Making low-wage work and family fit: perceptions and strategies among working families

Workplaces have changed dramatically over the past 50 years. Jobs have become more precarious, particularly for workers at the bottom of the income and occupational distributions, and this shift has created new challenges for balancing work and family roles. Previous research suggests that precarious work can make it difficult for families to manage childcare and schedule family time, but questions remain about the subjective experiences and perspectives of workers in low-wage jobs juggling work and family responsibilities. Using a work-family fit and balance perspective, which emphasizes individuals’ subjective appraisals of the work-family interface, and data from three waves of in-depth interviews with 50 workers earning low-wages, we document the demands and resources (at work and at home) that are most salient as they make subjective appraisals of work-family fit and the strategies they use to reduce perceived misfit. Our results highlight workers’ agency amidst a series of constrained choices. Workers in our sample were exceptionally skilled at making precarity work for their families but not without considerable labor and additional sacrifices.