parents, novel residency arrangements are implemented by courts in which children might stay with one parent for four days and then with the other parent for four days, or alternatively one week with one and the next week with the other parent (McIntosh & Chisholm, 2008). Thus, it is difficult for both lone parents and parents in blended families to predict their childcare commitments and adapt their work schedules accordingly. Hence, flexible working arrangements designed for nuclear families are not likely to meet the needs of lone parents and blended families when considering their unique family practices (Gatrell & Cooper, 2016).

One FWA that might be particularly useful to support lone parents and blended families in navigating both their heavier family demands and workloads is work schedule flexibility. Work schedule flexibility, defined as a tool which offers employees control over their work hours within certain parameters (Jung Jang et al., 2012), might be a major tool to allow parents to meet strict nursery and school pick-up and drop-off times, which is especially important for lone parents who often cannot rely on a co-parent for childcare (Reimann et al., 2019) but might also be relevant for blended families in which partners do not live in the same household or in which step-parents take on a more auxiliary role and the main share of parenting responsibility falls on the birth parent (Cartwright, 2010).

This is supported by findings from previous research which has demonstrated that work schedule flexibility can help reduce stress and negative work-family spill over for lone parents and those with a higher family workload (Jung Jang et al., 2012), including parents in blended families as established earlier. Hence, for employees with heavier family demands, schedule flexibility may be an easily implemented and economical organisationalwork-family initiative to support such employees in managing their work and family responsibilities (Jung Jang et al., 2012).

The ‘dark side’ of flexible working

However, work organisations need to be careful implementing flexible working arrangements as research has shown the existence of a ‘dark side’ of flexible working. In some cases, flexible working can lead to overtime and increased work hours, and as such increased instead of decreased work-family conflict (Chung & Van der Horst, 2018). For example, Reimann et al. (2019) found that when lone parents utilise remote working or flexitime working it does not necessarily lead to enhanced benefits in comparison to other parents. Instead, remote working is found to increase WFC for both lone and coupled parents (Abendroth & Reimann, 2018).

Controls need to be in place ensuring that employees utilising flexible working policies such as flexitime and remote working are safeguarded against such adverse outcomes. Especially lone parents belong to a vulnerable group for which flexible working has the potential to create more pressure. Chung and Van der Horst (2018) demonstrated that if schedule control as a means of flexible working is implemented by organisations to increase employee performance, it leads to more unpaid overtime for men. As 75 per cent of lone fathers are estimated to be in full-time employment (Bernardi et al., 2018), they might be adversely affected, especially considering how they remain an invisible group in organisations (Gatrell et al., 2014). Hence, while work schedule flexibility might be a key resource for lone parents to negotiate timing conflicts between work and childcare, lone fathers are at risk to work more unpaid overtime using flexitime.

Lone fathers and flexible working

Studies on lone parenthood in the context of paid work tend to focus on lone mothers. Scholars justify this decision by arguing that first, lone parents are mainly women. Moreover, it is argued that for men relationship status seems to have less of an impact on the work domain as can be seen in the fact that lone fathers tend to exhibit more stable work patterns and are objectively more successful than lone mothers (Bernardi et al., 2018). This is supported by findings from a quantitative study of work-to-family conflict among lone and coupled parents by Minnotte (2012) who finds that lone fathers report less work-to-family conflict than lone mothers, coupled mothers, or coupled fathers. The author suggests that this might be because lone fathers have more resources available to them than lone mothers, which enables them to navigate work and family demands more successfully. However, even if this is the case, it does not explain why lone fathers experience less work-to-family conflict than coupled parents who have a partner they can share family responsibilities with.

Current estimates suggest that 90 per cent of lone parents in the UK are women (Gingerbread, 2019) and it has been suggested that the current focus of flexible working policies on supporting lone mothers promotes the marginalisation (instead of mainstreaming) of policies to support parents in balancing work and family commitments (Lewis, 2001). It has been suggested however, that statistics might underestimate the numbers of men who are lone fathers some of the time, for example when children are classified as ‘officially’ resident with mothers but with fathers providing care (and therefore acting as lone parents) where required (Gatrell et al., 2015). Lone fathers might be under even more pressure than lone mothers given their restricted access to flexible working policies, which are based on assumptions that those utilising them will be working mothers. Lone mothers can hence access flexible working relatively easily whereas lone fathers might feel discouraged from using such policies (Gatrell et al., 2014). This might exacerbate workfamily conflict for lone fathers as organisational norms and policies continue to assume that fathers can rely on mothers to take on the main share of parenting work, which is not the case for lone fathers.

Hence, due to the gendered nature of flexible working arrangements, lone fathers, among other groups, experience a perceived restricted access to flexible working arrangements.