It was a great pleasure to discuss Work-life balance in times of recession, austerity and beyond with the book’s editors Suzan Lewis, Deirdre Anderson, Clare Lyonette, Nicola Payne, and Stephen Wood. The book seeks to broaden the dual agenda of promoting WLB to improve both gender equity and workplace productivity, to develop a triple agenda that also promotes social justice toward greater equality, social mobility, and workforce inclusion. The diversity of approaches in the different chapters of this book contributes important insights to the literature, for instance combining insights from action research (that can be criticized for its lack of generalizability) with cross-national compari- sons (that can be criticized for their lack of specificity). As such, the book does what an edited book does at its best: relating diverse perspectives on an important topic to a sum that is greater than its parts.

Ellen Kossek reworked our comments to the form of a book review, which now has been published in the recent issue of Community, Work & Family journal.

Nieuwenhuis, R., & Kossek, E. E. (2018). Work-life balance in times of recession, austerity and beyond (Book Review). Community, Work & Family, 21(1), 106–109. http://doi.org/10.1080/13668803.2017.1388002

We invite scholars to submit papers that examine the interplay of both policies that provide services (‘care’) and policies that provide financial support (‘cash’). Details are below:

Welfare states are in constant transition, with policy makers seeking solutions to address old and new social risks, while facing budget constraints. A useful distinction can be made between policies supporting well-being by providing ‘care’ in the form of public services, and policies providing ‘cash’ in the form of transfers. This distinction and changing balance between care and cash policies raises important new questions. To what extent may cash and care policies promote virtuous circles in welfare state reform? Are care policies adequately designed to compensate for reduced cash transfers? To what extent do cash and care policies depend on each other for maximum effectiveness and efficiency?

The general questions pertain to a wide range of policy areas. For instance, in labor market policy, the question can be raised whether active labor market programs (Bonoli, 2013) support employment adequately in order to compensate for reduced cash transfers in areas of unemployment and social assistance. In family policies, maternal employment are found to be higher in relation to work-family reconciliation policies such as childcare, but lower in relation to financial support policies as child benefits (Nieuwenhuis, Need, & Van Der Kolk, 2012). Yet, to reduce child poverty, both work-family (care) policies and financial transfers such as child benefits are thought essential and complementary (Maldonado & Nieuwenhuis, 2015). Policies can be distinguished that ensure care for the elderly through professional social services, and cash-for-care payments paying children to provide care for their elderly parents (Schmid, Brandt, & Haberkern, 2011). Publically funded education may have more equal outcomes when students can receive student grants to cover living expenses. Health and mortality are found not only to be affected by healthcare services, but also by minimum income benefits (Nelson & Fritzell, 2014). The effectiveness of public healthcare services may further depend on the presence of sickness benefits to allow patients to recover before having to go back to work.


This stream invites empirical papers that explicitly analyze the intersection of cash and care in welfare states, in any area of social policy. Contributions that examine policy developments, including the shift from cash to care, are welcome as well as contributions examining various types of policy outcomes.

Full details of all conference streams can be found at: http://espanetlisbon2017.eu/streams/

Deadline: March 15, 2017

The call for papers and full description of the stream can be found online.

From the stream description:

Who benefits most from family policies?

Family policies have received ample attention in the (comparative) study of welfare state outcomes. The attention now seems to turn to the question whether these family policy outcomes are homogenous across the population, or varies across people with different social backgrounds. Examples of such studies show that uptake of public childcare is biased against lower educated parents (Ghysels & Van Lancker, 2011), and that both paid leave and family allowances reduce poverty more strongly among single-parent families compared to two-parent families (Maldonado & Nieuwenhuis, 2015).

This stream seeks to bring together theory-driven, empirical studies on the question who benefits most from family policies. We welcome comparative papers as well as case studies, preferably using quantitative approaches to these questions.

Examples of possible contributions include, but are not limited to:

• Fathers or mothers: with fathers taking up leave becoming (somewhat) more common in various countries, the time seems right to address the question whether and how it affects their careers differently than is the case for mothers, how it impacts on household financial resources, and which kind of fathers actually make use of these leave schemes.
• Children from high or low SES parents. Does early childhood education and care level the playing field, or does it exacerbate existing differences in children’s outcomes? What are the redistributive effects of ECEC policies?
• The ‘institutional design of family policy’: Does universal coverage lead to universal use or take up? What kind of policy design yields the most equal outcomes? How do complementarities between policies come in to play to achieve more equal outcomes?
  The whole of society: in addition to papers examining specific sub-groups, we also invite papers addressing outcomes at the societal level, such as economic growth, inequality, and trends in poverty.
• Other options include differences in family policy outcomes across families with different levels of education, changing family structures, migrant histories, children with special needs etc.

Social Policy Responses: descriptions and analyses of social policy innovations focused on single-parent families. What social policies are adopted for single-parent families, and how are these policies debated? What are the determinants of (EU member) states adopting policies? Is there a trend towards targeting or universalism? How does Social Investment translate to policies for single-parent families?

Social Policy Outcomes: descriptions and analyses of how social policies affect single-parent families. What are the various policy arrangements for single-parent families? Do single?parent families benefit more from universal welfare state policies, or from policies targeted on specific needs of such families?

This panel will be part of the annual Policy and Politics conference, September 15-16th in Bristol. The full call for this panel is found online (.PDF). More information, and guidelines on submitting an abstract, are to be found on the conference website.

For further questions, leave a comment below of e-mail me at rense.nieuwenhuis@sofi.su.se

Appropriately, I started my day with a session on using social media. Nanette Fondas (amongst many other things a blogger at huffingtonpost.com) explained why intellectuals shold blog. The world has changed, with scholars increasingly trying to get their work out to the larger public. For academics blogging means more work. But, for greater dissemination, they have no choice but to participate. CV Harquail (Entrepreneur of insights, blogger at AuthenticOrganizations.com) explained how blogging is much more about influence and opinion than it is about presenting facts in academese language.

Next, a poster session. Admittedly, I found the posters a bit too much focused on text: as if a whole are article was copy-pasted on a big piece of paper. Nevertheless, interesting stuff! Audrey Reichman was interested in the association between maternal feelings towards employment and maternal mental health and well-being. Whereas the results were quite difficult to interpret, we had a nice discussion about interpretations of the findings, and possible improvements of the research. Christina Wolf showed analyses on time use of both men and women, in the United States and Germany. Men clearly spend more time on leisure than women. But, did you know that married men have less leisure time than cohabiting men? I wasn’t really aware of the existence of such differences between cohabitation and marriage, but the found disparities in time use were consistent between countries. In the general discussion, I could even contribute some insights on Dutch part-time labour. Since so many women indeed work part-time in the Netherlands, many women who actually want to work full-time find themselves faced with all kind of normative and practical pressures.

There was a great round-table conversation, about an international perspective on work and ‘families': addressing needs and solutions in diverse societies. The goal was to debate international applications of theoretical frameworks, measures, and interventions relating to the work/nonwork issues. The notes on this session will be posted on the WFRN commons soon, so make sure to check them out. Some of the issues discussed include how job demands – a crucial indicator of work-family balance – are highly job-specific, Gail Kinman argued, and therefore difficult to assess with general measures. Anne Bardoel discussed the difficulties multinationals face when trying to develop HR policies to apply in different countries. Total diversity is not feasible, but a single policy would not be applicable in all countries / cultures. Even within countries, great diversity is present. India, Tripti Desai described, is much more like Europe than a single country. Finally, despite all these forms of diversity in jobs, cultures, countries, and regions, Jospeh Grzywacz argued for the importance of looking for a common ground in our measures to attempt and facilitate comparative research.

So, we have had three fantastic days at the WFRN inaugural meeting in New York. Of course, I haven’t even told about a plenary meeting on Workplace Flexibility in the United States, nor about managing the work-family boundary, nor about supporting fatherhood and paid work. There simply was too much to attend, and to choose between. What a great program it was, and the number of very nice people I met!

In the end, I am delighted to have been part of the start of what seems to be a very interesting organization.

Did you attend this conference as well? Drop a comment with your thoughts on the WFRN inaugural meeting!

In a session on motherhood in the workplace, Jocelyn Elise Crowley provided qualitative accounts of how women experience being discriminated against for being a women. 54 Out of 125 women she interviewed reported having experienced discrimination, taking forms such as discrimination during th hiring process, getting less support on-the-job, and being discriminated against in job evaluations. Highly interesting, Daniela Grunow and Silke Aisenbrey studied the relation between the macro economic condition and mothers’ re-entry into the labour market. Their findings include (if remember correctly) that in Germany the employment gaps for mothers on family leave are longer during economic recessions. In the United States there were found no prolonged employment gaps for mothers on family leave during economic recession. I very much look forward to reading this paper in print.

A great plenary session was on the program. Ariane Hegewisch and Janet Gornick spoke about employment and work-family policy and drew some lessons from Europe. In Europe, EU directives mostly set minimum standards. Despite the common minimum standards, however, huge diversity in country-level policies and work-family infrastructure. One very straightforward core lesson we can learn from this European diversity is that work-family policy is also macroeconomic policy, strongly stimulating women’s employment; policy failure has significant economic consequences. There is some discussion whether very long (parental) leave periods have adverse effects on women’s careers. The united states, however, are so far in the ‘pathetic zone’, that there should be no concerns about the risk that increasing parental leave policies has adverse effects, Janet Gornick argued.

Jody Heymann widened the picture from Europe to the whole world, showing magnificent graphs on policy availability all over the world. Arguing that amongst the 15 most economically competitive countries in the world extensive family policies are highly common, she refuted the claim that on the long run countries ‘cannot afford’ to implement policies to reduce work-family conflicts. Arguing for the public availability of world-wide data on family policies, she presented the impassive website http://www.raisingtheglobalfloor.org. Go have a look!

Did I tell you about the work and family commons? The goal of the Work and Family Researchers’ Network (WFRN) reads:

The WFRN facilitates virtual and face-to-face interaction among work and family researchers from a broad range of fields and engages the next generation of work and family scholars. As a global hub, [the WFRN] provide[s] opportunities for information sharing and networking via [their] website, which includes the only open access work and family subject matter repository, the Work and Family Commons.

This Work and Family Commons really could turn out to something special: a multidisciplinary repository focused on the very relevant issue of work and family studies. If this takes of, this really will be the place to go to for learning what’s going on in the field of work and family research. Also, I signed up for a commission that will continue working on improving the work and family commons.

Next, ‘we’ focused on multilevel comparative work-life research. Laura den Dulk raised – and answered – the question how institutional and economic pressures in national context relate to the adoption of work-life-balance policies in organizations. They found that public sector organizations are more responsive to state support and female unemployment; large organizations are more sensitive to state support and importance of work. Karen Lyness presented how supervisors think that managers score higher on work-life balance, than the managers themselves think they do. Supervisors may underestimate managerial subordinates’ need for support in balancing their work with family.

And that wraps it up. Or not, actually, since there was so much else going on. Including a second plenary session. But this post is long enough as it is. Looking forward to day 3!

The WFRN facilitates virtual and face-to-face interaction among work and family researchers from a broad range of fields and engages the next generation of work and family scholars. As a global hub, [the WFRN] provide[s] opportunities for information sharing and networking via [their] website, which includes the only open access work and family subject matter repository, the Work and Family Commons.

The WFRN is a member driven researchers’ network, carrying on the legacy of the Sloan Network. This means that members can influence the ntwork’s policy, as well as appoint who’s in charge. Also, the network is independent from external funding, providing a good amount of opportunities to determine it’s own course.

I’ve so many interesting stuff, that I cannot share all of it. But here’s a selection of things I found interesting. In a session on family interactions and Gender Dynamics in the Household, analyses using time diary data were presented. Leah Ruppanner showed us a very nice macro-micro perspective, presenting how women spend more time on housework than men do, and that those women with more resources spend less time on housework. In addition, men spend more time on housework in metropolitan areas where women have a strong social position. So, gender equality on local labor market extends beyond the workplace to the home. Katie Genadek presented how the amount of time spouses spend together drops with young children in the household, to increase again when children grow older. Men and women report being more happy when spending an activity with their spouse. This, of course, has very interesting implications for the recent debate on whether having children contribute to your happiness, or not.

In a session on policies and contexts, making international comparisons, some interesting research was shown. Sue Yeandle presented how care responsibilities are concentrated in ages 40-60. Both men and women provide lots of care, and women somewhat more. However, at later ages men provide more care than women do. Caregiving has labour market consequences, as employment drops with increased intensity of caring. Tania van der Lippe made the argument that the work-family not only results in conflicts (as is studied so often), but also has positive effects on quality of life. It turns out, however, that the work-family conflicts have a stronger negative association with quality of life, whereas work-family enrichment has a weaker positive association with quality of life.

During a session on earnings and careers, I learned from a presentation by Michelle Budig that reconciliation policies (leave, childcare) are more effective in countries with a liberal population, compared to in a conservative population. So, as she concludes, policy and culture need to align for maximum effectiveness. Finally, Marie Evertsson studied the impact of work interruptions (e.g. Due to care, unemployment) on women’s future employment opportunities. Human capital deprecating during the work interruptions may be one factor influencing women’s career prospects after an interruption, but it turned out not to be the dominant one. Clear differences were found between Sweden, Germany, and the Unite States.

With over 800 presenters and 125 sessions, [I] don’t want to miss the latest work and family research from around the world. […] The conference features cutting-edge research and synthetic overviews of various topic areas. The program includes invited papers as well as those accepted via an open-submission process.

If you happen to attend as well, let’s discuss our work!

After models have been stored in MORET, they can be accessed from within R-Project, or they can be ‘dragged’ from within the MORET interface. So, basically, you can retrieve the full history of all the analysis you’ve done in a long period, or even career! Check it out on: www.rosuda.org

In a very different meaning of model management, Werner Stahel presented an augmented version of a regression function (”Yet another Regression Function”). It primarily has a different way of doing residual analysis and improves the way anova tables are calculated from regression objects. At times, he moves away form what is customary in regression analysis, so I wonder how many people will use it, or especially report the new measures in their publications.

The presentation by David Meyer was something completely different: visualizing categorical data and the corresponding VCD package. What I loved about this presentation, is that it contained some ideas on how one should properly visualize data. Still, we run into some weird instances of graphics, as was illustrated during the presentation (for instance the use of 3d bar-plots, in which we cannot compare the bar-height). One of the possibly interesting strategies, was to use color shaded mosaic plots, in which differences that were statistically significant to a higher extent were indicated by stronger colors. The direction of the relationship determined the nature of the color, the strength of the relationship the intensity of the color.

At the end of the session, a very nice piece of software was demonstrated, aimed at the dynamic interpretation and representation of principal components analyses. What the package basically does, is to take an object containing the results of a PCA, and then to represent that in a java based application. By that, we can easily select the variables or factors to represent. It is even possible to only show those factors, that have an impact above a specified threshold. Very nice visualization, and in the case of enormous numbers of variables, a real life saver.