The Evolution of Workplace Family Policy Research

This article integrates and analyzes research on workplace family policy and suggests areas for further inquiry. It highlights salient themes such as corporate culture, gender and class differences regarding support for policies, and the role of government. A theoretical framework for understanding barriers to progressive family policies in the workplace is articulated that identifies competing social, cultural, and psychological forces. Thus the article delineates factors that support and circumvent creation and successful implementation of workfamily policies. In so doing, it specifies reasons for employer and employee resistance to progressive gender roles. Although future research might elaborate more systematically the relative tenacity of and intersections between various barriers to progressive policy, it also needs to evaluate on a larger scale and with greater precision the costs and benefits of traditional versus progressive programs. These and other issues figure prominently in a research agenda for the 1990s.