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4. Juggling Work and Grandchildren
- NYU Press
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98 > 99 The trouble is, flexible schedules are not available to all; those in manufacturing and service sectors are often excluded. Employees who are black or Hispanic, have less education, or earn lower wages are less likely to be in positions that are offered, or allowed, to arrange flexible scheduling . Indeed, middle and higher earners are significantly more likely than lower earners to be able to set their start and end times through traditional or daily flex-time benefits.6 But those that can get them appreciate flexible schedules. The National Study of the Changing Workforce indicates that employees who have more control over their schedule or access to flexible schedules typically report greater involvement in their workplace, higher commitment to their jobs, and better well-being.7 Much has been said about the difficulties young mothers face as they attempt to juggle work and children, but little has been said about how grandmothers do the same.8 All of the 48 grandmothers I interviewed are working and caring for grandkids. These are the two conditions to be in my sample. They are working for a range of hours and caring for their grandchildren for an additional wide range of hours. Some of them are balancing these responsibilities seamlessly. Indeed a few women juggle work and grandchildren without changing their work schedules or using sick and vacation time. As with other studies, grandmothers commonly reported that they rearranged their schedules frequently . Some use nearly all of their paid sick and vacation time to care for the grandchildren. Some are willingly, or out of necessity, downsizing or changing jobs.9 The ease with which they rearrange work schedules varies considerably . Some are in highly autonomous positions and control their own schedules. Those who are managers, business owners, consultants, or per diem workers tend to have a fair amount of control over their scheduling . Others are in lower-income work that typically does not allow much flexibility. Nonetheless, as in other studies, many of the grandmothers I interviewed work in lower-waged jobs in offices with responsive employers who readily accommodate changing schedules, often by bending, breaking, or disregarding workplace policies.10 Studies have found that women whose jobs provide flexible hours, unpaid family leave, and paid sick leave are likely to remain employed, improving financial security for their own old age.11 Many of the grandmothers interviewed in this book have these lower-waged but fairly flexible positions. [3.235.76.155] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 16:55 GMT) 100 > 101 Retirement Survey (HRS) data set from 2010 to determine whether this sort of reallocation of hours is occurring on the national level.13 Table A.5, which appears in the appendix, shows the results of a regression equation predicting the number of hours of grandchild care grandmothers provided. HRS respondents were asked how many hours they provided during the preceding two years.14 When we explored what shaped how many hours of care grandmothers provided, we found that those with more education, those who lived within 10 miles of a grandchild, those who lived in multigenerational family households, those who were white, black or Hispanic, and those who were married or divorced, and those who are light drinkers, were all significantly more likely to report more grandchild care hours. What did not matter , however, was how many hours of paid work the grandmothers were reporting. Hours of paid work was not related to hours of grandchild care when we controlled for other factors. In other words, these findings support earlier findings that suggest that grandparents working a lot of hours tend to provide as much grandchild care as grandparents working fewer, or no, hours.15 Conversely, table A.6, which also appears in the appendix, shows that when we examined the number of working hours grandmothers reported, the number of hours spent on grandchild care was not significantly related. Women who were black worked significantly more hours, and women who were married, or doing more physical exercise, worked fewer hours. But increasing hours of grandchild care did not reduce hours of paid work or vice versa. Flexible and Inflexible Workplaces The vast majority of women I interviewed indicated that their workplaces were quite flexible, making it fairly easy for them to rearrange their work schedules to accommodate ever-changing grandchild care schedules. Had I interviewed working grandmothers who were not caring for their grandchildren, I may have found much less job flexibility. Marta, for example, works full-time as...