Predictably, most of the existing studies about work spilling over into family time take a management or organizational perspective. The assumption is that the dramatic increase in workers’ use of ICTs necessarily extends working time. For example, a Canadian study of managers, professionals, and technical workers actually defines cell phones, laptops, home computers, and BlackBerry devices as work extending technology— meaning the act of engaging in work-related activities outside of regular ofices hours in locations other than the business ofice.7 Some workers in this study, especially heavy BlackBerry users, did report a sense of having less family time as a result of working from home. Intriguingly, however, the main finding was that the very same features of ICTs that increase perceived control and facilitate communication are also the source of many oppressive features.
Noelle Chesley similarly found that frequent use of communication technologies by American professional and managerial career couples is linked to greater work-family permeability, lowering family satisfaction.8 However, work-family spillover was found more typically among men, and family-work spillover more among women, with only women reporting that taking family-related calls at work was stressful. In this way, Chesley argues, these technologies may be reinforcing the gendered character of work-family boundaries, as family responsibilities appear more likely to influence women’s outcomes. The potential for ICTs to simultaneously reinforce and rearticulate conventional gender scripts is a subject to which I will return.
The focus of these studies on high-earning employees bolsters the view that ICTs permit work extension, undermining domestic and family time. However, as I will demonstrate below, this is not necessarily indicative of more general societal trends in ICT usage.
A more fundamental problem, however, is that these studies take for granted the very boundary separation that they purport to be examining. The far-reaching changes wrought by digitalization call for a reexamination of this conceptual framework. Boundary permeability may not be the best way to frame the complex issues associated with a shifting workfamily interface. As people further incorporate ICTs into the fabric of their everyday lives, it may be that the spatial, organizational, and even psychological distinctiveness of time at home and time at work will lose its salience. We therefore need to stop focusing on the impact of new communication technologies on the boundaries themselves. Instead, I argue, the task is to comprehend the practical ways in which these devices facilitate idiosyncratic patterns of availability, such that individuals no longer recognize much of the divide between these categories in the first place.
Time to Talk
141