In this chapter and the next we explore the ways in which employment and unemployment, together with changing gender divisions of labour, affect the support that is exchanged within extended family networks. It has been argued that this support is lessening because of women's increased participation in paid employment and that there is a weakening of the connectedness of local social networks because of increasing occupational and geographical differentiation. This, as we have seen, has been conceptualised in terms of a reduction in social cohesion and/or social capital and increasing individualisation. There is also considerable debate about the effect of unemployment on families, the association of unemployment with social exclusion, and the moral values guiding choices about participation in paid employment. We therefore begin this chapter with a brief overview of this debate before discussing the type of support exchanged within kinship networks and the way it is affected by unemployment. In the following chapter we look at how family members care for each other and the impact of employment, particularly women's employment, on their ability to do so. Taken together, these two chapters provide a picture of the support exchanged by family members, how this support is affected by employment and its lack, and how it relates to class and gender.

Unemployment, social exclusion and gender divisions of labour

There is a tension in much debate about family change which hinges on different conceptualisations of social inclusion and social cohesion and their relationship to women's and men's employment. Thus, within the western social democratic tradition participation in paid work has come to be seen as the main way to ensure social inclusion (Lewis, 2002), while social capital theorists point to the negative impact of women's employment on the cohesiveness of families and communities (see Chapter 1). We have already considered the social capital argument so here we briefly look at the ways in which employment and social inclusion are linked in policy debates. We also highlight the difficulties of pursuing a policy based on the full integration of women and men in the workforce given the gendered moral values underpinning people's decisions about the balance between market and care work; this is an issue to which we return at the end of the book.