Working mothers at the crossroads - Work family conflict and childcare

Work and family interface has been regarded as one of the most studied social science topics for the past several decades. The initial studies viewed work and family from the prospective of segmentation theory, that regarded work and family as two completely different spheres of one's life and run by their own rules. However, the phenomenon which created the necessity of interdisciplinary study of these work and family is the entry of women in the workforce after large scale industrialisation in the 1960s and 1970s. A substantial number of educated women began to enter to the workforce, which was basically dominated by men since the beginning of civilisation. This phenomenon completely altered the very established social definition of mothers, as the caretakers and fathers, as the bread earners of the family. There is a major concern in organisations regarding work–life balance, specially for women and also its impact on childcare. The work–family conflict gets affected by multiple variables and the paper looks upon looking at the literature and also defining some of the variables in a better manner.