Centrality of and investment in work and family among Israeli high-tech workers: A bicultural perspective

Workers' attitudes concerning the competition for individual's resources between work and family are expressed by the relative centrality they attribute to each of these domains. This competition is also manifested in the tradeoff between work and family time. The study deals with 319 Israeli high-tech workers. We examined the effect of parenthood on men and on women regarding the centrality of and investment in work and family in the bicultural context of the Israeli high-tech industry (i.e., the family-centered Israeli society on the one hand, and the masculine work-centered high-tech industry on the other hand). A contrasting parenthood effect on men and women was found. Fathers showed higher relative work centrality than childless men, whereas mothers showed lower relative work centrality than women without children. Fathers invested more weekly hours in paid work than childless men, whereas mothers invested fewer weekly hours in paid work than women without children. In the parents' sub-sample, mothers evinced higher relative family centrality than fathers. Mothers also invested more weekly hours in childcare and core housework tasks than fathers. The uniqueness of the findings is that the contrasting parenthood effect prevails even in the demanding high-tech sector, in which women are expected to work long hours and play down their care-giving activities. Nevertheless, it should be stressed that mothers struggled to juggle active family caring with a career, rather than give up either of them. We also found that mothers invested more weekly hours in work in general (paid and unpaid work) than fathers.