Abstract. The time parents and children spend together is considered one of the most important characteristics of parental well-being. The amount and quality of time-to-children depends on a number of social, demographic, and economic factors. The article aims to identify working mothers’ satisfaction with the ability to devote sufficient time to their underage children and preferred employment formats for successful balance of their professional and parental responsibilities. The empirical basis of the research was a survey of working mothers aged 21—59 years living in the Ural region and having children 14 years and younger and the results of qualitative research (focus groups and in-depth interviews) conducted in Yekaterinburg in autumn 2022. The data allow us to draw the following conclusions. Although about two-thirds of the respondents positively evaluated their current opportunities to combine parenting and professional responsibilities, more than half of the respondents are dissatisfied
with time-to-children. Our hypothesis that satisfaction with time-to-children is directly related to the conditions of combining parenting and professional responsibilities has not been confirmed. This result may indicate that, in addition to reaching the balance of parenting and professional responsibilities, there are other factors determining working mothers’ satisfaction with time-to-children. A significant proportion of respondents believe that hybrid employment and flexible working hours provide optimal conditions for combining work and parenting, which confirms our hypothesis about the positive impact of these employment formats on mothers’ satisfaction with time-to-children and overall parental well-being. In the future, we believe it is necessary to conduct a study of satisfaction with time-to-children among working mothers with different forms and modes of employment living in Russia’s regions.
Acknowledgement: this work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation under grant № 22-18-00614 “Researching the impact of digital employment on fertility and parental well-being”, https://rscf.ru/project/22-18-00614/.
For citation: Markova, T. L., Tonkikh, N. V., Kamarova, T. A., Yeremkina, P. Ye. (2024) Otsenki rabotaiushchikh zhenshchin Urala: udovletvorёnnost’ vremenem na deteĭ,
distantsionnaia zaniatost’ i roditel’skoe blagopoluchie [A social portrait of working women in the Urals], Zhenshchina v rossiĭskom obshchestve, no. 4, pp. 119—138.