Negotiating a Meaningful Life: Time and the Gendered Perceptions of Risk in Work and Family Decisions

• In Event: 381 - Section on the Sociology of the Family Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 05. Gender and Family

Abstract

Concrete family obligations have a demonstrated impact on daily work experiences and long-term career success. Yet while family situations fluctuate over the life course, we know much less about how desired future relationships shape a person’s professional experiences. Through in-depth interviews and detailed career history data for 75 international aid workers, I find that even in the context of deeply meaningful work, people still seek fulfilling personal relationships. As a methodological tool, I analyze career decisions, not simply as occasions when current work and personal obligations need to be balanced, but rather as punctuated moments of crisis in which people search for meaning and seek the realization of deeply held values. Since women are more likely to make career sacrifices to facilitate a family, I compare men and women who have both prioritized their careers. I show that at these moments of crisis people engage in a process of meaning analysis, consisting of meaning reflection on the past and present and meaning prediction regarding the future. I find that the process of predicting future meaning is similarly uncertain for men and women, however women perceive the life course as more time sensitive and experience greater risk in foregoing personal relationships in pursuit of meaningful work. Finally, I demonstrate the varied strategies with which people respond at these moments of crisis. Together, these findings encourage a temporal perspective that considers the impact of desired personal relationships, highlight the importance of meaning-making in work-family theory, and enrich research on gendered career paths.

Author

• Carrie Robson Oelberger