As part of a study of young, UK-based black and minority business graduates’ career identities and aspirations, research participants were asked to talk about their future work-family balance. The following are selected quotations from the interviews.

Amer – British Pakistani male:

… work as hard as you can in your first 10 years because that’s when your single. That’s when you can make the most money. Like 21 to 30 that’s where you make the most money you can. And work for a good company, save up, earn as much money as you can and then once you hit the age of 30 when you really know what you want to do in life, start up your own business. So once you start up your own business, you’ve probably more time to yourself. Like, I mean you got to run the business the first few years … it’s going to be tough but you can, like, balance it out because it’s your business, you run the show so there’ll be more time for the kids, you can balance it out. When the kids are around you can spend more time with them and when they go to bed you can work. You can balance it out in that sense so…I think that’s a good idea for a long-term plan. I think it’s quite important to spend a lot of time with your kids. And so if I’m working for a big company and I don’t have the time for my kids, I think I’d look for a better option.

Mohammad – British Pakistani male:

I know I’ve talked a lot about how important money is but I feel it’s very, very important to spend time with my family. I would like to get home at a time where I can spend time with my kids. I wouldn’t want to work ’til 8 o’clock say, get home at 9 and put my kids to bed. I would like to spend some time with them. I would be willing to make financial sacrifices.

Hamad – British Bangladeshi male:

Hopefully if I’m running my own business and the business grows then I should have some flexibility to take time off work that kind of stuff you know.

Work a few days a week and then alternate … look after the kids some days and you know, hopefully the wife will do more of the looking after but, yeah something like that you know – a shared role basically.

But making time for them [the children]

otherwise they might end up as crack heads or something.

Sarina – British Indian female:

Life is so tough as it is and to have children on top of that … I mean, you need to be some sort of superwoman to be able to do everything. So my ambition really is to like do as much as I can now, do as much as I can with my husband, whether we can share a business or do some work together …

That will be great and then have enough money by the time we have children to not work the long hours that we worked prior to having children. So I want to give my children … I feel so like I want have a baby now but, no I want give my children like a lot of time because in this day and age it’s very hard, like you know you see the long hours culture and stuff and with the long hours culture you know your children get neglected and stuff. I mean even though there’s like all these benefits around like maternity leave and pay and all of this …

Shahida – British Bangladeshi female:

Basically I am hoping to get all my experience, qualify as an accountant. And then I feel that once I have achieved that, qualified as an accountant, then I will have much more flexibility. You can demand it and make up the hours that you work, whereas at the moment because I am not qualified I will have to maybe work full-time. No, I think there are values and there are things that I’d like to, you know, teach my children and I don’t feel that in a nursery environment they’d get that. But then my nieces and nephews they all went to nurseries and they have all ended up really, really clever. And if I send my children to nursery they might end up really clever as well. I mean I don’t know …

Monira – British Pakistani female:

I don’t think at this point I would need to go parttime as a teacher, just when I think about having kids as you work the same hours as your kids. You are on holiday with your kids, and there is a lot of help, in terms of child-care, and my mum looks after children so she would help out as well, so I don’t think that would really be a big problem for me. And also, my husband he has his own business as I have said before, so he would be more likely to help out in emergencies as opposed to my mum. So, we have an understanding.

Question

1 What kinds of attitudes to parenting do the above narratives reveal?
2 What kinds of orientations to work–life balance and the gender division of labour are revealed?
3 Do you detect any tensions and dilemmas among the young black and minority ethnic graduates?