Family and the Workplace : The Social Organization of Work

Within the literature on the family, we contend, there has been an over-concentration on the character of conjugal roles and upon the related issue of male authority, to the exclusion of a concern with the wider kinship structure (Bott, 1957 ; 1971 - Rapoport and Rapoport, 1976). This paper will demonstrate the implications of such shortcoming for the understanding of work organization. Much of this concern with conjugal roles owes it explaination to the quasi-ecological focus on co-residence in both historical and contemporary accounts of the family. A focus on co-residence as the measure of family structure is not surprising, given the relative ease with which such data can be collected ; relational data is more difficult to collect and has correspondingly received less attention. This data collection problem has resulted in an imbalance in the attention devoted to the cellular / nuclear family, with this type of family being portrayed as the predominant form at the expense of a proper consideration of the role of the extended family or the kin network in the modern (Parson and Bales, 1956).