Sustainability In Combining Career And Care: Challenging Normative Beliefs About Parenting

In this special issue on “Sustainability in Combining Career and Care”, eight empirical studies following
from an integrative framework address normative beliefs about parenting, “choices”
in combining work and family, and outcomes for individual careers, couples, and
children.

Offers an integrative framework for understanding and changing the effects of normative beliefs about parenting on “choices” at the work-family interface and on outcomes for careers, couple and children.

Highlights a wide range of multi-method studies of the work-family interface from multiple countries.

Employs a micro-, meso-, and macro-level perspective on creating and promoting sustainability in combining career and care.

Sheds a new light on popular misconceptions and stereotype reproductions in the media about the challenges, choices, and consequences of combining career and care for working parents.

Posits an innovative process model for changing normative beliefs about parenting and career success: The “Triple-N Model” of (1) Nominating Norms, (2) Navigating Norms (3) and creating New, No-nonsense Norms.

Marloes van Engen is Assistant professor at the department of Human Resource Studies, Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Tilburg University where she lectures in Diversity in Organizations and Human Resource Studies. She studied social psychology with a minor in the psychology of culture and religion at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. She lectured at Communication Sciences before she moved to Tilburg University. Her research interests are in the area of gender in organizations, gender and careers, work-family issues in organizations, diversity in teams and organizations, effectiveness of diversity practices and policies and methodology such as meta-analysis, multi-level analysis, qualitative research and intervention studies. She earned her PhD in 2001 on gender and leadership. She was a visiting academic at Northwestern University (USA), the University of Queensland (Australia) and Monash niversity (Australia). She has published in Psychological Bulletin, the Journal of Organizational and Occupational Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Leadership Quarterly.

Claartje Vinkenburg is Associate Professor of organizational behavior and development at the VU University Amsterdam. She studied social psychology at the University of Groningen, and earned her PhD in Business Administration in 1997 at the VU University Amsterdam on gender differences in managerial behavior and effectiveness. From 1997 to 2001 she worked as a management consultant (at Berenschot and independently) and a visiting scholar and adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University (USA). As managing director of the Amsterdam Center for Career Research (www.accr.nl), Claartje's research focuses on gender, leadership and career advancement, including the effects of normative beliefs about parenting on women's career patterns and outcomes, with Josje Dikkers (VU) and Marloes van Engen (UvT). She has published several book chapters and articles (e.g. Journal of Vocational Behavior and the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Leadership Quarterly) on her research, as well as edited a book on 'Top potentials' for the Dutch Foundation of Management Development.

Josje Dikkers works at the department of Human Resource Management, University of Applied Sciences Utrecht. She studied Work- & Organizational Psychology at Tilburg University and completed this study with honours (Cum Laude). In 2008, she earned her PhD on ‘Work-home interference in relation to work, organizational, and home characteristics' at the Department of Work- & Organizational Psychology of the Radboud University Nijmegen. From 2006 to 2012, she worked at VU University Amsterdam within the Department of Management amp; Organization Studies. Josje Dikkers has published several (inter)national articles and book chapters based on her research. Since 2004 she has also worked part time at Qidos as a research consultant. Her research interests primarily focus on the interaction between people’s work and private lives and work-home culture.