Negotiating paid work and intimate life in late modernity : accounts and strategies from primary carers returning to work in higher education

Concerns about the intensity of competing demands in our paid work and intimate lives, the blurred boundaries between work and home, and the changing role of women – are perennial themes taking centre stage in Australia today. The ideal and image of a relaxed, long weekend nation where individuals choose their preferred lifestyle, equally balance their work and family/personal life responsibilities,does not stack up. As Amartya Sen (2009), writing in a liberal society that ostensibly values both freedom and well-being, has argued: people having plans, being able to realise them and being free to choose between different styles and ways of living, is a vital constitutive characteristic of a liberal society. This paper draws on data from a longitudinal qualitative study conducted from 2004 to 2010 that investigated female university and retail employees’ preferences, plans and intentions, and lived experience of arranging their paid work and intimate/family life. The theory of domesticity ideology was applied to the data. The purpose of the paper is to unpacksome of the strategies and rationalities employed by the participants negotiating how to return to paid work, andin relation to debates around paid maternity/parental leave and equality outcomes. The findings open up important questions for how paid work and intimate life are negotiated in late modernity, and for enhancing gender equality in the household for the transition to return to paid work. This paper contributes to contemporary debates about emerging and enduring inequalities in daily life