Balancing work, family and life: introduction to the special edition.

• Author: Burgess, John
• Position: Contributed Article

The papers in this special edition of Australian Bulletin of Labour ate about the issue of balancing paid work with other aspects of life. Work-life had its genesis in the concept of work-family balance in the 1980s, when the apparent tension between work and family life began to be recognised. Woolcott (1990) showed that concerns about issues outside of work, particularly family responsibilities, had the potential to affect both the wellbeing and productivity of workers. Failing to address problems of imbalance between work and other life aspects has also been identified as resulting in detrimental social and economic consequences (OECD, 2008). Asa result of these consequences, initiatives that assist workers to balance their work and family lives have gained increasing support from policy makers, employee and employer groups.

Early conceptualisations of work-family balance tended to confine research, policy and organisational attention to the matter of conflict between work and the rearing of dependent children. Research has since covered significant terrain, becoming multi-disciplinary, with studies emerging from industrial relations, economics, psychology and human resource management and including topics such as Iong working hours (for example, Bunting 2005), gender (for example, Gregory and Milner 2009) and power (for example, Mescher, Benschop and Doorewaard 2009).

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