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This pioneering work aims at understanding the impact of non-standard (evening, night, weekend) working time on family cohesion, meaning parent-child interaction, partnership quality and divorce or partnership dissolution. ´Out of time - the Consequences of Non-standard Employment Schedules for Family Cohesion´ is the first work to treat this important topic in a cross-national, comparative way by using data from two large comparable surveys. The impact of work in non-standard schedules on workers can be divided into individual and social consequences. Research so far has shown the clear individual effects of these schedules, such as increased stress levels and sleeping and physical disorders. There is less clarity about social consequences. Either no or positive effects of these types of schedules on workers and their families are found, or a significant negative impact on the relations between the workers and others, especially other members of the family is shown in research results. This Brief compares the Netherlands and the United States of America, countries that both show a high prevalence of non-standard schedule work, whereas both operate in very different institutional and welfare regime settings of working time regulation. By combining both quantitative and qualitative data, the authors are able to provide generalized views of comparative surveys and challenging those generalizations at the same time, thus enabling the reader to get a better understanding and more balanced view of the actual relationship between non-standard employment schedules and family cohesion.

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Introduction.- Where are Nonstandard Schedules Located and Who Works in Them? The Role of Occupational, Household and Institutional Factors.- Nonstandard Work Schedules and Parent-Child Interaction.- Nonstandard Work Schedules and Partnership Quality.- Nonstandard Work Schedules and Partnership Dissolution.- Conclusions: The Impact of Nonstandard Employment Schedules on Family Cohesion.

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Kadri Täht is Associate Professor at the Institute of International and Social Studies at Tallinn University, Estonia. She got her BA in Sociology from rtu University, Estonia; her MA from Lancaster University and the CEU; UK and Poland; and her Ph.D. at the VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She has carried out research projects on Higher Education and the Labor Market, on Lifelong Learning, and Work-Family Reconciliation. Her current research focuses are social inequality in post-socialist societies and social exclusion of youth in Europe. Kadri Täht has published in journals relevant for her research area, including the Journal of Marriage and Family, and has acted as a reviewer among others for International Sociology, European Sociological Review and Journal of Family Issues.Melinda Mills is Nuffield Professor of Sociology at Nuffield College and Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford. She received her MA in Sociology at the University of Alberta, Canada and Ph.D. in Demography at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Since 2012, she has been the Editor-in-Chief of the European Sociological Review and is the Principal Investigator of the ERC funded SOCIOGENOME project (www.sociogenome.com). Her main areas of research include fertility, partnerships, work-family reconciliation, work scheduels, biodemography and sociogenomics. Her current projects examine late motherhood and the social and genetic influences on fertility and family behaviour. She recently published an introductory book on survival and event history methods using the statistical programme R.

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