The puzzles of daily life : The temporal orders of families when parents have non‐standard work schedules

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ The puzzles of daily life : The temporal orders of families when parents have nonstandard work schedules © 2022 The Authors. International Journal of Social Welfare published by Akademikerförbundet SSR (ASSR) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published version Siippainen, Anna; Närvi, Johanna; Alasuutari, Maarit Siippainen, A., Närvi, J., & Alasuutari, M. (2023). The puzzles of daily life : The temporal orders of families when parents have non‐standard work schedules. International Journal of Social Welfare, 32(3), 291-305. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijsw.12576 2023 ORIGINAL ARTICLE The puzzles of daily life: The temporal orders of families when parents have non-standard work schedules Anna Siippainen 1,2 | Johanna Närvi 3 | Maarit Alasuutari 1 1 Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland 2 Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland 3 Social Sustainability, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland Correspondence Anna Siippainen, Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University, Kalevantie 4, 33100 Tampere, Finland. Email: [email protected] Funding information The Academy of Finland, Grant/Award Numbers: 293049, 314317 Abstract This article investigates the temporal orders of families as the daily rhythms and schedules when one or both parents work non-standard hours. Our focus is especially on the often asynchronous times of non-standard work, on one hand, and of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services and other institutions, on the other hand. The data consist of semi-structured qualitative interviews of Finnish parents with a four-year-old child. The results show that the asynchronous times generated by non-standard working hours cause a wide range of collisions both in relation to childcare and ECEC and to the division of labour between parents. The parents are ‘wrestling’, not only because of the asynchrony of their own work but also because of the ‘pedagogical rhythm’created by ECEC professionals. However, the parents also find ways to manage time, facilitated by workplace flexibility or spousal negotiations over the sharing of responsibilities. KEYWORDS asynchronous daily rhythms, childcare, childcare policy, discursive analysis, early childhood education and care, interview study, non-standard work hours, parenting, temporal order, time INTRODUCTION “It takes flexibility and dedication from both of us for this corporation called ‘Family’ to work.” The 2010s—up until the Covid-19 pandemic—show that in two-parent households with children, increasingly, both parents participate in working life (e.g., OECD, 2021). Furthermore, due to the emergence of a post-industrial, service- and information-intensive 24/7 society, working hours have become more fragmented (Anttila & Oinas, 2018), entailing that in many families, one or both parents have non-standard work schedules, including shift work or (ir)regular work during non-daytime hours or at weekends (see Presser, 2003). The interface and reconciliation of work and family life—or making the “corporation called ‘Family’to work”, as one of the interviewed parents in this study said—can be a challenge and “a daily puzzle”for the parents in such families. In this article, we consider how the interviewed parents manage different schedules and responsibilities related to work, childcare arrangements and family, and the (a)synchronisms they encounter in their daily lives. Our focus is on two-parent families due to the composition of the data. Received: 22 November 2021 Accepted: 15 November 2022 DOI: 10.1111/ijsw.12576 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. © 2022 The Authors. International Journal of Social Welfare published by Akademikerförbundet SSR (ASSR) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Int J Soc Welf. 2022;1–15. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ijsw 1 14682397, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijsw.12576 by University Of Jyväskylä Library, Wiley Online Library on [09/12/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License The management of family time is a multifaceted phenomenon. Zerubavel (1981) argues that synchronisation is a basic principle of social organisation but is often overlooked because of its familiarity. Some scheduled routines and normative values relating to time are created and maintained by states (Edensor, 2006,2016), organisations (Breedveld, 1998; Snyder, 2019) and family and its members. Besides dealing with the different roles and activities of family members in a society, the management of family time concerns different aspects and periods of time. A key aspect of this is managing and measuring chronological time or ‘clock time’, such as when the parents need to be at work and when the childcare setting opens. Through the timetables for work, school, commuting and so on, clock time is imposed on most of family life (Hassard, 1990). However, the times defined by clock time may vary in how they condition family life and family members. Family schedules may include components that can be totally self-determined by the family or its members, components that can be totally environmentally or externally determined and components that are negotiable (Zerubavel, 1977). Furthermore, family schedules may be characterised as being divided into public and private time. That is, they may be characterised as comprising components that are defined by temporal boundaries between family members' states of being in and off occupational roles or other institutional roles (e.g., being a student) (Zerubavel, 1990). Thus, in everyday family life, managing time means attending to the different, and in varying ways (non-) negotiable, clock-time schedules of each family member. These schedules can be fairly synchronous, particularly if the parents work standard hours. However, if one or both parents work in shifts or non-standard hours, the emergence of asynchronous or conflicting schedules may be difficult to avoid. How the asynchronous schedules are coordinated and the family time is managed in these situations relate to the other key aspect of time: social time. Within the concept of social time, time is intertwined with meaning and is, thus, connected to the social construction of times (see Hassard, 1990). In this article, this concept refers to the meanings that parents give to the different components and times of both their own and the other family members' schedules. For example, parents may primarily conceive of their time off work during weekdays as their personal private time, or they may approach this time from the viewpoint of parenting and act according to the child's care arrangements. Parents construct their daily, weekly and long run schedules by negotiating about their individual and family members' internal needs for rest, food, leisure, intimacy and togetherness—that is, private time—on one hand, and the external temporal structures of societal institutions, such as those of paid work or early childhood education and care (ECEC) services—public time—on the other hand. According to Daly (1996), the temporal orders of public time frame, shape and constrain the options available to parents when they organise and schedule their everyday lives, thereby creating their own temporal orders. This article focuses on the daily rhythms and schedules of families with a four-year-old child when at least one parent has a non-standard work schedule or works non-standard hours. We especially examine the often non-synchronised times produced by non-standard work, on one hand, and on childcare services and other institutions, on the other hand. Parents can be constrained by but also have some flexibility and control over the time structures within which they live. In this article, we address the following questions: 1. What types of (a)synchronisms do parents encounter in their family's daily temporal orders when one or both of them work non-standard hours? 2. How do they manage their daily rhythms concerning paid work and childcare? Time, temporal orders and childcare when parents work non-standard hours Along with time's measurable dimension, clock time, there is the socially negotiable and culturally constructed dimension, social time (Daly, 1996; Hassard, 1990). How time is understood and organised reflects what is valued in a given society (see Daly, 1996). In many Western societies, family time is a strong ideal that represents what is understood as good parenting or family togetherness (Daly, 1996; Gillis, 1996). However, the ideal of family time often contradicts the sociocultural temporal order of which present-day families are part (Daly, 1996). Parents' non-standard work schedules can affect their ability to balance paid work and family responsibilities (Tammelin et al., 2017), including the time they have available for their children. Non-standard work schedules can be asynchronous with the institutional rhythm of ECEC services, with leisure and community activities, with the individual rhythms of other family members and with family rhythms, such as the timings of family meals or other activities. Some studies have found that parents' nonstandard work schedules can make family environments chaotic because of the difficulties of planning everyday life (Li et al., 2020). Aho (2019) used the concept of ‘rhythm conflicts’when describing the unsynchronised social rhythms that truck drivers face in their work and personal lives, including their family members' rhythms and the rhythms of other social and leisure activities. 2SIIPPAINEN ET AL. 14682397, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijsw.12576 by University Of Jyväskylä Library, Wiley Online Library on [09/12/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Family time and rhythms also have a gendered dimension, as mothers and fathers usually face different expectations about how they should use their time for paid work or childcare responsibilities (Salin et al., 2018). In almost all Western countries, and despite diverse policy and cultural contexts, parenthood is gendered, with mothers devoting more time to childcare and fathers to paid work (Craig & Mullan, 2011; Grunow & Evertsson, 2016). The time parents spend with their children is also related to both the children's and parents' well-being, as well as to the perceived work–family balance (Milkie et al., 2010; Offer, 2014). Many parents— especially mothers—are aware of the intensive parenting norm that guides parents to devote large amounts of time and energy to their child and to put the child's needs first (Faircloth, 2014; Hays, 1996). According to Daly (1996), negotiations around organising and managing time within families can reveal how different cultural ideals dictate what is considered important and how priorities are established. Parents in two-parent families can, try to synchronise their rhythms by creating shared temporal guidelines, but they can also ‘off-sched- ule’the rhythms, for example, by working different shifts to create more parental care time for their children, despite having less time together as a couple (Begall et al., 2015; Presser, 2003; Täht & Mills, 2012). In fact, a study based on Finnish time use data found that non-standard working hours were not related to how much time parents spent at home caring for their children in families with two carers (Oinas, Tammelin & Anttila, 2015). However, another study found that working non-standard hours particularly increased the time that fathers spent with their children (Oinas, Anttila & Mustosmäki, 2019). Furthermore, Sev on et al. (2016) noticed that non-standard working hours might equalise the division of labour between parents. However, they also noted that cultural perceptions of intensive and caring motherhood were strong. The temporal orders of society can, therefore, limit parents' daily and weekly actions through multiple and sometimes asynchronous time commitments, but they can also be negotiated and controlled. Parents have varying degrees of autonomy in relation to different sociocultural time structures (Daly, 1996). They have more control over private, family and community activities, such as mealtimes, play or excursions with friends, and less or no control over working times or the opening hours of ECEC services. Organisations, such as workplaces, have the power to practise time discipline—that is, to control the social rhythms of groups of people, such as their employees, to achieve organisational goals (Snyder, 2019). However, working time flexibility or autonomy can help parents reconcile their daily commitments to paid work and family needs. Autonomy concerning working time can allow spouses to match their individual working hours to the family's (or each other's) family-time structure, thus enabling the formation of the family's individual working time arrangements and rhythms (Oinas, Anttila & Mustosmäki, 2019). Fleetwood (2007) classified flexible working practices as employee friendly (e.g., flexible start and finish times, voluntary part-time and career breaks), employer or business friendly (e.g., zero-hour contracts and call-out arrangements) and neutral (i.e., friendly to both parties). Work–family conflict has been a traditional way of interpreting work–family reconciliation. Research on non-standard work schedules and their effects on families has centred on questions of parental processes, such as the division of labour between parents or parent–child relationships, and parental and child well-being, including health and socio-emotional well-being (Pollmann- Schult & Li, 2020). Many studies have shown that nonstandard working times have negative consequences for the couple's relationship, the couple's work–family reconciliation or child development. Other studies, however, have also demonstrated beneficial aspects of working non-standard hours, such as the above-mentioned more equal division of unpaid work between parents (for an overview, see e.g., Pollmann-Schult & Li, 2020 or Grzyvacz, 2016). According to Pollmann-Schult and Li et al. (2020), family strategies can play an important role in understanding the either negative or positive impacts of parental non-standard work schedules on family wellbeing. In this article, our focus is on time and how it is managed and negotiated by parents with non-standard work schedules. Therefore, we investigate not only the work–family relation but also the rhythms of ECEC or differing rhythms of individual family members. Non-standard work schedules and the childcare system in Finland Standard daytime working hours are no longer the norm for many workers globally (Presser, 2003). Yet the Nordic countries, with a tradition of high social protection and strong labour market regulation, have a lower incidence of non-standard work schedules compared with other regions in Europe (Gracia et al., 2021). Nonetheless, in Finland, the share of employees working daytime hours (between 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM) has decreased from 70% to 62% during the past two decades, which can be linked with the increase in employees being able to determine their work schedules themselves. At the same time, the share of employees working in shifts has stayed the same since the 1990s. In 2018, one in five employees worked in shifts or regularly during evenings or nights. Shift work THE PUZZLES OF DAILY LIFE 3 14682397, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijsw.12576 by University Of Jyväskylä Library, Wiley Online Library on [09/12/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License was more common among blue-collar workers and younger age groups and slightly more common among women. In addition to regular non-standard hours, as many as half of all employees occasionally worked in the evenings, and one in six, men more commonly than women, worked at night within a 4-week period (Sutela et al., 2019). According to the European Working Conditions Survey 2015, Finland was among the countries with the highest scores for workers working at night once or more per month (25% compared to the EU average of 19%), while the scores remained below the EU average for workers working at the weekend once or more per month (Finland: 51%; EU average: 54%) or in shifts (Finland: 19%; EU average: 21%) (Eurofound, 2021). Consequently, many parents also work during nonstandard hours. Around 30% of mothers with children below school age in Finland work in the evening, at weekends and at night (Hietamäki et al., 2017; Sulkanen et al., 2020). The employment rate for mothers of 3– 6-year-old children is high (84% in 2020) and full-time work is common (Statistics Finland, 2020; Sutela et al., 2019). An individualised and diversified working life requires flexibility in ECEC services (Repo & Kröger, 2009), and this is reflected, among other things, in the need for ECEC during non-standard hours. In Finland, municipalities are responsible for organising ECEC services, and all children have the unconditional right to full-time ECEC regardless of parental employment status (Act on Early Childhood Education and Care 540/2018, 2018). Most often, ECEC is offered in centres, but family day care may also be available. This refers to services provided by one carer who cares for up to four children in her/his own home. Both types of ECEC are governed and regulated by the same legislation. Municipalities are also required to provide such services for children whose parents work or study during non-standard hours. However, the unconditional right to ECEC does not apply to early mornings, late evenings, nights and/or weekends (Act on Early Childhood Education and Care 540/2018, 2018); municipalities only provide ECEC services during non-standard hours when parents need them due to their work or study schedules. Furthermore, municipalities differ in how they organise ECEC during non-standard hours. Often, one or more ECEC centres in a municipality are assigned to provide services during non-standard hours (Rönkä et al., 2019), but such services can also be provided by a family day care or by hiring a carer to work in a family's home. The youngest children enrolled in ECEC in Finland are usually about 10 months old, since parental leave ends then. Currently, the leave system is being renewed, which will extend the leave period until the child is about 14 months if both parents use their share of leave. After the parental leave period, parents are entitled to a homecare allowance until the child turns 3 years old, unless the child is attending publicly provided or subsidised ECEC. Due to Finland's home-care allowance system, the participation rate of children under 2 years old in ECEC is less than 40% (Tuononen, 2021). Parents returning to work and working at most 30 h per week are entitled to a flexible care allowance until the child turns 3 years old. Parents whose child is in the first or second grade in primary education can access a similar benefit. Typically, mothers obtain the home-care allowance and have shorter working hours (Miettinen et al., 2021). In Finland, 7% of children enrolled in ECEC attend these services during non-standard hours (Säkkinen & Kuoppala, 2017). In a survey of parents of four-year-old children, more than one in four mothers or fathers worked shifts or worked regularly outside typical office hours, but less than 5% of the children attended ECEC during non-standard hours (Sulkanen et al., 2020). According to Lammi-Taskula and Siippainen (2018), the childcare choices of parents working non-standard hours seem very similar to those of people doing standard daytime work. This means that parents with non-standard work schedules organise everyday life—including paid and unpaid work as well as childcare—in many ways. One way to organise childcare in dual-earner families is so-called tag-teaming—an arrangement where the parents work at separate times and are, thus, responsible for childcare and work at different times (La Valle et al., 2002; Presser, 2003). Still, most four-year-old children attend ECEC, and reliance on informal care, such as care provided by grandparents, is rare (Sulkanen et al., 2020). DATA AND METHOD The data for this study consist of 16 semi-structured qualitative interviews chosen from a larger dataset including several rounds of longitudinal interviews with Finnish parents. The analysed interviews were conducted in 2019, when all the participating parents had at least one 4-year-old child, but many also had other children. The interviews explored the parents' childcare solutions, including the use of ECEC services, and the explanations for these solutions. The parents were also asked about issues related to work–family reconciliation and the division of unpaid home and care work. Qualitative interviews were selected as the data collection method due to the theoretical commitment to the concept of social time, which considers time as intertwined with meaning and, thus, as being constructed by actors (see Hassard, 1990). Qualitative interviews are 4SIIPPAINEN ET AL. 14682397, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijsw.12576 by University Of Jyväskylä Library, Wiley Online Library on [09/12/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License typically conversational in character. Therefore, they are more flexible than structured data collection methods, both for the interviewees to raise their viewpoints and experiences and for the interviewer to focus the discussion on themes and issues that are relevant for both the interviewee and the study. As such, they can be considered interactions in which meanings are produced not only by the interviewee but also the interviewer (see Mason, 2002). With this study, we strive to illuminate the meaning-making in family life contexts, which may differ considerably due to variations in types of non-standard work. Such variation is difficult to consider, for example, in a survey, which also supports the use of qualitative interviewing as the data collection method. The interviews were conducted in 10 discretionally selected municipalities. The municipalities are located in different parts of the country and vary in their employment rates and the share of population working in services, industry and agriculture. The municipalities also differ in their organisation of ECEC for children whose parents work non-standard hours. Some, often more populated, municipalities have a wide network of services for parents to choose from, while less-populated municipalities with low demand for ECEC during non-standard hours provide individually tailored solutions with extended hours for families. For the analysis, from the data (59 interviews), we selected 16 interviews representing families in which one or both parents worked non-standard hours. The families were living in nine (out of the 10) studied municipalities. All of them were two-parent families with different-sex couples. In this study, we use the concept of a two-parent family, which also covers family forms in which the family is formed by a new spouse in addition to the biological parent, for example. Both parents were present in three of the 16 interviews. Six of the interviews were conducted TABLE 1 Background information on the families (n=16). Family Parents' current activity Number of children Childcare arrangement of the four-year-old child Family 1 Mother in part-time non-standard work; father in day work 3 ECEC centre Family 2 Mother in non-standard work; father in day work 4 Family day care Family 3 Mother in non-standard work; father in day work 2 ECEC centre Family 4 Mother in day work, which occasionally includes evening work; father in part-time day work and studying 1 ECEC centre Family 5 Mother in day work; father in part-time nonstandard work 1 ECEC centre Family 6 Mother studying; father in part-time non-standard work and studying 1 Family day care Family 7 Mother on parental leave (before that in nonstandard work); father in non-standard work 3 Home care Family 8 Mother in non-standard work; father in work that required travel 1 ECEC centre with extended opening hours Family 9 Mother in day work (occasionally weekends); father in non-standard work 3 ECEC centre with extended opening hours Family 10 Mother in day work (studies part-time in the evenings); father in non-standard work 2 ECEC centre Family 11 Mother in part-time day work; father in nonstandard work 2 ECEC centre Family 12 Mother in non-standard work; father in day work and evening meetings 2 Family day care with extended hours Family 13 Mother in non-standard work; father in day work 2 ECEC centre Family 14 Mother in non-standard work; father studies 2 ECEC centre Family 15 Mother studying and in part-time non-standard work; father in day work 2 Family day care Family 16 Mother in day work; father in non-standard work 2 ECEC centre THE PUZZLES OF DAILY LIFE 5 14682397, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijsw.12576 by University Of Jyväskylä Library, Wiley Online Library on [09/12/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License with the fathers and the rest with the mothers (altogether 19 parents). Twelve of the interviewed parents worked non-standard hours, while in other cases it was the other (non-interviewed) parent. Most interviewees had a university-level education, either a BA (n=6) or a higher degree (n=6). Five interviewees had a vocational qualification and two had no vocational qualification. At the time of the interview, the interviewed parents were mainly working full-time (n=13) or part-time (n=4). One of the parents was a full-time student, and one was a stay-at-home parent. Table 1summarises the interviewed parents' as well as the other parents' situation. Parents with non-standard schedules were working in occupations or fields such as social and health care, teaching, postal services, sports and fitness, the restaurant business, commerce, laboratory technology, journalism and local politics. Some parents worked in blue-collar occupations but most in white-collar occupations. As will also be seen, many of them had the opportunity to influence, for example, their working hours at least to some extent. As we know from previous studies, this is not possible in all jobs (e.g., Roman, 2017; Tammelin, 2009). One of the four-year-olds in these 16 families was in home care, two were enrolled in an ECEC centre with extended opening hours and nine were attending centrebased ECEC with standard opening hours. Furthermore, three children were in family day care, and care in extended hours was available for one of them (see Table 1). In this article, our interest is in descriptions of the management of family rhythms and, in particular, the asynchronisms in them. As stated already, we approach these descriptions as producing the meanings of specific times in the family rhythm and actions associated with them. Thus, the article is framed by social constructionist thinking (see Burr, 2015). Our analytical approach resembles what Jackson and Mazzei (2012) called thinking with theory. The analysis proceeds as a continuous dialogue between empirical data and theoretical thinking with one complementing the other. Instead of mechanical coding, analytical questions formed on the basis of theoretical concepts are presented to the data (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012). The above-described analytical approach is in line with the ideas of reflexive thematic analysis (see Braun et al., 2015) applied in the analysis. Reflexive thematic analysis underlines the implementation of the analysis with theoretical knowingness and transparency and the researcher's active role in creating the themes. After carefully reading the 16 interviews, we selected those sections of the transcripts where parents considered issues related to reconciling work and family for further analysis. At this point, it became evident that the interview talk was strongly related to time. Through our data-driven reading, we categorised the data into four themes related to the use of time (individual, family, ECEC and work time). In other words, we concentrated on talk about the asynchronous daily rhythms concerning paid work, childcare and family and individual rhythms, and on potential conflicts between and among them. Then we further categorised the parents' descriptions of their ways of managing the asynchronisms. The research was approved by the Ethical Committee of University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Participation was voluntary, and the participants gave informed consent for their participation in the research. The anonymity of the interviewees and their families was ensured at all stages of the research. All identifying information has been removed and the situation of individual families is commonly described in terms of work and childcare solutions. RESULTS Drawing on the aforementioned theorisation of time (Daly, 1996; Hassard, 1990; Zerubavel, 1977,1990), we present the interfaces and asynchronisms between private and public time in the family rhythm as they were discussed in the research interviews. ‘Private time’ includes the family's shared time together and individual time, which can include, for example, a family member's time for hobbies. ‘Public time’comprises parents' time at work and the child(ren)'s time in institutional care. In the interfaces and overlaps of these different times, asynchronisms and conflicts emerge. Families' daily rhythms are affected by family members' childcare and work FIGURE 1 Asynchronous daily rhythms and dimensions of time. 6SIIPPAINEN ET AL. 14682397, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijsw.12576 by University Of Jyväskylä Library, Wiley Online Library on [09/12/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License schedules, by their individual and family time commitments and by expectations relating to families' use of time. From the perspective of family well-being, it is crucial to identify the points where asynchronous rhythms are located. In this article, we are especially interested in what happens when families' asynchronous rhythms meet (see Figure 1). In the data, the collisions were between private (family and individual) and public (work and childcare) rhythms. Managing the rhythms of work Non-standard working hours created the context for all the families' daily rhythms in this research. However, the parents' working hours ranged from regular three-shift work to random shifts during evenings or at weekends. As mentioned earlier, family schedules may include components that can be self-determined by the family or its members, components that can be environmentally or externally determined and components that can be negotiable (Zerubavel, 1977). This seemed crucial in identifying asynchronies and even conflicts between parents' working hours and the families' rhythms, such as both unpaid care work and housework. In the following extract, the mother describes the interface of work and family in a situation where the parents' work schedules were strict. The father worked regularly at weekends. In addition, the parents' shifts overlapped, since the mother's work began early in the morning and the father's work began a few hours later: Interviewer: How about reconciling family and work? Mother: In fact, that goes well too because, as we go to work at different times, we get this all to work deftly. So, when I leave early, no one is awake, but then I have more time to be with the children in the afternoon, whereas my husband sometimes regrets that he practically comes home only to put the kids to bed. So, I kind of like to get to work early so that I then have time in the afternoon (…)’Cause taking them (the children) in the morning (to ECEC) and picking them up in the afternoon runs so flexibly somehow, (…) it suits us, at least now! (Family 16). In the extract, the interviewed mother describes scheduling everyday life according to the parents' differing working hours in such a way that their two children's ECEC attendance was flexibly organised. Overlapping shifts enabled the children to attend ECEC with regular hours and not for full days. The father experienced asynchrony between his work schedule and family time. According to the mother, he would have favoured spending more time with the children than his evening shifts allowed him to do. However, for the mother, the situation was the opposite due to the early start of her work—even though it was not her own choice—and the father being able to take responsibility for the morning routines. Non-standard working hours caused rhythm conflicts for the father, but for the mother, the spouse's work schedule served as a resource for spending more time with the children. Workplace flexibility proved vital for the parents' attempts to manage the asynchronies in their daily rhythms. Some interviewees described their work and employer as flexible and understanding. They were able to influence their working hours and shifts and make changes to working time on the basis of their needs at short notice. Flexibility and the possibility of negotiating working hours helped in reconciling work and family. When work flexibility was not an option, some parents took advantage of the possibility of part-time work. In one family, the father had a three-shift work schedule and the mother had daytime work before she went on study leave: Father: Practically, our child was full-time (in ECEC), perhaps, for the first half of the year after starting in ECEC. After that, my spouse started a study leave— 19 months—and we were able to reduce the number of ECEC days. I do threeshift work, and because of that, we have been able to reduce the amount of ECEC. (…) And I have now worked 75% h from January to September just to be at home a little more. (Family 5). Here, the interviewed father describes several ways in which they had organised both their working hours and their only child's ECEC hours. Both the mother's study leave and the interviewee's shift work served as resources to manage the family's daily schedule. When work or working hours were not flexible, other solutions needed to be found. In this case, part-time work provided flexibility. The possibility of remote work was also mentioned as a way of reconciling working times with family responsibilities. Several interviewees emphasised that their employer was flexible, but they also considered themselves to be flexible as employees. The flexibility of both parties made THE PUZZLES OF DAILY LIFE 7 14682397, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijsw.12576 by University Of Jyväskylä Library, Wiley Online Library on [09/12/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License it possible to reconcile work and family life. However, not every interviewee could work part-time or influence their shifts, work tempo or the predictability of their work. Although non-standard working times and asynchronies between parents' work rhythms sometimes caused difficulties in a family's daily life, the parents also found ways of managing time, such as taking advantage of flexible workplace policies. Managing the rhythms related to ECEC Families also faced asynchronies between rhythms of working life and other institutional rhythms. Collisions sometimes occurred, when a family's daily rhythms based on the parents' working hours did not synchronise with the institutional rhythms or practices of ECEC services. The next extract describes a situation where both parents had jobs with non-standard hours. At the time of the interview, the mother was on parental leave and at home with a baby, and the four-year-old child was enrolled at an ECEC centre part-time. Before the birth of the new baby, the parents had worked at different times and had scheduled the child's ECEC attendance according to their shifts. The child was in a nearby ECEC centre, which was open during standard daytime hours: Mother: Well, there's only one thing concerning the ECEC centre that has been vexing me, and it's that the activities there usually take place in the mornings, I mean, when they do crafts or do some other things. And as we both do shift work, then the need for childcare has mainly been in the afternoons, but in the afternoon, there's only the nap and outdoor activities, and that sort of thing, and nothing else. And sometimes, we have had to take (the four-year-old) to the ECEC centre earlier than we needed, just for the child to get involved in the activities. (Family 7). It is typical for the pedagogical activities in ECEC centres to be organised during mid-mornings. The family in the extract needed out-of-home childcare, especially in the afternoons. Due to the ECEC centre's schedule and the timing of its activities, the child either missed out on the pedagogical activities or the parents needed to take the child to the ECEC centre earlier than would have been necessary because of their working hours. In the latter case, the child's day in ECEC was longer, and the time for the parent(s) and the child to be together was shorter than they would have liked. In another interview, a mother described that the parents resisted a suggestion by the staff to bring the child to the ECEC centre earlier in the morning, because “I won't be getting [the four-year- old] too early, so let the father be a little with the child too, for otherwise he won't see the child, being at work in the evenings”(Family 9). In trying to manage the asynchronies between different institutional rhythms, the parents thus also struggled with different meanings of social time—between valuing the private, parental time with children and the public, pedagogical time children could spend with ECEC professionals. Cultural assumptions about an ideal ‘childhood rhythm’may also be nestled in the practices of ECEC services, as shown in the next extract, where a mother of two children explains trying to match her younger child's daily schedule with the ECEC's schedule when she works non-standard hours and her spouse is at a day job: Mother: Once again, we arrive at nine o'clock, all sleepy and (the teacher) says, ‘Dear me, [the child] missed the gym in the morning. What a pity, as [the four-year-old] enjoys it so much’. And then I thought, ‘That's true’and ‘What a shame’. And then we thought, ‘Let's try to make it so that [the child] would be there at eight for breakfast. So, let's try to get going earlier’. We are all quite sleepy in the morning. It's not always that easy. So, then I said, ‘Yes, we will try to make it so that our child comes at eight in the morning, so [the child] has a routine, and so on, if that would make it easier?’ And then (the teacher) said, ‘Oh dear, that's a pity. The days will then become so long if [the child] comes so early in the morning’. (Family 3). As the mother describes above, the guided pedagogical activities of the ECEC centre took place in the morning. While the parents had to reconcile the child's daily rhythm with their work schedules, they also responded to the expectations of the ECEC centre concerning the child's daily rhythms, regarding the timing and length of the child's day. 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University of Chicago Press. Zerubavel, E. (1990). Private-time and public-time. In J. Hassard (Ed.), The sociology of time (pp. 160–177). Palgrave Macmillan. How to cite this article: Siippainen, A., Närvi, J., & Alasuutari, M. (2022). The puzzles of daily life: The temporal orders of families when parents have non-standard work schedules. International Journal of Social Welfare,1–15. https://doi.org/10. 1111/ijsw.12576 THE PUZZLES OF DAILY LIFE 15 14682397, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijsw.12576 by University Of Jyväskylä Library, Wiley Online Library on [09/12/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License