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Data from ISSP 2002 is used to analyze work-family balance among working couples in 29 countries. It is observed that the regime theory is important for cross-national patterns of female employment but in terms of work-family balance, it is unable to account for the similarities between the familialist and de-familialist regimes.

Using data from a 2007 U.S. survey of workers, this article examines the implications of schedule control for workufamily role blurring and workufamily conflict. Four main findings indicate that (a) schedule control is associated with more frequent working at home and workufamily multitasking activities; (b) the positive association between schedule control and multitasking suppresses the negative association between schedule control and worku family conflict; (c) the positive association between working at home and multitasking is weaker among individuals with greater schedule control; and (d) the positive association between workufamily multitasking and worku family conflict is weaker among individuals with greater schedule control. Our findings reveal previously undocumented mediating, suppression, and moderating patterns in the ways that schedule control contributes to workufamily role blurring and workufamily conflict. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for views of schedule control as a oresourceo and theories about the borders in the workufamily interface.

We study to what extent adjustments in labor market participation, defined as employment entry and exit, and as increases and reductions of weekly working hours, depend on resources of the partner. Moreover, we investigate whether the influence of the partner depends on historical period, human capital, and children. We are especially interested in the economic-based hypothesis that people are more likely to reduce working hours when their partners have more resources. We use retrospective information on labor market careers of 5,685 respondents and their (ex-)partners (Family Surveys of the Dutch Population 1998-2003). Our results provide little support for the economic hypothesis, and we suggest that family formation and cultural factors are more important predictors for male and female labor market participation adjustments in the Netherlands.

The authors compare determinants of labor force participation and occupational sex typing over a 20-year period for matched samples of American and Swiss women. Results indicate important cross-national differences in processes governing women's market careers. These are in line with the authors' predictions regarding mediating effects of specific cultural, organizational, and institutional factors that differentiate the two countries. Female labor force participation is more strongly influenced by family configuration in Switzerland than in the United States. This can be attributed to powerful cultural and organizational constraints on maternal employment in Switzerland. In addition, the association between educational credentials and occupational sex typing is stronger and more persistent in Switzerland due probably to the greater differentiation and tighter market linkages characterizing the Swiss educational system. Results suggest that the explanatory power of conventional individual-level models of female market behavior varies depending on the structural and normative conditions under which women make life choices.