Work and Occupations

Although the job and career functions of workers' networks have been well documented, there is little understanding of the social support that workers provide to their network members. This article addresses this gap by developing a typology of social support that workers provide to their network members. Drawing on interview data from 40 employees, the author identifies six types of social support that vary in terms of their intimacy, emotional energy expended, nonemotional resources required, frequency of expression, and function. The author concludes by discussing the implications of this typology for our understanding of workplace intimacy and the benefits of informal networks in work organizations.

Although Mills was only age 45 years when he died, he had become the leading critic of the nation and its conscience. Mills insisted that for intellectuals, work and nonwork are inseparable. The author examines the relationship between Mills' theory of social structure and his biography. For data, the author draws on Mills' biographers, self-observations, letters, and the author's contacts with him as his dissertation director and later contacts. From infancy, Mills saw most relationships in terms of power and control. He was determined to remain autonomous, resist all attempts to control him. He was critical of the work of most sociologists and chose nonsociologists as friends.

Recent research has suggested that the characteristics of paid work affect trade-offs between women's activities in the family and employment spheres. One argument suggests that public sector employment, more so than private sector employment, provides conditions that are amenable to the combination of paid work and family. In this article, the authors exploit panel-type data to compare the labor market behavior of Jewish Israeli women in the years following childbirth and focus on differential labor market activity among women with employment histories in the public and private sectors. Their findings point to significant interaction effects between previous sector of employment and childbearing behavior and suggest that the welfare state, through the provision of “family friendly” employment opportunities, plays a role in encouraging women's paid labor in the years following childbirth.

This article examines the influence of job features on domestic outsourcing. The central hypothesis is that households use outsourcing more often if the partners are less available for domestic chores and caregiving because of job demands. Analyses of data on 795 Dutch couples show that if they work longer hours, there is more of a demand for the outsourcing of female tasks. Flexible availability resulting from autonomy and working at home facilitates the use of outsourcing alternatives. Working at home by women reduces the amount of formal child care; however, for men it increases the outsourcing of child care.