Leisure, family and work in the lifestyles of dual-earner families

Elizabeth Such
School of Sociology and Social Policy
University of Nottingham
University park
Nottingham, UK
NG7 2RD
elizabeth.such@nottingham.ac.uk

Paper presented to the ESRC seminar: Impact of a Changing Labour Market on Families, Children and Mental Health: building research–user alliances

Seminar 3 ‘Households, families and the changing nature of work’
7 November 2001
University of Aberdeen

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the role of leisure in the lifestyles of dual-earner families. It explores leisure as a dimension of lifestyle that has been relatively under-researched, despite a burgeoning interest in the dual-earner family in both academic research and policy and political contexts. Although it has been generally acknowledged that leisure is a vital component of daily life, much social scientific research has focussed on the relationship between family and employment in dual-earner families and analyses of leisure have been relatively incomplete (for example Hochschild, 1989; Scott and Duncombe, 1992; Gregson and Lowe, 1993, 1994). In a policy context, family-related policy discourse has highlighted the problems dual-earner families face trying to reconcile the demands of work and home and achieve a ‘work–life balance’, but explicit references to leisure are almost absent from debate. Scholars within the interdisciplinary field of leisure studies have, however, argued that a leisure dimension to research and analysis offers additional insight into daily life that can enhance existing academic and policy debate (for example Deem, 1999; Kay, 2000). 
The paper begins by examining some of the contributions leisure researchers have made to an understanding of the role of leisure in lifestyle and some of the definitional problems associated with the concept ‘leisure’. The second part of the paper utilises data from in-depth interviews with dual-earner couples with dependent children to explore the leisure behaviours and orientations of men and women in dual-earner families in the context of their everyday lives, and the ways in which leisure interacts with the employment and family lives of couples. The findings from the fieldwork for the study focus on how the men and women in the study group attribute ‘priority’ to paid work, domestic work, family life and leisure, and how lifestyle ‘hierarchies’ differ between men and women. The results also reveal that individuals in couples ‘strategize’ daily life in order to access leisure, but that family and gender ideologies impact on the nature of the strategy adopted and its perceived ‘appropriateness’. The paper concludes with a discussion of the value of including leisure in analyses of dual-earner family life and the contribution it can make to research and policy debate.

Introduction
In recent years, much social scientific research has focused on the changing familyemployment configurations of households in the United Kingdom (UK). The dual-earner family has emerged as a topic of academic research as it has grown in the socio-demographic profile of the UK since the 1970s. Specific attention has been paid to the family and employment behaviours of women, as the shift away from the ‘traditional’ male breadwinner family structure and towards dual-earnership in couple-headed households has principally occurred as a result of women’s entry into the labour market. Questions for researchers have primarily centred on how women’s behaviour accommodates the demands of both family and employment and why activity in the domains of employment and the home differ between the sexes. Research on the distribution of domestic labour in dual-earner families has, for example, focused on the extent to which women continue to fulfil the (gendered) obligations of housework (for example Hochschild, 1989; Scott and Duncombe, 1992; Bagilhole, 1994). Despite this growing interest in the employment and family activities of dual-earner families, very little attention has been paid to the leisure behaviours of couples. Leisure is a vital component of everyday life that has been particularly overlooked in academic research and policy debate, despite several scholars identifying a clear conceptual link between leisure, family and employment (for example Roberts, 1970, 1999; Rapoport and Rapoport, 1975; Kelly, 1983, 1990). Most leisure, for example, is spent in the home and with other household members (Kelly, 1997, p.132), and research has uncovered both the familial and personal importance of leisure in daily life. 
This paper attempts to partially fill this gap by exploring the role of leisure in the lifestyles of dual-earner families with dependent children. It draws on the findings of a doctoral study of men and women in 14 dual-earner families in the UK. In-depth interviews and life histories were used to examine the employment, family, unpaid work and leisure lives of individuals over time and in the context of dual-earning. The paper begins with an outline of the rationale for including leisure in analyses of daily life, and unravels some of the definitional issues surrounding the concepts of ‘leisure’ and ‘lifestyle’. The role of leisure in the lifestyles of men and women in dual-earner families is then discussed in the context of the findings of the research. Notions of the ‘hierarchy’ of work, family and leisure, the sacrifices of and for leisure and leisure ‘strategies’ are the focus of the discussion, and gender differences are particularly highlighted. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the argument for including leisure in analyses of everyday life and its relevance to policy debates.
Leisure in the lives of dual-earner families: rationale and existing evidence
Only a few British and American scholars, primarily within the interdisciplinary field of leisure studies, have explicitly applied the triad of work, family and leisure to the context of dual-earner families (for example, Shaw, 1987; Bialeschki and Michener, 1994; Kay, 1996a, 1996b, 1998, 2001; Clough, 2001). The most commonly analysed relationship in research is that of the familyemployment relationship, and commentary on ‘leisure’ has often been vague and incomplete. Arlie Hochschild (1989), for example, in her well known account of the dynamics of the everyday lives of dual-earner couples in the US, introduced the notion of a ‘leisure gap’. She contended that men and women had unequal access to leisure because women largely fulfilled the ‘second shift’ work within the home and this reduced the time available for leisure. This idea was not pursued in great depth and, consequently, the processes through which a ‘leisure gap’ emerged and its role in the construction of gender relations in the home was dealt with cursorily. In a policy context, family-related policy discourse has highlighted the problems dual-earner families face in trying to reconcile the demands of work and home and achieve a ‘work–life balance’. ‘Work–life’ debates in policy and political contexts are, however, essentially concerned with the employment and family lives of dual-earner couples and they generally fail to evaluate the leisure dimension. 
Leisure researchers, particularly those engaged in gender-related leisure research, have examined more closely the work–family–leisure dynamic within different family–employment contexts, although not necessarily within the dual-earner family. The feminist contribution to leisure studies has critically examined how family ideologies impact on the leisure experiences and behaviours of family members, and the interrelation of the gendered roles and responsibilities of motherhood with leisure has been particularly scrutinised. The interaction of leisure and the family has been shown to affect negatively women’s access to and experience of leisure and has been identified as reflective of, and instrumental in, the maintenance of oppressive gender relations (Green and Hebron, 1988). Deborah Bialeschki and Sarah Michener (1994, p.59) commented that: ‘Women, particularly those who are mothers, seem to be expected to subordinate their own leisure aspirations and defer to the needs of other family members, often under the guise of the “ethic of care”’. This notion of an ‘ethic of care’ has been raised in other research on the family–employment relationship and refers to the ideological process whereby women ensure that the needs of others in the family take precedence over their own (Wearing, 1998). Leisure, as an area of life that is conceptualised as expressive of personal freedom and focuses on self-satisfaction does not, therefore, fit comfortably with ideologies of motherhood. Feminist studies on the relationships between motherhood and leisure have highlighted the impact of gender-typed expectations on behaviours and the incidence of women sacrificing personal leisure in response to demands from the home and work environments, and/or integrating the leisure preferences of children or partners into their own leisure behaviours to avoid feelings of guilt or selfishness (Bialeschki, 1991). Research conducted by Jenny Anderson (2001, p.110) has indicated that family holiday experiences are viewed by women as an expansion of parental responsibility rather than a personal leisure preference that is chosen as an activity in its own right. Feelings of guilt have also been identified as an indication of women’s lack of a sense of entitlement to personal time and, therefore, constitute a ‘psychological barrier to leisure’ (Henderson et al, 1989, p.125). 
Feminist discourse has also highlighted the close relationships between women’s family life and their paid work, domestic work and leisure lives. Eileen Green et al (1990, p.9) in their study of women’s leisure, for example, commented that ‘almost all the women we interviewed used work as an elastic term which could take in both paid employment and domestic work’, but that ‘work-like’ activities such as gardening, sewing and cooking could also assume ‘leisure-like’ meanings among some of the women in the study. They also pointed out that definitions of ‘work’ and ‘leisure’ were tied to women’s activities in the labour market with full-time working women and, in particular, single women with full-time jobs, finding it ‘easier to ‘compartmentalise’ areas in their lives than women who work in the home’ (Green et al, 1990, p.9). This finding particularly highlights ‘the inadequacy of seeking to define activities as either “work” or “leisure”. In women’s lives such boundaries as do exist are likely to be complex, blurred and shifting’ (Green et al, 1990, p.10). Feminist commentary, therefore, demonstrates how and why women’s experience of leisure does not comply to normative understandings of leisure as something which occurs in ‘time left over’ from work. In particular, feminists have sought to highlight the ‘blurred boundaries’ between ‘work’ and ‘leisure’ and have, hence, examined leisure in the context of women’s everyday lives (Wimbush and Talbot, 1988; Green et al, 1990). 
Results from the body of research on employed women’s leisure indicates that, while single women with full-time jobs may be more likely to distinguish clearly work as paid employment from leisure (Green et al, 1990), women with dependent children with full- or part-time jobs are closely tied to the roles and responsibilities of motherhood. In addition, mothers are the primary providers of childcare and fulfil the majority of domestic work (Kay, 1998, 2001; Clough, 2001). Research that specifically relates to the leisure experiences and activities of men and women in dual-earner families is under-developed but some British leisure researchers have examined the leisure patterns and experiences of women in dual-earner families. Hochshild’s contention that a ‘leisure gap’ exists between men and women in dual-earner families, for example, has been partially confirmed by British leisure research (Kay, 1996a, 1996b, 1998). Employed mothers have been reported to curtail leisure in the light of other demands and women have been found to indicate that their partners maintain access to leisure throughout childrearing and dual-earning. Conflicting evidence, however, exists on the extent to which women’s employment is constrained by the dual burden of employment and family responsibilities. Maternal employment, for example, has been reported to be accompanied by an enhanced sense of entitlement to leisure and the financial independence to pursue it (Kay, 1996b, 1998). More forceful challenges have emerged from some time-budget research in the US which claims that a genderless, ‘androgynous society’ is emerging whereby ‘time for life’ is equally distributed between men and women (Robinson and Godbey, 1997). Research and theoretical developments within the feminist movement in leisure studies in the 1990s and into the twentieth century have also questioned the extent to which leisure is a site of constraint for women and the differential ways in which women actively construct leisure experiences in their everyday lives. While it has been widely recognised that the responsibilities of childcare, for example, ‘constrain women’s leisure not just because of the considerable physical care required by babies and young children, but also because of their social and emotional needs’ (Henderson et al, 1989, p.123), the ‘ethic of care’ may also be seen as an entitlement to leisure because the ethic can be extended to women themselves. Bialeschki and Michener (1994) highlighted this point in their findings from interviews with mothers:
Many women find a need to bring care of self and care of others into a balance that often involves finding a purpose that puts them at the centre of their own lives … Caring for self may be an important step toward claiming a right to focus on self and to overcoming gender role expectations in other aspects of life that are oppressive and restrictive of women. (Bialeschki and Michener, 1994, p.69)

It is worth noting that analyses of gender in UK leisure studies literature is almost entirely concerned with female experiences. Notable exceptions include social psychological, cultural post-structuralist research on leisure and masculinities. Research which is fundamentally concerned with the relationships between leisure and gender, however, cannot only be concerned with women’s experiences. In the context of research which centres on the lifestyles of men and women in dual-earner couples, the dual role of men and women in the construction and negotiation of gender relations in the home is crucial.
The problem of defining ‘leisure’
The centrality of the family–employment relationship in social scientific discourse and the relative absence of leisure in analyses of the lifestyles of employed couples with dependent children reflects both the investigative trends and biases of disciplines within the social sciences as well as some of the inherent difficulties of conceptualising and theorising leisure as a component of human experience. These conceptual and theoretical difficulties arise in main from ‘the definitional problem about leisure that cannot be avoided’ (Deem, 1986, p.17). This definitional problem has several components. Firstly, the question is raised of the feasibility of defining ‘leisure’. As a subjective experience, ‘leisure’ has multiple meanings that alter across time and space. These meanings are influenced by broad social and economic historical changes such as industrialisation and globalisation; societal and cultural factors such as social class, ethnicity, gender and sub-culture; and individual factors such as psychological orientation and stage in the lifecourse. The multiplicity of meanings of leisure has diminished the objectivity many leisure scholars have required to attempt its definition (Parker, 1983, p.3). Although ‘no generally accepted definition of what leisure is’ can be found, there is value in exploring its parameters, not least because it is ‘an important ingredient of contemporary life’ (Roberts, 1970, p.6) that has economic, psychological, social and political significance (Roberts, 1999, pp.6–16).
The second problem is, therefore, how to define ‘leisure’. Several attempts have been made to clarify the definitional content of leisure. Sociological approaches have utilised two main methods of definition: identifying what leisure is (usually in terms of activity, time-use and experience) or what it is not (a residual definition). Residual definitions that portray leisure as ‘existing in what is left over; the time that remains when paid work and other obligatory activities have been done’ (Roberts, 1999, p.5), incorporate one of the key perceived qualities of leisure: its freedom from obligation. The concept of freedom or, more accurately, relative freedom, is a broadly accepted primary component of leisure (Parker, 1976; Kelly, 1972, 1983, 1990; Iso-Ahola, 1999). The notion of its relativity refers to the philosophical and sociological question of the extent to which absolute freedom is possible. In sociological terms, freedom is dependent on the social context in which ‘leisure’ is experienced. The leisure context may, for example, be dependent on a variety of social constraints based on dominant social norms and values. In the case of the project on dual-earner families, dominant perceptions of the roles and responsibilities of motherhood and fatherhood may impact on the extent to which leisure is ‘free’ from obligation. 
Other components of leisure that have been proposed in the literatures principally focus on leisure as time, activity and/or experience. Definitions of leisure, however, necessarily contain ambiguities and do not provide universal or absolute statements. It ‘may be’ many things and is, thus, ‘highly context dependent’ (Roberts, 1999, p.1). 
The contextual dependence of leisure, its multiple components and its definitional complexities render absolute definitions of leisure unattainable. A clearer understanding of its contextual meanings, however, can uncover new, empirically based dimensions to definitions of leisure, the differential role of leisure in people’s everyday lives and the nature of its relationship to other life domains. In reference to the interconnectedness of work, family and leisure, the project utilised the concept of ‘lifestyle’. Susan Glyptis (1981, p.314) referred to lifestyle as ‘the aggregate pattern of day-to-day activities which make up an individual’s way of life’. This definition of lifestyle is utilised in the context of this research, although the importance of the attitudes and motivations that inform daily activities (or inactivities) are also considered crucial to an understanding of lifestyle. The definition of lifestyle, therefore refers to the parts of daily life that make up the whole, rather than the more common-sense, everyday concept of lifestyle as ‘consumption’.
The study: methods and study group
The fieldwork of the study was designed to explore the role of leisure in the lifestyles of men and women in dual-earner families with dependent children. The subjects were selected using a two-phase research strategy. Firstly, questionnaires were sent to the parents of children from two primary schools in the Loughborough area of the East Midlands. Parents were invited to complete the questionnaire which asked basic household composition, employment and leisure behaviour questions. The second phase of the fieldwork, an interview stage, was derived from the first, and was the main method of data collection. The questionnaire provided subjects with the opportunity to offer themselves for interview and suitable couples were contacted for interview. The family and employment characteristics of the 14 couples interviewed in the second stage of the fieldwork are identified in Table 1.
The households studied did not vary considerably in their employment and education characteristics and were largely middle class. There was a range of employment configurations within households: six families contained a full-time employed father and a part-time employed mother, six were composed of two full-time workers, one included a full-time working mother and a part-time working father and one family managed their own company which was led by the male partner and supported administratively by the female partner and they both worked variable hours. The family histories of partners varied, although most of the couples were partnered with their first and only spouse and their biological children. Five interviewees had, however, been married previously and one of the five had been married and divorced twice and was currently living with a new partner (who had also previously been divorced) in a consensual union. Three of the five were remarried at the time of interview and one couple had previously separated for a period of five years but this had not led to divorce.
Data was collected via in-depth interviews which incorporated the life histories of individuals. Partners were interviewed separately and in immediate succession and similar issues relating to employment, family life, childcare and leisure were covered.
Table 1 Interviewee characteristics
Couple	Pseudonym	Age	Job/occupation	Hours of work	No. of children (ages)	
A	Andrew	39	Self-employed computer consultant	30–50	1 (11)	
	Sarah	46	Acquisitions librarian + unpaid assistant to husband’s business	20		
B	Chris	40	Fitter	27.5	2 (13, 10)	
	Fiona	39	Senior Manager (NHS)	37		
C	Charlie	44	Computer Manager (University)	37	3 (10, 12, 14)	
	Claire	44	Photographer (University)	20		
D	Jon	39	Fire fighter + part-time removals	42	2 (11, 9) 	
	Jennie	31	Senior researcher (University) + GCSE maths tutor	38		
E	Geoff	40	Self-employed advertising and marketing consultant	wide range	3 (18, 14, 12)	
	Suzanne	41	Secretary to the family company	wide range		
F	Peter	49	Modern languages teacher	40+	4 (22, 21, 13, 11)	
	Heather	45	Project Co-ordinator (local charity) + Youth worker	25		
G	David	42	Researcher (University)	45	2 (13, 11)	
	Eva	42	Government advisor	50		
H	Trevor	44	Landscape architect	38	2 (10, 8)	
	Anne	40	Health promotion specialist + OU lecturer	29		
I	Nigel	44	Town planner	37	2 (10, 8)	
	Kelly	42	Library asst + SEN worker + lunchtime supervisor	25		
J	Richard	44	Self-employed automotive styling designer	55	3 (12, 11, 9)	
	Mary	39	Nursery nurse	35.5		
K	Guy	41	Teacher	35	2 (7, 1)	
	Jean	38	Librarian	37		
L	Scott	41	Lecturer	50	3 (13, 11, 9)	
	Tracy	40	Special school assistant + respite foster carer	15		
M	Barry	45	Consultant engineer	35+	1 (13)	
	Barbara	43	Teacher	35+		
N	Tom	41	Insurance broker	45	1 (4)	
	Debbie	35	Environmental health officer	37		

Work, family and leisure ‘hierarchies’ and the sacrifice of leisure
The results of the fieldwork are presented into two main parts. The first part looks at the ways in which work, family and leisure are constructed by the individuals in the study group and the relative ‘priority’ participants attributed to life domains. In particular, the notion that individuals sacrifice leisure in the light of competing familial and work demands is explored in combination with the ways in which and the conditions under which leisure is prioritised over other life domains. The concept of lifestyle ‘hierarchies’ is also examined. Secondly, the leisure strategies adopted by the interviewees are explored and are related to the gendered context in which the couples lived their everyday lives. 
The fieldwork for the study revealed that dual earning in a household with dependent children placed a strain on family resources and that women, in particular, experienced ‘time squeeze’, in other words, a contraction of time that was an outcome of competing family and employment demands. Furthermore, some of the female interviewees commented that ‘time squeeze’ impacted on their leisure orientations and their experience of leisure. The following dialogue clearly demonstrates this point:
ES: Is there anything that stops you from doing the things you want to do in terms of leisure?
Jean: Time. Just haven’t got enough hours in the day really to do other things let alone have leisure and I think leisure probably comes towards the bottom of the pile really. Whereas I have to get everything sorted out and I have to get all their clothes out for the next day and think about, I don’t know, washing the pots and whatever, Guy [her husband] can just quite usually just sit there and relax and watch the television whereas I can’t. I can only relax when I’ve done all the odd jobs really. So it comes as a lower priority to me because otherwise I keep thinking I can’t relax, there’s a mountain of pots, a mountain of ironing to do or something and I think that’s one of our big differences, and … he finds it frustrating sometimes because he can’t understand why I can’t just sit there, you know, and relax when there’s all these things to do. And equally I find it frustrating that he can just sit there and relax while I’m tearing round. (Jean, 38, librarian) 

In these comments, Jean is expressing the sentiments of many of the women in the study: that the responsibilities of being an earner and a mother allowed them little time or space to satisfy their leisure needs. Jean also provides insight into the gendered processes through which leisure is curtailed. Domestic work was a source of constraint for Jean, who felt that she could not ‘relax’ and, therefore, experience leisure, when there were ‘odd jobs’ to do around the house. In Jean’s case, housework was a ‘priority’ and leisure came ‘towards the bottom of the pile’. This notion of there being a female ‘hierarchy’ of orientations and activity whereby leisure is relegated to any time ‘left over’ has been discussed in other research (Kay, 1998). Jean’s frustration with her partner’s ability to claim leisure while she was ‘tearing around’ doing domestic chores is a clear example of the process of gender construction and reinforcement. The behaviours and orientations of both partners support the underlying assumption that the female partner should assume the main responsibility for housework and that entitlement to leisure is linked to her ability to fulfil her obligations to both paid and unpaid work. Other research indicates that men’s entitlement to leisure is derived largely from their paid employment (Deem, 1986; Kay, 1998, 2001), and this research supports the notion that men in dual-earner families maintain a more distinct work/non-work divide throughout the lifecourse than their partners.
An explanation offered by one of the female participants in the study about her own personal hierarchy of work, family and leisure and the different experiences and attitudes of her male partner was that it was a ‘woman’s thing’ and that the curtailment of her own personal leisure was ‘part and parcel’ of being a mother: 
Ultimately, when it actually boils down to it, I think it’s more important for Jon to get his game of squash than it would be for me because – there’s a number of reasons why – as a vent of adrenaline or aggression or whatever. It’s important that he gets out on the squash court which I don’t have so badly … whereas it wouldn’t bother me whether I played or not. So I think it’s just maybe a woman’s thing. I think you just do. So there are times when I don’t do things because something has come up, but I accept that as part and parcel of it, however it’s not very often (Jennie, 31, researcher). 

Jennie’s comments indicate that, although there is little conflict between herself and her partner about accessing leisure, she ‘accepted’ that her responsibilities as a mother were different from those of her partner and that this inevitably affected her access to and orientation towards leisure. This was not, however, the only factor that Jennie felt was important in the construction of relations within her family home. Having been a young single mother and as part of a reconstituted family, relationships between household members were complicated. Jennie felt that these family factors impacted on the extent to which leisure was disposable:
I think if we were honest we’d have to say that I would sacrifice before Jon [her husband] would on things, but that’s a product of the way that our relationship has grown, because she [Laurie, her daughter] was mine and we’d been together on our own and I didn’t make it particularly easy for him to take any responsibility for her because I was quite possessive, very possessive, and plus Laurie was very clinging to me so that was how things started in as much that if there was a sort of clash then I wouldn’t go and Jon could go. Now, I didn’t resent that because that’s the way I wanted it. And now that things have changed because they know each other a lot better now, I can’t then turn round and expect him to change because that’s the way I made things. Do you know what I mean? It would be very unfair of me, so I still say at the moment that if there was a real clash and there was a problem like Laurie had to be somewhere but there was squash organised, Jon wouldn’t ring and cancel his squash match, I’d alter maybe what I was planning to do to make sure she went where she was going to go. But I suppose maybe I’m just old fashioned, I see it as my responsibility anyway, and I’ll probably do the same for this one [referring to her unborn child]. (Jennie, 31, researcher)

This example indicates that it is not only Jennie’s sense of being a mother that impacts on her access to leisure, but that her responsibility to her daughter supersedes her husband’s obligations due to his status as step-parent. Jennie felt that she had played a crucial role in the construction of relationships in the home and because of her initial possessiveness towards her daughter, she then could not alter her expectations of her partner when relationships in the home changed. In these circumstances, her responsibilities towards her daughter were heightened and her own personal leisure curtailed when caring requirements overrode her leisure needs. Her concluding reference to her unborn child, that she will ‘probably do the same for this one’, indicates, however, that the motherhood role is the primary influencing factor in her prioritisation of other life domains over leisure. In addition, Jennie’s example shows how her partner’s leisure was facilitated by her assumption of the role of primary carer.
Sacrificing leisure because of family obligations was not, however, an exclusively female phenomenon. Many of the men in the study felt that the demands of work and home placed restrictions on their ability to claim personal leisure, although ‘time with the family’ was often leisure-like. Andrew in particular, reflected on his obligations to his family and the impact this had on his own leisure when asked if anything prevented him from doing the things he wanted to do in terms of leisure:
Yes, childcare responsibilities in a wider sense in that – like me not going for a swim – it’s not because there’s nobody here to care for Claire [his daughter], it’s because I feel an emotional responsibility to be here as well … The evenings are about the only time – or, not true, the early evenings, 4 ’til 7, 4 ’til 8 – are the only times on a daily basis when there’s any chance of us being together and that doesn’t happen every day, other than breakfast. (Andrew, 39, self-employed)

In these comments, Andrew expresses a sense of parental obligation towards his daughter that goes beyond providing childcare. His sense of ‘emotional responsibility’ towards his daughter reoriented his approach to leisure in a way that reflects many of the female participants discourse of wanting to ‘be there’ for their children. Andrew’s explicit recognition of his emotional role in the family was rare among the male participants in the study and indicates how behaviour can diverge from ‘traditional’ role expectations. In the main, however, the female participants indicated that their roles as mothers and responsibilities as earners placed a ‘double burden’ on their access to leisure: leisure was an area of life that was the most easily curtailed and was relegated to the bottom of the work–family–leisure hierarchy. While some of the men felt that their own personal leisure was also sacrificed for work and family, their role as fathers rather than mothers altered the nature of their obligation. Sacrificing personal leisure appeared to be more related to individual choice and agency for the men in the study, whereas constraints in the form of fulfilling role expectations played a bigger part in the leisure lives of their female partners. 
Leisure ‘strategies’
Relinquishing leisure was a strategy frequently adopted by most of the women in the study group and, to a lesser extent, the men, to reconcile the demands of work and home. This was not, however, the only lifestyle strategy utilised by men and women in dual-earner couples. A variety of means of accessing leisure were described by the interviewees, some of which occasionally challenged, as well as reinforced, gender assumptions. Almost all of the men and women in the study group expressed the view that leisure was important in their everyday life (although this was not universal), and that both personal and family leisure played crucial individual, psychological and ‘family bonding’ functions. As a consequence, individual strategies were developed to access leisure and these often included making sacrifices in other spheres of life. ‘Making room’ for personal leisure, for example, often required the renegotiation of housework, family and/or paid work. 
Housework was the most commonly identified area of everyday life that was ‘set aside’ so that leisure could be accessed. This prioritisation of leisure over housework was accompanied by a discourse of changing attitudes towards domestic work and a sense that it was part of ‘getting one’s priorities right’. Suzanne explained her rationalities in the following way:
I’m quite good, I suppose, from the point of view that I will not do housework if I would prefer to do something else. I’ve always seen it as – housework’s something that it will still be there tomorrow, regardless of whether you do it or not. So I think … [if] I don’t get stuff done today then I would either get it done tomorrow or I would think ‘no, I’ll go and do the garden because the sun’s come out’ … I wouldn’t say ‘oh no, I’ve missed out on this that and the other’, no. (Suzanne, 41, secretary)

Jon expressed similar sentiments to Suzanne:
[We sacrifice] housework if we want to go and have a game of squash we’d do that rather than clean the floors and if it’s a sunny day we’ll go for a 20 or 30 mile bike ride sooner than doing the washing up … You’ve got to prioritise haven’t you? That is one of our fairly high priorities. (Jon, 39, fire fighter)

These two examples demonstrate how leisure is prioritised over housework so that leisure experiences do not have to be disposed of and can be integrated into everyday life. Many of the women expressed this reprioritisation as an outcome of the ‘double burden’. They suggested that working for an income may have the potential to reduce engagement in the domestic sphere and, hence, challenge the distribution of household labour. Indications from this research were, however, that renegotiations of domestic work between partners was negligible.
Some of the interviewees felt that paid work was also sometimes reprioritised so that leisure could be accessed. Sacrificing paid work for leisure was, however, not commonly cited by the interviewees and was only often commented upon by those in more autonomous working environments and particularly those in self-employment, although not all had discretion over working hours. Peter (49, teacher), for example, worked within a fixed working hours framework in school, but felt that outside of his timetable commitments he had some degree of flexibility within which he could negotiate his leisure time: ‘I will happily push my pile of marking to one side and say I’ll mark it tomorrow. Or mark it early sometimes, so I can go to a football match tonight or so I can play my tennis match tonight.’ Most of the interviewees, however, had fixed hours of work and so could not negotiate their time to meet their personal leisure needs. This included some of the women who worked part-time who felt that time for personal leisure was restricted by obligations other than employment. Anne (40, health promotion specialist), for example, commented that, although she felt she had ‘more leisure’ when she was working part-time, this was mostly ‘spent with other women in the same position’ and that she ‘had more childcare commitments’. Her responsibilities as a mother and primary carer, therefore, impacted both on her access to leisure and the form it took.
In terms of sacrificing ‘family time’ for personal leisure, few of the study group accepted it as a personal strategy that was used or that was legitimate. ‘Family time’ often assumed a high level of importance and was embedded in a discourse of ‘family comes first’: 
There are things I would like to do … but I, you know, realise that I’m in a position where I accept … for the time being, life is gearing around, basically geared around these kids … I’ve got a fairly long-term view of life and erm I don’t sort of get impatient or frustrated because I’m not able to do just what I personally like to do … I guess if anything it’s sacrificing things I’d like to more so I can be at home rather than sacrificing home life and work life so I can do certain things that I’m probably not really that fussed about anyway (Nigel, 44, town planner).

Some of the interviewees, however, such as Eva (42, government advisor) felt able to reduce family time to ‘make room’ for personal time: ‘I think I do sacrifice time with the children and time with David [her husband] too in order to do the things that I like doing’. Sarah (46, acquisitions librarian), who was active in the church, felt similarly to Eva: ‘I do sacrifice time with Andrew [her husband] and with Claire [her daughter] if I go off and do church things, because Andrew isn’t a Christian and Claire doesn’t very often come out with me to church things in the evening’. The ‘sacrifice’ of time with the family for some of the women in the study, however, were rarely reported as having a deleterious effect on family life. This was directly contrasted with the experiences of a few of the couples who reported that the leisure activities of some of the male partners impinged on family life. Geoff felt that established patterns of leisure behaviour were unsustainable after his children were born:
ES: Have you ever sacrificed other things so that you can have your own personal leisure?
Geoff: I did to start off with, but that soon stopped. Well, the cricket for instance, I would sacrifice being at home with Suzanne [his wife] and the boys to go and be out with a group of blokes hitting a ball around. You can’t, if you sit back and look at that, you can’t make it right … It wasn’t appreciated, being away [but] it wasn’t stopped. Suzanne wasn’t going to stop me but she wasn’t happy about it, and, of course, the boys would want to spend time with me and I wasn’t there for them. So … it had to come to a halt. (Geoff, 40, self-employed)

In this example, Geoff expresses the feeling that a regular and formal commitment to a specific leisure activity was not reconcilable with the demands of home life and, after a time, had to end. Many of the men in the study felt that ‘prioritising’ and ‘compromising’ were invaluable when balancing work, family and leisure: ‘You’ve got to prioritise whether it be for work or spending time here [at home]. A compromise, yeah.’ (Tom, 41, insurance broker). Others ‘timetabled’ personal leisure. For example, David (42, researcher) had established a pattern over a period of around 20 years of going running ‘at least two times a week’, and said that he would be ‘prepared to go to long lengths to make sure I could manage to get it in’; Charlie (44, computer manager) worked as a volunteer ‘maybe once or twice a week’ for around 15 years; Chris (40, fitter) played snooker with his dad once a week and had done so for a number of years; and Barry (45, consultant engineer) belonged to an organisation that met twice a month on a weekday evening. This formalisation process seemed to reinforce the male partner’s entitlement to leisure and ‘fixed’ it in a way that was similar to the non-negotiable timetable of paid work. The ‘timetabling’ of formal leisure was commented on by one of the female participants as a problematic and resented feature of her partner’s behaviour:
Debbie: He [her husband] plays golf … It’s the one bug-bear of mine. He’s been playing golf for a long time, well ten years now, might be even longer than that … It’s every Saturday and occasionally mid-week as well.
ES: What problems does that present?
Debbie: (laughs) It just makes me annoyed that he gets time in the day to do his own thing and I don’t. So if I want to do something on a Saturday I have to get in and book it before he books any golf or arranges that. It’s not something I can do at the last minute because he’s already arranged to play golf … So I can’t sort of do anything on-spec because I know he’s playing golf on Saturday.
ES: So how do you think Tom’s ideas of leisure are different from your own?
Debbie: (laughs) Oh dear. I think he’s quite selfish about it to be honest … He knows what I think about it (laughs). Yeah, he knows what I think about it. Yeah, it is quite selfish I think
ES: Have you ever tried to change anything about it?
Debbie: Oh, on several occasions, yeah. I get a stone wall. It’s his thing, it’s what he does. (Debbie, 35, environmental health officer)

In this example, leisure is a pivotal factor in the construction and maintenance of gender relations in the home. The inflexibility of Debbie’s partner’s leisure behaviour and the engagement in formalised ‘timetabled’ leisure acted to suppress her own leisure. Furthermore, the disposal of personal leisure on behalf of Debbie acted to facilitate the leisure activities of her partner. These behaviours reinforce gendered ideologies and, although attempts may be made to renegotiate arrangements, deeply entrenched patterns of gender role behaviour are resistant to change (‘I get a stone wall. It’s his thing, it’s what he does’).
In contrast, the women in the study rarely ‘timetabled’ leisure in an entirely stringent manner. Some women such as Mary (39, nursery nurse) did timetable a Saturday slot of personal time after reaching a crisis point with work and family pressures, but this level of formal arrangement was uncommon among the female interviewees. More usual was a flexible approach to leisure whereby personal time would be taken when opportunities arose and obligations had been met. Furthermore, a flexible approach to leisure was part of a broader life strategy among the female interviewees. Life was styled flexibly around the fulcrum of children and family. Heather reflects on her flexible approach to life and leisure in her following comments:
ES: And how different do you feel your leisure is to your partner’s?
Heather: Well I feel because his is sort of timetabled, you know there is never actually the pull for him as to, ‘will I go this football match?’ or, ‘gosh the gardening really needs doing!’, because the football match is at a certain time. But, I mean, you can’t really do much about that. And maybe that’s why I have sort of chosen something like the gym because it can be flexible. And I mean there’s a link there with my job, I have chosen jobs that are flexible, and I’ve chosen leisure time that’s flexible. But I think women generally tend to do that, I mean very often I’ve been doing something like reading a book or what have you and if one of the children says will you come and do this with me then I will always put down the book and go and do it, but you know I think when you have got children, and when you have got three and they are varying ages like mine are you’ve got to learn to juggle really. (Heather, 45, project co-ordinator)

Heather expanded on this notion of ‘juggling’ elements of lifestyle and underlined the idea that there was a hierarchy of leisure, family and work by saying that: ‘I’m very careful that I don’t ever go to the gym at tea time or evening times when they are about. I always do it in the day time and if anything has to be juggled I juggle my work to fit that in, I don’t juggle them to fit it in’. Heather’s example reveals the contrast between her own and her partner’s leisure and the significant role played by ‘timetabling’ and flexibility in the leisure behaviours of her partner and herself respectively. These comments also provide insight into gender relations in the home and how leisure in the context of everyday life is instrumental in the reinforcement of existing gender ideologies. In dual-earner families the notion of ‘flexibility’ is gendered. A flexible lifestyle is primarily a female phenomenon. Paid and unpaid work and leisure are patterned around the primary responsibility of the motherhood role, namely, the care of children. The men in the study tended not to display the same degree of lifestyle flexibility and their arrangements for leisure largely reflected this. 
Discussion and conclusion
The aim of this paper has been to examine the role of leisure in the lifestyles of dual-earner families with dependent children. The fieldwork of the project revealed that leisure plays a crucial role in the construction of daily life and that it contributes to the formation, maintenance and, in some cases, contestation of gendered patterns of behaviour within the home. The disposable nature of leisure in the lifestyles of many of the women in the study reflected the residual status of leisure in the orientations and priorities of many of the female participants. This finding was mirrored in Kay’s (1998) study of professional female workers in dual-income households with dependent children. She commented that ‘working mothers described their parenting role as the most important dimension of their lives … Leisure was a desired but residual category, an experience that was needed but rarely had’ (Kay, 1998, p.445). The research revealed, however, that work, family and leisure were sometimes reprioritised. Housework was the most commonly relinquished everyday task, but both family time and paid work time were set aside by some of the interviewees to satisfy their leisure needs. Establishing flexible patterns of leisure behaviour among the female participants directly contrasted with the actions of many of their partners who tended to claim more ‘timetabled’ leisure slots. This reflected gender relations in the home and acted to reinforce existing balances of power and patterns of behaviour.
These findings contribute to an understanding of how daily life is constructed and how leisure interrelates with other aspects of lifestyle for men and women in dual-earner families. Understandings of the family and employment lives of dual-earners are enhanced by explorations of the leisure dimension and a greater appreciation of the holistic nature of daily life emerges. This research, therefore, represents a juncture between two largely separate areas of investigation, namely, research focusing on the family–employment relationship and research that incorporates a leisure dimension. A holistic approach to lifestyle presents opportunities for future research on the ways in which individuals in different family and employment contexts construct and experience daily life. 
The findings of the project also contribute to the policy debate, particularly contemporary policy and political discourses on ‘work–life’ balance or the reconciliation of work and home. ‘Reconciliation’ policies have emerged on the political and policy agenda in the UK, especially since the election of the New Labour government in 1997. The fieldwork revealed the central importance of leisure in the lifestyles of the families to whom reconciliation policies are targeted, yet policy and political discourse on the ‘work–life’ balance makes very little explicit reference to leisure. Leisure has, however, been shown to lie at the heart of the construction, maintenance and negotiation of gender relations in the home, and the women in the study in particular experienced a ‘leisure deficit’ as an outcome of an imbalanced ‘work–life’ mix. The results from the study, therefore, can inform policy by broadening understandings of what constitutes ‘life’ in the ‘work–life’ debate by demonstrating the role played by the leisure in the lives of dual-earner families.

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