Managing families, managing time. Parents’ work-family difficulties and work-family strategies over time.

This article contributes expanded knowledge about parents’ difficulties in reconciling work and family and their work-family strategies by studying how these difficulties and strategies change over time, e.g. from the early childhood years to the school-age/preteen years. Drawing on qualitative, longitudinal interviews with Swedish parents of school-age children who were interviewed when their first child was about 1.5 years of age, and then later when that child was 11 years of age, the article addresses the following research questions: What are the main difficulties in the parents’ reconciliation of paid work and caring responsibilities, and how have these difficulties changed over time? What are the parents’ most important work-family strategies for reconciling paid work and caring responsibilities and how have these strategies changed over time? The article draws on theories of work-family conflict, gender and time, and the results indicate change and continuity concerning the work-family difficulties and work-family strategies. Time famine appears to be a central difficulty that is consistent throughout the years. The findings also indicate gendered aspects of some of the strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]