Out of Time ― The Consequences of Non-standard Employment Schedules for Family Cohesion

This pioneering work aims at understanding the impact of non-standard (evening, night, weekend) working time on family cohesion, meaning parent-child interaction, partnership quality and divorce or partnership dissolution. ‘Out of time - the Consequences of Non-standard Employment Schedules for Family Cohesion’ is the first work to treat this important topic in a cross-national, comparative way by using data from two large comparable surveys. The impact of work in non-standard schedules on workers can be divided into individual and social consequences. Research so far has shown the clear individual effects of these schedules, such as increased stress levels and sleeping and physical disorders. There is less clarity about social consequences. Either no or positive effects of these types of schedules on workers and their families are found, or a significant negative impact on the relations between the workers and others, especially other members of the family is shown in research results. This Brief compares the Netherlands and the United States of America, countries that both show a high prevalence of non-standard schedule work, whereas both operate in very different institutional and welfare regime settings of working time regulation. By combining both quantitative and qualitative data, the authors are able to provide generalized views of comparative surveys and challenging those generalizations at the same time, thus enabling the reader to get a better understanding and more balanced view of the actual relationship between non-standard employment schedules and family cohesion.?

Kadri Taht is Assistant Professor at the International Institute of Social Studies at Tallinn University, Estonia. She got her BA in Sociology from Tartu University (Estonia), her MA from Lancaster University and the CEU in Warsaw. Kadri got her Ph.D. at the VU University Amsterdam. She has carried out research projects on Higher Education and the Labor Market, on Lifelong Learning, and on the relationship between non-standard work schedules and family cohesion. Her current research focuses are social stratification in post-socialist societies and the relationship between globalized labor markets and ageing workforces. Kadri Taht has published in all journals relevant for her research area, including the Journal of Marriage and Family, and has acted as a reviewer for International Sociology and the European Sociological Review.

Melinda Mills is Full Professor of Sociology of the Life Course and Rosalind Franklin Research Fellow at the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Groningen. She got her MA in Sociology at the University of Alberta and her Ph.D. in Demography at the University of Groningen. Melinda Mills has worked on several international research projects that were funded by e.g. the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) and the Volkswagen Foundation (Germany). She was the first female editor of International Sociology, the journal of the International Sociological Association, and has been on the Editorial Boards

of a number of important journals in her fields of research. Melinda Mills has obtained several grants from the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and the European Science Foundation. Her current research focuses on Fertility, Cross-national Sociology of the Family, Partnerships, and Sociology of the Life Course.