Sustainability in Combining Career and Care: Challenging Normative Beliefs about Parenting

In this special issue on Sustainability in Combining Career and Care, eight empirical studies following from an integrative framework address normative beliefs about parenting, choices in combining work and family, and outcomes for individual careers, couples, and children.

Offers an integrative framework for understanding and changing the effects of normative beliefs about parenting on choices at the work-family interface and on outcomes for careers, couple and children. Highlights a wide range of multi-method studies of the work-family interface from multiple countries. Employs a micro-, meso-, and macro-level perspective on creating and promoting sustainability in combining career and care. Sheds a new light on popular misconceptions and stereotype reproductions in the media about the challenges, choices, and consequences of combining career and care for working parents. Posits an innovative process model for changing normative beliefs about parenting and career success: The Triple-N Model of (1) Nominating Norms, (2) Navigating Norms (3) and creating New, No-nonsense Norms.