Exploring the juggling of responsibilities with space-time accessibility analysis

Journal article

The ways employed parents negotiate and combine employment and caring responsibilities has recently attracted increased attention in the social sciences. Nonetheless, many studies provide only limited insight into the opportunities that specific physical, institutional and cultural contexts offer to parents for 'juggling' responsibilities. Space-time accessibility modeling might be used to fill this gap, although its conceptualizations of human subjects, space and time need to be rethought in light of feminist geographic concerns. We propose ethnographic or narrative space-time accessibility analysis as a partial and situated way of alerting readers/spectators to the ways constraints coalesce into opportunities for juggling responsibilities. The approach is illustrated through a case study of a highly educated mother who has to reconcile fixed employment times, chauffeuring her son to childcare and a lengthy commute via the congested highways around Utrecht in the Netherlands.

Authors: Schwanen, T; De Jong, T

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Routledge
• Journal: Urban Geography
• Volume: 29
• Issue: 6
• Pages: 556-580
• Publication date: 2008-01-01
• DOI: 10.2747/0272-3638.29.6.556
• EISSN: 1938-2847
• ISSN: 0272-3638
• Subjects: space-time accessibility analysis; the Netherlands; work-life balance; mixed-methods research