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The Associations Between Flexitime and Teleworking and Life Satisfaction Among Parents

Aneesa Qadri, University of Oxford

Over the last two decades, there has been a rise in the availability, and use of flexible working arrangements in the U.K. Scholars and the British government believe that these changes nurture work-life balance, especially among parents of young children, which contributes to wellbeing levels. Previous empirical studies have focused primarily on the impact of part-time work on parents’ life trajectories, while other flexible working arrangements like flexitime and teleworking have been largely unexplored. I address this gap by using data from a nationally representative panel survey, Understanding Society, to study the overall and gender-specific association between parents’ use of flexitime and teleworking and their life satisfaction levels. Another aspect of my study is evaluating the correlation between one parent’s use of flexitime and teleworking and the other parent’s satisfaction with life. I find that use of flexitime has no association with either mothers’ or fathers’ life satisfaction, yet the use of teleworking is positively correlated with mothers’ life satisfaction levels. For cross-partner effects, mothers’ life satisfaction is positively impacted by fathers’ use of flexitime and negatively impacted by fathers’ use of teleworking.

Keywords: Gender, Life course analysis, Demographic and social surveys, Family demography

See paper.

  Presented in Session P15.