Conceptualizing boundaries between ‘life’ and ‘work’

Surf ’s Up: Work, Life, Balance and Brand in a New Age Capitalist Organization

“…This distinction is based on the argument that paid employment and unpaid care are primarily concerned with extrinsic utility or practical outcomes, both essentially imposed by the objective situation in which people find themselves (the need to earn money, the need to maintain oneself and one"s family). Recreational labour, in contrast, achieves utility through more intrinsic, personal satisfaction and is motivated by subjective desires (Ransome, 2007). This form of labour might include community activities, care of self, leisure, and pleasure.…”

“…More recently, however, this approach has been the subject of criticism for its narrow focus and neglect of non-productive forms of "labour". Ransome (2007) notes that only 22% of UK households contain dependent children, and suggests that taking childcare as the model for "life" risks generalizing from a small minority to a much larger population whose concerns, and lives, are quite different. Ransome offers a third category of activity, "recreational labour", to set alongside paid employment and unpaid care work.…”

“…Following traditional sex/gender divisions of labour, these discourses implicitly or explicitly assume that the subject of the work/life balancing act was a "generic female parent" (Smithson and Stokoe, 2005), whose primary responsibilities outside of work were domestic and reproductive labour (Ransome, 2007;McKie et al, 2002). This focus remains at the heart of the discourse, driven now by declining fertility rates and an aging population (Gregory and Milner, 2009).…”

“…As well as leading to disproportionate attention on working mothers (Edwards and Wajcman, 2005;Lewis, Gambles and Rapoport, 2007;Gregory and Milner, 2009), this focus on "life as family" has neglected other "life" activities such as leisure and recreation, in part because child-rearing is legitimated as a productive activity (Ransome, 2007).…”

Walking the tightrope between work and non-work life: strategies employed by British and Chinese academics and their implications

“…Further, state policy towards women, work and childcare leads to crossnational differences in terms of WLB strategies (Crompton, Brockmann, and Lyonette 2005;Windebank 2001). Within WLB decision-making, elements of autonomy are moderated by "a wide range of cultural, institutional and structural factors" (Glover 2002, 263) and these factors have provided part of the explanation as to why there are society-wide similarities in WLB decisions (Ransome 2007). Evidence shows that the western perspective of WLB is not adequate in explaining work-life/family issues in the Chinese context (Ling and Powell 2001;Ren and Foster 2011), and major coping strategies adopted by employees in China or Asia are significantly different from their Western counterparts (Chandra 2012;Siu et al 2002;Xiao and Cooke 2012).…”