Parental Care And Female Work Family Balance

As society changes, the education of female and women’s rights awareness have improved, more and more women entered labor market as men did. The traditional pattern "men outside and women insider" is gradually replaced by “both working outside” which has positive effects on resisting the risk of poverty in the new social risk. However, it is worth noticing that this model leads to imbalance between work and life because of the unbalanced allocation of time and energy for both men and women.In modern society, people need external support in order to maintain the balance between work and family. For example, support from family members support, support of purchasing power, and also governmental and social support. As the national family structure changes, the trend of miniaturization family size becomes more obvious. Due to the lack of support from family members or the government, people are more likely to stuck into conflicts between work and family. In China, grandparents usually help to raise their grandchildren. According to the statistic on the health and nutrition of Chinese family, for families live with grandparents, time grandparents spent on taking care for children is as much as mothers did. For those living separately, 40% of young couples sent the children to grandparents’ home. Grandparents taking care for grandchildren——the tradition encourages family member to help each other to resist the risk caused by the lack of governmental support.Previous researches about parental care mainly aim at studying how the participation of women in labor market affects their work-life-balance, and it is used to explain the declining rate of women’s participation in work. However, a essential factor was ignored —— the participation of grandparent in families. Based on the survey of the Institute of Sociology in CASS in 2008, this research focuses on how the involvement of grandparents effects on families, especially on women’s work and life balance. In addition, this research makes suggestions to government policies by exploring the effects of changing family structure on care of family members.The research results showed that grandparents as caregivers have significant positive effects on children’s family care. Living with grandparents has a significant positive impact on women the balance work and family. However, this factor has no direct effect on the urban married women’s labor force participation. This paper suggests that the participation of grandparents and the “living nearby” pattern play an important role in women’s work-family balance. For those women who live with or nearby their parents handle their work and life better, because the grandparents partly take the place of women. On the contrary, for women who are lacking of supports of their parent are more likely to face the conflicts between work and family. Female’s work and family balance is not only related to family stability, but also to the social and economic development. Therefore our government should pay attention to women’s work and family balance. In order to improve the situation of females’ work and life balance, this paper makes some recommendations: establishing a specific department for family policy, protecting family as a whole group, providing more supports for elder caregiver(eg. grandparent.), establishing and completing safeguard mechanism for women and children and encouraging the "living nearby” pattern.