Work from home and shifting perceptions of career prospects among employees with children: the role of work- and family-related contexts
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose This study examines how individual work- and family-related circumstances shape the relationship between working from home and self-perceived changes in career prospects among employed parents, more than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic. We particularly investigate how prior experience with work from home (WFH), occupational status and the intensity of family demands moderate this relationship. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on several theories, including role conflict and competing demands frameworks, we formulate five hypotheses, which we test using a large multi-country dataset and fixed effects multinomial regression models. The data come from representative samples of working parents with dependent children in Canada, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden and the United States, collected in mid-2021. Findings The findings show that parents who worked from home both before and during the pandemic were more likely to report positive changes to their career prospects, especially men and those in managerial or professional positions. However, these positive associations are contingent on favourable family contexts: they are evident primarily among parents living with a partner and those whose children were not at home for extended periods. In contrast, mothers who began WFH during the pandemic, particularly those living alone or managing prolonged childcare duties, were more likely to report worsened career prospects. Originality/value This study advances the literature by highlighting the intersectional and gendered nature of perceived career changes during the pandemic. It shows that the professional benefits of WFH are not universally shared but depend critically on pre-existing work arrangements and family responsibilities. The findings point to the importance of designing context-sensitive career development strategies in increasingly hybrid work environments.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".