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 fairness 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 employees preferences, plans, intentions and lived experience of arranging their paid work and family/personal life. The data are from 15 participants interviewed a total of three times. The theory of domesticity ideology was applied to the research. The purpose of this paper is to unpack some of the strategies and rationalities employed by the participants negotiating how to return to paid work, and which underpins patterns of paid work transitions. The findings open up important questions for how paid work and family/intimate life are negotiated in late modernity, and in relation to debates around paid maternity/parental leave and equity outcomes. This paper contributes to contemporary debates about emerging and enduring inequalities in daily life.