ABSTRACT
The author claimed that 'the nature of household management rules makes a significant difference in the handling of household work contradictions in three-job families'. In this chapter, the author provides evidence and argument for this claim by specifying the constraints experienced by husbands and wives in managing their three-job households. A 'constraint' is perceived as a restraint that stems from either or both macro institutional order/labour market and micro interaction order/family and impinges on the normal workings of three-job families. Beechey describes these constraints as structural tensions between the labour process, occupational and industrial concentral ions of women employees and the sexual division of labour. Trade-off families faced similar constraints as rigid families did. However, these families continually assessed their priorities in the light of their means. Rigid families wished to achieve many goals with somewhat limited ends. The specific constraints were a lack of resources: time, energy, and money to buy hired help.
