Browsing by Subject "24/ -talous"

There is an intense debate about combining working life and family life going on in Finnish society. The subject is especially interesting at the moment because some recent social structural changes have blurred the boundary between work and family life. For example, the liberalization of the opening hours of the shops and markets poses new challenges for parents who are finding balancing their non-standard working hours with family life increasingly difficult. The aim of this Bachelor’s thesis is to find out how parents’ non-standard working hours are affecting the everyday life of families with children. The subject has been approached from different perspectives including individual, organization and society. The results this study has revealed are based on existing research materials and studies. The answers to the research questions were found in scientific articles, studies and literature related to this topic. Finna-portal, Google Scholar as well as the search engine of the City Centre Campus Library were mainly used to search articles and studies for this thesis. Comparing, studying and combining the results of previous studies have revealed that parents’ non-standard working hours have created a variety of new challenges for families with children. It turned out that the lack of regular family routines and the problems related to finding time for family members to spend with each other were considered especially demanding and stressful. Although the research results seem to focus mainly on factors which ignore the apparent complexity of family life and are thus perceived as not supporting family life, the research materials also revealed factors which have positive influences on everyday life of families with children. For example, there were some indicators which show that working non-standard hours may facilitate work-family balance. A day off in the middle of the week could sometimes be seen as a necessary and useful thing when running and organizing family life. Also, parents’ non-standard working hours seemed to offer more opportunities to fathers to share family and domestic responsibilities with women on an equal footing.