Unequal but balanced: Highly educated mothers’ perceptions of work–life balance during the COVID-19 lockdown in Finland and the Netherlands

One year after the European work–life balance directive, which recognises the need for work–family policy support, measures to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic began shaping parents’ work–life balance in significant ways. Academically, we are challenged to explore whether existing theoretical frameworks hold in this new environment with combined old and new policy frameworks. We are also challenged to understand the nuanced ways in which the first lockdown affects the combination of paid work and care. We address both of these issues, providing a cross-sectional comparative analysis of highly educated mothers’ perceptions of work–life balance during the COVID-19 pandemic in Finland and the Netherlands. Our findings show that highly educated Finnish mothers have more difficulty combining work and care during the first lockdown than Dutch mothers. The absence of state-provided care during the lockdown creates greater difficulty for full-time working Finnish mothers in a dual-earner/state-carer system than an absence of such care in the Dutch one-and-a-half earner system, where most mothers work part time. Further analyses suggest variation in part-time and (nearly) full-time hours mitigates the work–life balance experiences of highly educated Dutch mothers. Additional factors explaining cross-country variation or similarities include the presence of young children and the presence of a partner. We discuss these findings in light of current theoretical frameworks and highlight avenues for future research. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of European Social Policy is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Gendering boundary work: Experiences of work-family practices among Finnish working parents during COVID-19 lockdown.

In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak and governmental lockdowns changed the everyday lives of families with children worldwide. Due to remote work recommendations and the closing of school premises and childcare centers, work-family boundaries became blurred in many families. In this study, we examine the possibly gendered boundary work practices among Finnish parents during the COVID-19 lockdown in spring 2020 by asking, how do parents perceive the blurring of work-family boundaries? What kind of boundary work practices did families develop to manage their work and family roles, and were these practices gendered and how? Boundary practices are analyzed by combining theories of doing boundaries and gender theories in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and applying them to survey data. The results revealed that during lockdown, both spatial and temporal boundaries blurred or partly disappeared, and boundary practices developed by families were highly gendered. Especially in families where childcare practices had been gendered already before the lockdown, it was predominantly mothers, who shouldered the main responsibility of increased childcare and struggled to manage their work duties. Hence, families had varying means to cope with blurring boundaries based on their ability to switch to remote work, but also on their work-family practices before the pandemic.

Family Coping Strategies During Finland’s COVID-19 Lockdown

During spring 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and global lockdowns fundamentally changed families’everyday lives. This study aims to examine how families with children coped during the COVID-19 lockdown in Finland and what kind of coping strategies they developed. An online survey including both qualitative and quantitative questions was conducted between April and May 2020 to gather Finnish families’experiences during the COVID-19 lockdown. In this study, we focus on information from one open-ended question, and Huston’s social-ecological theory was used as an analytical framework. The results showed that Finnish families employed coping strategies on three levels: macroenvironmental, relationship, and individual. This supports the argument that to better understand families’coping strategies, the macrosocietal environment surrounding families, their relationships, and the interactions between family members, as well as individual decisions and attitudes, should be taken into account.