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‘Pressed for time’ – the differential impacts of a ‘time squeeze’ Dale Southerton and Mark Tomlinson Abstract The ‘time squeeze’ is a phrase often used to describe contemporary concerns about a shortage of time and an acceleration of the pace of daily life. This paper reviews analysis of the Health and Lifestyle Survey (HALS), 1985 and 1992, and draws upon in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with twenty British suburban house- holds, in order to shed light on ‘senses’ of time squeeze. 75% of HALS respondents felt at least ‘somewhat’ pressed for time, with variables of occupation, gender, age and consumption significantly increasing senses of being ‘pressed for time’. This is not surprising given theories of the ‘time squeeze’. However, identification of vari- ables only offers insights into isolated causal effects and does little to explain how or why so many respondents reported feeling ‘usually pressed for time’. Using inter- view data to help interpret the HALS findings, this paper identifies three mecha- nisms associated with the relationship between practices and time (volume, co-ordination and allocation), suggesting that ‘harriedness’ represents multiple experiences of time (substantive, temporal dis-organisation, and temporal density). In conclusion, it is argued that when investigating ‘harriedness’ it is necessary to recognise the different mechanisms that generate multiple experiences of time in order for analysis to move beyond one-dimensional interpretations of the ‘time squeeze’, and in order to account for the relationship between social practices and their conduct within temporalities (or the rhythms of daily life). Time, like money, has become a basic unit of measurement during modernity. E.P. Thompson (1967) demonstrated how organising the production process according to time-oriented action was central for the development of indus- trial societies, while Veblen’s (1953: 43[1899]) account of the leisure class where ‘conspicuous abstention from labour . . . becomes the conventional mark of superior pecuniary achievement’ highlighted how time can be asso- ciated with social status. Yet, contemporary anxieties about time go beyond measurement and display. Put simply, time is often viewed as being ‘squeezed’, that people can no longer find the time to complete the tasks and activities most important to them and that the pace of life is increasing (Cross, 1993; DEMOS, 1995). There are many explanations as to why this is the case. Some explore substantive changes in the duration of time spent on particular tasks, © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, 02148, USA.

Pressed for Time'– the Differential Impacts of a 'Time Squeeze

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‘Pressed for time’ – the differentialimpacts of a ‘time squeeze’

Dale Southerton and Mark Tomlinson

Abstract

The ‘time squeeze’ is a phrase often used to describe contemporary concerns abouta shortage of time and an acceleration of the pace of daily life. This paper reviewsanalysis of the Health and Lifestyle Survey (HALS), 1985 and 1992, and draws uponin-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with twenty British suburban house-holds, in order to shed light on ‘senses’ of time squeeze. 75% of HALS respondentsfelt at least ‘somewhat’ pressed for time, with variables of occupation, gender, ageand consumption significantly increasing senses of being ‘pressed for time’. This isnot surprising given theories of the ‘time squeeze’. However, identification of vari-ables only offers insights into isolated causal effects and does little to explain howor why so many respondents reported feeling ‘usually pressed for time’. Using inter-view data to help interpret the HALS findings, this paper identifies three mecha-nisms associated with the relationship between practices and time (volume,co-ordination and allocation), suggesting that ‘harriedness’ represents multipleexperiences of time (substantive, temporal dis-organisation, and temporal density).In conclusion, it is argued that when investigating ‘harriedness’ it is necessary torecognise the different mechanisms that generate multiple experiences of time inorder for analysis to move beyond one-dimensional interpretations of the ‘timesqueeze’, and in order to account for the relationship between social practices andtheir conduct within temporalities (or the rhythms of daily life).

Time, like money, has become a basic unit of measurement during modernity.E.P. Thompson (1967) demonstrated how organising the production processaccording to time-oriented action was central for the development of indus-trial societies, while Veblen’s (1953: 43[1899]) account of the leisure classwhere ‘conspicuous abstention from labour . . . becomes the conventionalmark of superior pecuniary achievement’ highlighted how time can be asso-ciated with social status. Yet, contemporary anxieties about time go beyondmeasurement and display. Put simply, time is often viewed as being ‘squeezed’,that people can no longer find the time to complete the tasks and activitiesmost important to them and that the pace of life is increasing (Cross, 1993;DEMOS, 1995). There are many explanations as to why this is the case. Someexplore substantive changes in the duration of time spent on particular tasks,

© The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.,9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, 02148, USA.

such as paid and unpaid work (Gershuny, 2000; Schor, 1992). Others considerthe temporal organisation of societies (Zerubavel, 1979), while qualitativeaccounts examine narratives and experiences of those most vulnerable to time pressures (Hochschild, 1997; Thompson, 1996). The problem remains,however, that little agreement can be found regarding whether experiencesof a time squeeze (or being harried) are as pervasive as popular discourse sug-gests, what socio-structural mechanisms generate a time squeeze and whetherits effects are distributed evenly across society.

This article reviews analysis of the Health and Lifestyle Survey (HALS),1985 and 1992, and draws upon in-depth semi-structured interviews conductedwith twenty British suburban households in order to shed light on ‘senses’ oftime squeeze. The HALS is interesting because it asked respondents whetherthey felt ‘pressed for time’ and therefore presents a quantitative source of datawhich can be associated with the notion of being ‘harried’ – a term oftenemployed by people interviewed in the qualitative part of this study.1 Liter-ally, the verb ‘harried’ means ‘to harass’ and ‘to worry’ (Oxford English Dictionary). However, since Linder (1970) appropriated the term to describethe ‘harried leisure class’, its meaning has come to be associated more directlywith both a lack of time and the acceleration of daily life. For example, to beharried is similar to being hurried and harassed in the sense that people ‘hurry’to complete tasks within limited time frames or feel harassed by the burdenof obligations to others. To this, the term ‘harried’ adds a degree of anxietyregarding the temporal over-load created by the proliferation of simultane-ous demands (Southerton, 2003).

Following a brief review of the many accounts which address why a timesqueeze may be emerging results from the HALS are presented. Accompa-nied by analysis of interview data, these results demonstrate how occupation,gender, age and consumption held various implications for the degrees towhich people felt harried. When the data sources are taken together threemechanisms which generate different experiences of ‘harriedness’ arerevealed. This suggests that when analysing time it is necessary to considerhow multiple inter-connected, yet relatively distinct, mechanisms are at playin the conditioning of temporal experiences, not all of which relate to the dis-tribution of practices in time but to the conduct and collective organisationof practices in time (and space).

Explanations of the ‘time squeeze’

Explanations of the ‘time squeeze’, of being ‘harried’ and ‘pressed for time’can be broadly summarised within three themes of social change – economic,cultural and technological. The themes are not mutually exclusive, althoughthey do indicate contrasting approaches to the study of time. This review is not exhaustive. Rather, it represents the theoretical orientation of keyaccounts that address this subject of social scientific enquiry.

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Economic change

Those who point to economic change as the root cause of a time squeeze iden-tify mechanisms related to employment and the provisioning of goods andservices. Some highlight the pressures placed on people to work longer hours.Two related processes are widely identified. The first focuses on workplacecompetition, employees being pitted against one-another (with respect tocareer progression) in a way that generates a culture of working long hours –the principal means of demonstrating commitment and ambition by employ-ers (Rutherford, 2001; Kunda, 2001). The second emphasises the organisationof capitalist workplaces. Schor (1992, 1998) explains the economic benefits for firms of training a limited number of employees who work long hours asopposed to a larger number of employees who work limited hours. She alsohighlights the significance of consumption in ‘ratcheting’ upwards the hourspeople spend in paid work. Assuming that people value their consumptionrelative to others and that a global consumer culture places the lifestyles ofthe most affluent as the key consumer referent group, then ‘the average indi-vidual needs to earn more money’ (Schor, 1998: 123). Overall, the logic ofglobal capitalism is that people work more to consume more. The difficultywith these arguments is that much, although not all, time use data suggeststhat people are not working longer hours. Robinson and Godbey’s (1997)analysis demonstrated that Americans felt more ‘rushed’ in 1995 than they didin 1965 despite having significantly more leisure time. Importantly, analysis ofsocial change is dependent on the historical time scales taken for compara-tive analysis. Gershuny (2000) demonstrates that the general trend in the UKis a decrease in hours worked until the mid-1980s when hours spent in paidwork increased slightly.

The changing distribution of time spent in work and leisure is important,but says little about the temporal organisation of daily life. Garhammer(1995), describing the shift toward post-Fordism, identifies a process of ‘flex-ibilization’ whereby working times and locations are increasingly de-regulatedand scattered. The consequence is a temporal shift from ‘9 to 5, Monday toFriday’ to the ‘24 hour society’, from collectively maintained temporalrhythms toward individually organised temporalities. While Breedveld (1998)demonstrates that the ‘9 to 5’ model remains the dominant practice in theNetherlands, his analysis of ‘scattered working hours’ does suggest that thosewith higher socio-economic status are best placed to utilise flexibilization andgain greater control over their own daily use of time because they have auton-omy over the allocation of tasks within their working day and over whichhours of the day that they work. By contrast, flexibilization for lower socio-economic status groups tends to be controlled by employers and it is thisgroup who suffer most from the temporal fragmentation caused by working‘irregular hours’. Wouters’ (1986) discussion of ‘informalisation’, wherebygroup-based norms are eroded, also implies a reduction in the rigidity of insti-tutionally timed events. A clear example is the growth of ‘grazing’ patterns of

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eating and decline of the ‘family meal’ (Charles and Kerr, 1988). Takentogether, flexibilization and informalisation imply a weakening of socio-tem-poral structures that, in the absence of fixed institutional temporalities, makethe potential for co-ordinating practices between social actors increasinglyproblematic (Warde, 1999; Southerton et al., 2001). These are theories thatcan be described as indicating a process of ‘de-routinization’ of society’s col-lective temporal organisation.

A third set of theories refers to the growing number of women enteringthe workforce. It is suggested that women in dual income households experience a ‘dual burden’ as a consequence of ‘juggling’ both paid employ-ment and their continued responsibility for domestic matters (Thompson,1996). One symptom of the squeeze placed on women’s time is the require-ment to ‘multi-task’ or do many tasks simultaneously in order to ‘fit them allin’ to finite amounts of daily time (Sullivan, 1997). Perhaps more profoundare the implications for how people interpret and organise time in their daily life. In her ethnographic study of a major American corporation,Hochschild (1997) draws together accounts of how intensifying global com-petition increases hours of paid work and the temporal implications of a dualburden. She argues that as hours of paid work increase (what she calls the first shift), time for domestic matters (the second shift) become squeezed,creating the need for a ‘third shift’ whereby people attempt to create ‘qualitytime’ for their loved ones. This is a process of rationalisation because the principles of Taylorization, whereby tasks are broken down into their com-ponent parts (fragmented) and re-sequenced to maximise temporal efficiency,have become applied to domestic matters. Consequently, the second shiftbecomes time pressured and, Hochschild suggests, the process spills into the third shift where even ‘quality time’ becomes regulated by the principlesof efficient time use and time itself comes to be viewed as a means to an end.

Crucial to the dual burden thesis is the claim that women have compara-tively less leisure time than they did in the past and than men. Bittman and Wajcman (2000) demonstrate that in OECD countries, when taking paidand unpaid work together, there is very little difference in the number of minutes men and women spend in ‘work’. While undermining the dualburden thesis, Bittman and Wajcman’s study does reveal important distinc-tions in the ‘quality’ of leisure time experienced by men and women. They distinguish between ‘pure’ and ‘interrupted’ leisure and show that men enjoy more leisure time that is uninterrupted. Women’s leisure, by contrast,tends to be conducted more in the presence of children and subject to punc-tuation by activities of unpaid work. In addition to implying that women’sleisure time maybe less restorative than men’s, Bittman and Wajcman showhow the socio-economic organisation of time, particularly in terms of thedomestic division of labour, can produce qualitatively different experiencesof time.

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Cultural change

Linder (1970) was the first to identify cultural changes in leisure practices andassociate them with shifting cultural orientations toward time use. TurningVeblen’s theory of the ‘leisure class’ around, Linder argued that the relation-ship between status and leisure today rests on the volume of leisure experi-ences rather than on the conspicuous display of idleness. To display statusthrough leisure requires the consumption of more and more leisure practices,a process which in turn renders leisure less leisurely as people attempt to crammore activities into their daily life (Roberts, 1976). This basic argument istaken further by Darier (1998) who suggests that being busy is symbolic of a‘full’ and ‘valued’ life. In his conceptualisation of the problem, reflexive mod-ernisation and the emerging demands on individuals to narrate their identitythrough styles of consumption (see Bauman (1988) and Giddens (1991) for adetailed exposition of this theory) brings with it the demands of trying newand varied experiences, and it is this which leads individuals toward the infi-nite pursuit of more cultural practices. In short, being busy is now a necessaryrequirement of reflexive identity-formation.

Accounts of changing orientations toward consumption lend some supportto Linder and Darier’s theories. Peterson and Kern (1996) discuss omnivo-rousness – an orientation toward consumption where good taste is judged lessby a depth of knowledge in specified cultural practices and more by a broadunderstanding of many different genres. From a different theoretical position,Lamont (1992) points to the orientation of the professional middle classestoward cosmopolitanism and self-actualisation – the serious and committedpursuit of many novel cultural activities. Both accounts imply that changingcultural orientations toward consumption make it a set of social practices bothmore demanding on time use and more central to social life. It follows thatsuch cultural changes bring with them new experiences of time that, whentaken in conjunction with the theories of Linder and Darier, indicate that con-sumption might be a central mechanism in generating the ‘time squeeze’.

Technological change

Accounts of socio-technological change highlight how emerging technologiesimpact on the temporal organisation of society. Innovations in the form oflabour-saving domestic appliances have received most attention. The basicconundrum is whether labour-saving technologies also save time. Vanek(1978) demonstrated that the amount of time devoted to domestic work bywomen in the USA remained constant between the 1920s and 1970s. Giventhat this period featured the rise of domestic labour-saving technologies,Vanek explains this consistency by recognising that such technologies increasedomestic productivity and with this comes a corresponding increase in (cul-tural) standards of domestic work. In other words, labour-saving technologies

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contribute to an increased frequency, range and quality of domestic work.As Schwartz-Cowan (1983) indicates, net gains in time saving are thereforelimited while expectations of time saving are high, leaving impressions that itis time which has become squeezed rather than that domestic technologieshave not delivered time saving (see also Shove, 2003).

Summary

Explanations of a time squeeze all take the position that contemporary life is at least perceived as an experience of increased ‘harriedness’, even if empirical accounts are inconsistent in their prognosis of the condition. Analy-sis has tended to focus on the relationships between work, home and con-sumption, with attention paid to the changing distribution of practices withinand between these spheres of daily life. Whether quantitative methods areemployed to investigate ‘use of time’ or qualitative methods to explore ‘expe-riences’ of it, the problem tends to be addressed through one-dimension – thatsome practices ‘take up’ increasingly more time to the detriment of others(Bittman and Wajcman being the major exception). The consequences of suchchanging distributions of practices in time are then associated with broadersocial changes such as those outlined above.

Despite the theoretical and analytical gains presented by these approaches,what remains unclear is how the idea of a time squeeze has come to be sopervasive in popular discourse. Current accounts tend to identify specificgroups as being susceptible to the same one-dimensional problem through aplethora of largely unconnected processes. For example, dual burden theoriesidentify women in paid labour as being the ‘harried’, while theories of con-sumption and workplace competition tend to focus on the middle classes. Thisarticle is less concerned with which social groups are most ‘pressed for time’(although the identification of why different social groups might feel ‘pressedfor time’ is important to the analysis). Rather, using a combination of quan-titative and qualitative data, our concern is with understanding whether ‘harriedness’ is a uniform experience and with revealing the mechanisms that generate such experiences. As a starting point, we examine explanationsof economic, cultural and technological change in relation to the availablevariables that affected subjective statements of the degree to which HALS respondents felt pressed for time. The article continues to reveal three different mechanisms responsible for generating multiple experiences of harriedness.

‘Pressed for time’ – results from the Health and Lifestyle Survey (HALS)2

The HALS data were collected in 1984 and 1985 to form a random sample of9003 respondents aged 18 or over and resident in private households in Great

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Britain, and included many variables related to the areas of consumption andlifestyles. For example, detailed data on food consumption, smoking, alcoholconsumption, hobbies, exercising, as well as socio-demographic variablesincluding social class, household composition, age and gender were gathered.The respondents were traced and re-interviewed seven years later (referredto as the follow-up survey) and almost all the original questions wererepeated. Thus we have similar data from two points in time for the same people. However, a number of respondents from the first wave couldnot be traced or had died when the second survey took place, reducing thesize of the second wave from 9003 to 5352. This merits some caution whenanalysing the second wave of the survey as we do not know what effects this attrition of the sample may have on the results. The models use datapooled for the two years so that time can be taken into account. Also notethat all models, with the exception of model 1, were restricted to employeesonly. Attrition is controlled for in the models below by including a dummyvariable (called ‘lost’) indicating that a respondent in wave 1 was absent inwave 2.3

Crucially for our analysis, questions were asked about day to day habitsand use of time including a variable reflecting harriedness: ‘Indicate how wellthe description ‘Usually pressed for time’ fits your life’. Respondents had fouroptions in reply – ‘not at all’, ‘somewhat’, ‘fairly well’, ‘very well’. Taking theseresponses as the dependent variable in ordered logistic regression models, weanalyse the extent that people reported feeling pressed for time in terms ofsocial class, age, gender, life-course, and consumption orientations. We werealso able to analyse the data in relation to a number of less commonly usedvariables, such as the effect of shift work and going out to meet people, in anattempt to isolate possible causes of being ‘pressed for time’. These variablesare described in table 1.

Interpretation of the survey results was aided by qualitative interview dataconducted in 2000. Twenty suburban households were interviewed regardingtheir impressions of whether people are increasingly squeezed for time. Thesample comprised single households, couples with and without children andrespondents’ age varied between 25 and 65. Some were dual income house-holds, some professionals and some retired, thus providing a range of demo-graphic and socio-economic status groups. Interviewees were contacted vialetters sent to every other house in the most and least expensive areas of thetown.4 Interviews lasted, on average, two hours. Adopting a conversationalapproach (Douglas, 1985) toward semi-structured interviews, intervieweeswere asked about whether society was, in general, more time pressured thanin the past, whether they felt pressed for time, to recount and reflect on theprevious week and weekend day, and to recall moments when they feltharried. In this article, interview data is used to illustrate and help interpretthe significance of the HALS results (for a more detailed analysis of the qual-itative data see Southerton, 2003). What follows is a general description of thesurvey findings, starting with responses to the initial question and followed by

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regression analysis of how occupation, age, gender, life-course and consump-tion affected the degree to which people felt ‘pressed for time’.

How many people are pressed for time?

Figure 1 reveals that little change has taken place between 1985 and 1992 withregards to ‘feeling pressed for time’. This is perhaps not surprising given the

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Table 1 Complete list of independent variables included in the models

Variable name Description

y92 Dummy: 1 if year = 1992, 0 if year = 1985lost Attrition dummy set to 1 if no response in second wavei Occupation professional (RG I)ii Occupation manager (RG II)iiin Occupation routine non manual (RG IIIN)iiim Occupation skilled manual (RG IIIM)iv Occupation semi skilled (RG IV)6

unemp Unemployedsickdis Sick or disabledretired Retiredstudent Full time studenthwife Full time housewifethirties Aged 30–39forties Aged 40–49fifties Aged 50–59sixties Aged 60 and above7

female Femalewk1120 Hours worked 11–20wk2130 Hours worked 21–30wk3140 Hours worked 31–40wk4198 Hours worked 41 or more8

drive2-drive4 Indicators of drive and ambition from a 4 point scale (base 1 islowest)

shift Whether has shift worksuper Whether supervises othersfi/mi etc. Occupation interacted with gender (e.g., fi = female class I,

miv = male class IV etc.)kids04m Man with children aged 0–4kids04f Woman with children aged 0–4kids511m Man with children aged 5–11kids511f Woman with children aged 5–11logomni Omnivorousness scoregooutlot Indicator of people who go out a lotseeppl Indicator of people who go out to see people a lotspur People who indicate they do things on the ‘spur of the moment’carefree People who describe themselves as ‘carefree’

relatively short time scale between the two sample years, and because expla-nations of an increasing sense of feeling harried tie the process to a broadertime frame. Figure 1 suggests that three quarters of the population reportfeeling at least somewhat pressed for time but whether ‘somewhat pressed fortime’ constitutes being harried is open to interpretation.

Impact of employment status and occupation on harriedness

Initial regression results5 (see table 2) show that all classes are more pressedfor time relative to classes IV and V (note that the non-employed are notassigned to a class in this analysis). The professional and managerial groupsreported being most pressed for time and non-employed groups, other thanhousewives, were significantly less pressed for time than those in work. Thus,the unemployed, students, the sick and disabled, and the retired are all lesspressed for time. There is a marginal decline in being pressed for time in 1992,but this is only just significant at the 5% level. More importantly the attritionindicator appears to be insignificant so we can be more confident that attri-tion in the second wave is not having a dramatic effect on the results. Othersignificant effects from the first model show highly significant age effects withtime pressure declining as respondents get into their fifties and beyond, anda highly significant gender effect with women much more likely to describethemselves as pressed for time than men.

The ‘class’ effect persists even when we control for number of hoursworked among employees in the sample (table 3), but only for managerialand professional workers. Thus among the employed the most harried seemto be at the upper end of the white-collar spectrum. When we only consideremployees there is no significant change in harriedness over time (y92 isinsignificant) and again the attrition indicator is insignificant. It may be the

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Indicate how well the description ‘Usuallypressed for time’ fits your life (%)’

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Not at all Somewhat Fairly well Very well

Year

19851992

Figure 1 degrees of feeling pressed for time in 1985 and 1992

case that some generalisable characteristics of professional and managerialjobs make them more demanding in terms of time. This argument gainssupport when the variable pressed for time is analysed in relation to whetherpeople work shifts or whether they supervise others. Table 4 demonstrates thatsupervisory roles, which require a degree of responsibility for the time man-agement of others, and not working fixed hours (i.e. not working to a shiftsystem) increases senses of being pressed for time. This provides some supportfor Garhammer’s theory of the impacts of flexible work and Breedveld’sclaims to a process of de-routinization, whereby an erosion of structured worktimes makes collective action a case of individual time management and hasthe effect of intensifying the immediacy of time. However, the class effectremains even when these things are taken into account.

Explanation as to why being professional middle class served as a signifi-cant variable might be found by generalizing about the workplace and socialstatus. Rutherford (2001) and Kunda’s (2001) ethnographic accounts of timeand professional occupations suggest that the corporate world encourages,if not demands, high degrees of employee competition as an incentive for

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Table 2 A basic model with occupation, age and gender – all respondents

Number of obs = 10,356Ordered Logit Estimates chi2(17) = 1,664.76Log Likelihood = -13,239.853 Prob > chi2 = 0.0000Variable Coef. Std. Err. P > |z| Pseudo R2 = 0.0592

y92 -0.0933702 0.0471658 0.048lost -0.0722766 0.0489713 0.140i 0.8874785 0.1176081 0.000ii 0.867675 0.090162 0.000iiin 0.4642229 0.0993753 0.000iiim 0.415411 0.0884631 0.000iv 0.1567807 0.0997465 0.116unemp -0.5803457 0.126371 0.000sickdis -1.065291 0.1816903 0.000retired -0.8239733 0.1149354 0.000student -0.4924166 0.112017 0.000hwife -0.1459078 0.1016325 0.151thirties 0.0557434 0.0599808 0.353forties -0.0877262 0.0620595 0.157fifties -0.2478916 0.0646654 0.000sixties -0.555723 0.0830194 0.000female 0.3291287 0.0386622 0.000_cut1 -1.156138 0.0981035 (Ancillary parameters)_cut2 0.4564696 0.0972167_cut3 1.812553 0.0992585

ambitious employees. Apart from placing pressure on employees to worklonger hours, workplace competition has the effect of intensifying work rates,meaning that even those who did not work long hours still felt the impact oftime pressure. This was also an explanation offered by interviewees such asSuzanne:

‘in the seventies ‘stress’ wasn’t a word was it? . . . in the commercial world,and you know a lot more is expected of you compared to that era . . . I thinkcompanies . . . they demand blood . . . that makes it very competitive . . . Theknock on effect of that then when you’re looking at your personal life andthat sort of thing, then you haven’t got time! Because you’re directing all yourtime in trying to be successful in your career.’

Rutherford and Kunda’s studies also indicate how being ‘harried’ has becomean important part of professional middle class identity and source of socialstatus. Take for example Steven’s remarks about career success:

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Table 3 Effects of hours worked – employees only

Number of obs = 5,908Ordered Logit Estimates chi2(16) = 399.59Log Likelihood = -7,675.1401 Prob > chi2 = 0.0000Variable Coef. Std. Err. P > |z| Pseudo R2 = 0.0254

y92 -0.0597711 0.0534919 0.264lost -0.020583 0.0666777 0.758i 0.6927484 0.1498345 0.000ii 0.5871587 0.1294274 0.000iiin 0.2377826 0.1364008 0.081iiim 0.1634402 0.1278771 0.201iv -0.1139742 0.1365585 0.404thirties 0.1311829 0.0726211 0.071forties -0.0261868 0.073514 0.722fifties -0.1653488 0.0795361 0.038sixties -0.30182 0.1124572 0.007female 0.6749304 0.0579366 0.000wk1120 0.3600338 0.1159055 0.002wk2130 0.5460537 0.1197813 0.000wk3140 0.4706091 0.1042179 0.000wk4198 1.143891 0.1125365 0.000_cut1 -0.7232272 0.1689376 (Ancillary parameters)_cut2 1.148328 0.1686873_cut3 2.509649 0.171139

‘if you’re successful or have a high status job then you’ll be busy and nothave enough time for yourself because you’ll have so much to do. It’s the oldmoney rich time poor syndrome.’

To not identify oneself as harried within the context of ‘dynamic’ careers wastantamount to admitting that one did not belong to the successful professionalmiddle classes and was lacking ambition and personal determination tosucceed within that environment.

HALS does not contain variables of workplace competition to allow fordirect testing of this hypothesis. However, it does ask questions regarding thedegree to which respondents felt they were ambitious. As Table 4 indicates,ambition was related to an increased likelihood of reporting being ‘pressedfor time’. Whether being ambitious is a personal characteristic particular to

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Table 4 Models including other work oriented variables – employees only

Number of obs = 5,908Ordered Logit Estimates chi2(21) = 772.83Log Likelihood = -7,488.5195 Prob > chi2 = 0.0000Variable Coef. Std. Err. P > |z| Pseudo R2 = 0.0491

y92 -0.0569811 0.0538156 0.290lost -0.057432 0.0671888 0.393i 0.4985009 0.1529758 0.001ii 0.395934 0.131889 0.003iiin 0.1141724 0.1377934 0.407iiim 0.0856758 0.1290255 0.507iv -0.1271915 0.1376565 0.355thirties 0.2184767 0.0735777 0.003forties 0.1059875 0.0748754 0.157fifties -0.0360448 0.0808012 0.656sixties -0.2352873 0.1131939 0.038female 0.8265935 0.0594302 0.000wk1120 0.3749939 0.1167885 0.001wk2130 0.5269522 0.1208173 0.000wk3140 0.3561772 0.1066145 0.001wk4198 0.9243931 0.1156808 0.000drive2 0.5584821 0.0817706 0.000drive3 0.8648146 0.0812849 0.000drive4 1.70397 0.100324 0.000shift_ -0.267912 0.0715689 0.000super_ 0.1935124 0.0548396 0.000_cut1 -0.0465987 0.1805062 (Ancillary parameters)_cut2 1.894702 0.1817661_cut3 3.325726 0.1851352

the professional middle classes or an outcome of increased workplace com-petition in professional occupations is a debate beyond the scope of thisarticle. At the very least it seems that being harried has become intimatelyconnected with being a member of the professional middle classes in additionto any personal ambitions they might have.

The effects of gender

We saw in table 2 that gender was highly significant. Table 5 demonstrates thatwomen in the same occupations as men generally reported feeling morepressed for time. Professional and managerial women reported feeling themost pressed for time of all female employees and more so than their malecounterparts. This finding is consistent with the effects of workplace compe-tition having a greater effect on women compared with men in the same occu-pation (Rutherford, 2001). However, the largest gap between men and womenof the same occupation can be found in the intermediate classes – occupationsless readily associated with workplace competition over career progression.

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Table 5 Gender and occupational interaction effects – employees only

Number of obs = 5,961Ordered Logit Estimates chi2(16) = 235.99Log Likelihood = -7,828.0971 Prob > chi2 = 0.0000Variable Coef. Std. Err. P > |z| Pseudo R2 = 0.0148

y92 -0.032267 0.0531224 0.544lost 0.0102972 0.0658993 0.876fi 0.8131743 0.1726698 0.000mi 0.6115915 0.1652358 0.000fii 0.8290091 0.1309003 0.000mii 0.5620387 0.1297832 0.000fiiin 0.4947467 0.140924 0.000miiin 0.0960335 0.1467161 0.513fiiim 0.419361 0.1289212 0.001miiim 0.0475298 0.1271188 0.708fiv 0.2330796 0.1427538 0.103miv -0.3380453 0.1472103 0.022thirties 0.1281205 0.0712439 0.072forties -0.0012553 0.072553 0.986fifties -0.1545216 0.0783178 0.048sixties -0.4321708 0.1096457 0.000_cut1 -1.567225 0.1308244 (Ancillary parameters)_cut2 0.2737908 0.1284503_cut3 1.604649 0.130285

The gap between men and women appears only partially attributable to dif-ferential pressures in the workplace.

It is interesting to note that Bittman and Wajcman’s (2000) time use studyreports the total paid and unpaid working hours of men and women for theUK in 1985 (the same year as the first wave of the HALS). Using this data,we can see that UK men and women worked approximately 47 hours eachper week. However, women were responsible for 76% of total time spent inunpaid work. Taken together with the HALS results it appears that womenreport feeling pressed for time more than men regardless of occupation anddespite similar total hours of paid and unpaid work. This lends some supportto the dual burden theory as explained by Thompson (1996). It implies thatthe dual burden is less about total hours worked and more about the respon-sibilities and obligations that accompany unpaid work and particularly thework of caring for children. Thompson (1996) employs the metaphor of ‘jug-gling’ to capture working mothers’ experience of time and the personal anx-ieties that arise through managing motherhood and career. Yet surprisingly,table 6 demonstrates that having very young children (under 5) had littlebearing on the degree to which women felt pressed for time when comparedto men. Indeed it appears to be men with small children rather than womenthat are the more pressed for time, all things considered. The survey data, therefore, either indicates that dual burden theories are mistaken in theirprognosis that juggling paid work and caring for the family create senses of harriedness or that the survey question fails to capture particular experi-ences of time that might otherwise be described as ‘harried’. Both men andwomen with children aged 5–11 showed a marginal effect on being presses fortime.

Interviews with women did indicate that having young children significantlyincreased senses of being harried even if those women did not describe them-selves as ‘lacking time’. Cindy provided a good case in point. She describeduse of time during the day of interview as a mix between leisure and domes-tic tasks:

‘I worked out in the gym . . . Then I came home, had my lunch and potteredaround the house for a bit which is quite unusual for me because I usuallytend to go to the shops or see friends or whatever . . . I had to be back to theschool for about three . . . Then we walk home from school and I spent awhole hour getting her [daughter] to eat her tea ready for gym club whichwas quarter to five.’

Given this description of events it was not surprising that Cindy suggests sheis not ‘short of time’. However, she was clear that she was sometimes harried:

‘I find the mornings very very hectic what with trying to feed her, get herdressed, to get myself dressed and get her out the door in time to get her toschool. Like this evening she got back from school, we had about one hour

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and then she had to go to gym club and I was like, that’s not enough time,she needs to eat her tea and you would think an hour is plenty but, so I findmyself stressed all the time by trying to get her to places for the time she needsto be there.’

What is important about Cindy’s case is that she demonstrates how beingharried should not be conflated with feeling ‘pressed for time’ because‘harried’ is a term which describes a density of social practices within specificframes of time. ‘Pressed for time’, by contrast, implies a general shortage offree time.

Of course, one reason why working mothers may not have reported ‘addi-tional’ degrees of feeling pressed for time is that they are more likely to havesome form of childcare. Dual burden theories suggest that women maintainresponsibility for the organisation and transportation of children to the

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Table 6 Impact of children – employees only

Number of obs = 5,961Ordered Logit Estimates chi2(20) = 257.76Log Likelihood = -7,817.2155 Prob > chi2 = 0.0000Variable Coef. Std. Err. P > |z| Pseudo R2 = 0.0162

y92 -0.0340488 0.0531607 0.522lost 0.0163995 0.0659705 0.804fi 0.8213948 0.1736224 0.000mi 0.5955452 0.1657334 0.000fii 0.8481595 0.1318441 0.000mii 0.5472701 0.1305113 0.000fiiin 0.5244022 0.1416063 0.000miiin 0.098522 0.1471445 0.503fiiim 0.4371475 0.1299953 0.001miiim 0.0322492 0.1278308 0.801fiv 0.2543633 0.1435184 0.076miv -0.3556183 0.1478064 0.016thirties 0.0399756 0.0756705 0.597forties 0.012943 0.0739842 0.861fifties -0.0979907 0.079697 0.219sixties -0.3685517 0.1107295 0.001kids04m 0.2378405 0.0683029 0.000kids04f 0.1071713 0.0992041 0.280kids511m 0.1088399 0.052991 0.040kids511f 0.1254814 0.0542904 0.021_cut1 -1.507913 0.1317126 (Ancillary parameters)_cut2 0.3369538 0.1294723_cut3 1.671726 0.1314261

various forms of day care available to them. Sarah served as a good example.As a single working mother, Sarah admitted she was fortunate to be able toafford a nanny to care for her two children during the daytime. She was alsoadamant that ‘I’m not pushed for time because I’m organised’. However, shedid admit that predictable moments of her daily schedule were ‘harried’:

‘it is a case of getting up, feeding the two boys, making their breakfasts,getting them off to school . . . we have this set routine, they get up, we haveour breakfast, we hoover, they have a bath, I get them dressed and then weare ready for school. The latest that I can go upstairs for that bath is 8 o’clock.Otherwise, we are very pressured for time and then we are rushing.’

Cindy and Sarah captured how mothers in the interview sample experi-enced time, whether working mothers or not. These narrative accounts alsotally with the qualitative accounts of Hochschild (1997) and Thompson (1996)and together indicate that the limitations of the survey question (‘are youusually pressed for time’) for revealing experiences of time and highlight thata dual burden refers more to the ‘quality’ of time than to the quantities oftime spent in paid and/or unpaid work.

Consumption and lifestyle

We saw in tables 2 and 3 (above) that increasing age generally has a negativeimpact on being pressed for time. Life-course effects could explain whyyounger adults felt more pressed than those aged over fifty. However, it seemsunlikely that starting a family is significant given the limited effect that havingyoung children had on women – although the strong significance for men sug-gests that life-course is an important factor for them. Orientations toward con-sumption offer a different account of the relationship between age and feelingpressed for time. Schor’s theory that consumer culture generates the ‘timesqueeze’ implies a generational effect. Consumer culture is a process that canbroadly be traced to the 1960s (Harvey et al., 2001), making those aged intheir forties and under more susceptible to the influence of this process. Toexamine this claim, it is necessary to consider the impacts of consumption andlifestyle on survey responses.

While the Health and Lifestyle survey holds no data on the volume of timerespondents devoted to practices of consumption, it does contain variablesrelated to leisure activities. This allows for analysis of ‘omnivorousness’ – aconcept that suggests an orientation toward consumption where individualsconsume a wide variety of cultural pursuits but do not necessarily devote sig-nificant volumes of time or energy to them. Using a measure derived fromWarde et al. (2000), where participation in various activities is combined intoa score, we were able to construct a variable to measure omnivorousness.Table 7 shows that omnivorousness had a significant impact on degrees offeeling harried. Despite being unable to measure the frequency that cultural

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activities occurred for each individual, the significance of omnivorousnessdoes suggest that it may be the range of consumption interests rather than theamount of time spent on consumption in total which increases senses offeeling pressed for time. Indications of why this might be the case can be foundin variables regarding sociability. As Table 7 also shows, ‘going out’, in itself,makes little difference to feeling pressed for time but going out to ‘see people’does. It follows that the task of co-ordinating with others and with having tem-poral deadlines for meeting others enhances senses of being pressed for time.This was a point made by many interviewees:

‘Our problem is that when we arrange to go out you can guarantee that what-ever time we need to leave by Karen will not be ready and that makes things

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Table 7 effects of lifestyle – all respondents

Number of obs = 10,356Ordered logit estimates LR chi2(22) = 1,873.77Log likelihood = -13,135.345 Prob > chi2 = 0.0000Variable Coef. Std. Err. P > |z| Pseudo R2 = 0.0666

yr92 -0.1470373 0.0477677 0.002lost -0.0646442 0.0491892 0.189i 0.7817256 0.118458 0.000ii 0.7969043 0.0907899 0.000iiin 0.3902125 0.0999473 0.000iiim 0.3850488 0.0886054 0.000iv 0.1338496 0.0999785 0.181unemp -0.6223712 0.1267945 0.000sickdis -1.05596 0.1828032 0.000retired -0.8418699 0.1153555 0.000student -0.544319 0.1124722 0.000hwife -0.1582944 0.1016999 0.120thirties 0.1043857 0.060403 0.084forties 0.0003151 0.062969 0.996fifties -0.1311548 0.0659491 0.047sixties -0.4178277 0.0844001 0.000female 0.2949099 0.0390883 0.000logomni 0.2533645 0.0326249 0.000gooutlot 0.0456961 0.0388151 0.239seeppl 0.1495254 0.0398839 0.000spur 0.2468636 0.0371008 0.000carefree -0.370981 0.0393145 0.000_cut1 -0.8616358 0.113354 (Ancillary parameters)_cut2 0.7735507 0.1130085_cut3 2.1467 0.115055

difficult because we are late and then we have to try and make up time to getthere on time and it’s not really a very good start to an evening out.’ (Steven)

‘it’s okay if you’re going out alone or down the pub but if you’re going tothe cinema and you’re late and you’ve arranged to meet friends then you dorush more because of the thought of them sitting around waiting for you’(Kathryn)

Hypothetically, being omnivorous is likely to increase the range of people withwhom sociability occurs by arrangement because it will potentially expandsocial networks, and together this might further exacerbate senses of beingpressed for time. More prosaically, consumption and sociability have directimplications for how time is experienced, although the survey data is notextensive enough to conclusively tie this either to Schor’s (1992) ‘work-spend’cycle nor Linder’s ‘harried leisure class’.

Mechanisms generating ‘harriedness’: substantive overload,disorganised rhythms and temporal density

The survey data is instructive in identifying variables that effected senses offeeling ‘pressed for time’ and for highlighting which social groups felt rela-tively more ‘pressed’ than others. However, isolating variables and compar-ing groups tells us little about the mechanisms that make ‘harriedness’ appearso widespread. While analysis in relation to interview data and other empiri-cal accounts helps interpretation of why specific variables might affect expe-riences of time, these accounts remain fragmented and connections betweenvariables remain inadequately explained. Identifying the mechanisms thatgenerate senses of being harried is, therefore, necessary if analysis is to movebeyond a description of the problem and towards an explanation of processes.As it stands, the survey only tests isolated causal models of why occupation,gender, age and consumption were significant.

Three mechanisms can be isolated from the data to explain senses of feelingpressed for time. First is the volume of time required to complete sets of tasksregarded as ‘necessary’, and refers to the changing distribution of practices intime. This is a straightforward process identified in rational action theories oftime use (Becker, 1965) where, for example, working long hours reduces theamount of time available to spend on other sets of tasks, such as domesticwork, time with family and friends, consumption and leisure. This raises issuesof what constitutes ‘need’ and whether some groups are ‘pressed for time’because they place greater value on certain practices that other groups regardas less ‘necessary’. For example, some professionals might work longer hoursin order to gain advantage over others in the advancement of their career, oryounger people might work longer hours in order to consume more, or spendmore time devoted to consumption because it is regarded as a ‘need’ rather

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than a ‘want’. Regardless, volume of time devoted to work and/or consump-tion practices is one mechanism that increased senses of ‘harriedness’.

The second mechanism is co-ordination, which refers to the difficulties ofco-ordinating social practices with others in a society where collectively organ-ised temporalities have been eroded. In a similar sense to the process of flex-ibilization discussed by Garhammer and Breedveld’s de-routinization, thismechanism points to the challenges of co-ordinating collective social practicesin circumstances where institutionally derived and relatively stable temporalrhythms are undermined by the individualised scheduling of practices. Theimpact of flexible working hours on degrees of feeling ‘pressed for time’ servesas a good example of this process. Omnivorous orientations toward con-sumption are also associated with the mechanisms of co-ordination. This isbecause practices of consumption often involve interaction within social net-works (Warde and Tampubolon, 2002), and accounts of network formationsuggest that individuals develop network ties based around specific culturalpractices (Bellah et al., 1985; Fischer, 1982). Consequently, those who aremore omnivorous in their consumption orientations are likely to have agreater range of networks in which issues of co-ordination will be central tothe organisation of those consumption practices. Allan (1989) demonstratesthat, when socialising, the working classes use public spaces where there is astrong likelihood of meeting network members by chance rather than arrange-ment. For the middle classes, such network meetings are pre-arranged. In bothcases, co-ordination becomes increasingly problematic in circumstances wherecollective temporalities are eroded. It means that ‘turning up’ in public spacesis less likely to reveal ‘known others’ because networks might, for example,work at different times of the day, thus undermining normative meeting times.In terms of meeting by arrangement, increasing fragmentation of collectivetemporal rhythms is likely to make common agreement on suitable times tomeet more difficult. In this way, co-ordination is a mechanism which explainswhy flexible working hours, omnivorousness and socialising with others weresignificant variables that increased senses of feeling pressed for time.

The third mechanism refers to the allocation of practices within time.Rather than suggest actual increases in volume of practices, allocation refersto certain practices being located within temporal rhythms that create a senseof intensity in the conduct of those practices. Allocation is not a mechanismrevealed by the survey data and this is important because it indicates howexperiences of time can be evaluated according to multiple criteria. Forexample, narratives of juggling practices and multi-tasking that are found inaccounts of the lives of working women (Hochschild, 1997; Sullivan, 1997;Thompson, 1996) all concern the challenges of allocating practices within par-ticular parts of the day. Allocation is also linked to a notion of the boundariesthat separate practices. Hochschild’s account of domestic work suggests thatwhat were once task-oriented practices have now become time-oriented,meaning that the boundaries between domestic tasks are no longer driven bycompletion of those tasks in a sequential manner but according to principles

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of time-related efficiency. Consequently, the boundaries between tasks areeroded in the course of generating more efficient means of completing thosetasks (see also O’Malley, 1992). Importantly, the allocation of practices, whichno longer have clearly defined boundaries, into particular parts of the day cangenerate senses of being harried, irrespective of whether the bulk of that dayis experienced as being ‘pressed for time’. This mechanism is not restricted tothe home and can also be found in work-place practices where the allocationof tasks is subject to personal management and where multiple tasks are con-ducted simultaneously.

Isolating these three mechanisms reveals that ‘harriedness’ is not a one-dimensional experience. Indeed, the three mechanisms seem to generate threedistinct senses of ‘harriedness’. The mechanism of ‘volume’ can be held as thebasis for substantive senses of being harried. Bradley summarised what beingsubstantively harried means:

‘between my working 5 days a week and then taking Alex [his daughter]places at the weekend and then in the summer you have to come home andcut the grass every week and you just have, the household management isjust like almost a day gone . . . But most of the time I leave for work at 7, gethome about 6, 6.30, do household management, sit down at 10 and if I’vegot the energy read for 20 minutes.’

A second form of harriedness refers to temporal dis-organisation and is theoutcome of the mechanism of co-ordination. This sense of harriedness is lessconspicuous than the substantive form because it accounts for experiencesthat are not obviously connected with an absolute shortage of time. Tempo-ral dis-organisation takes many forms. For example, Charlotte described being‘rushed’:

‘This morning was typical, first Mike rushes about to get out the door byquarter to seven, then I get the girls up, dash about getting them ready andthen myself. Then it’s out the door, rush to school and I have to drop themat ten to nine or I am late for work. I do my cleaning [paid work] and gethome about two, have something to eat and then get the girls from schooland generally from then on it’s plain sailing.’

Senses of ‘rush’ always related to the difficulty of meeting co-ordination pointswithin the day, such as to collect children from school or meet with friends orwork colleagues. As Charlotte illustrated, this was caused by the problem ofco-ordinating between her personal schedule and the schedule of her daugh-ter. However, dis-organisation was also expressed in terms of an inability tocompetently organise one’s own time. As Cindy explained:

‘I do find that I get easily distracted, you know going to the school in themorning, and it’s like I’ve got to come back and I must do this and I must

do that. At the school I’ll chat to friends, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat,chat, and then it’s ‘oh no’, come back, ‘oh no, I was gonna do that at thattime’ you know.’

In other cases, temporal dis-organisation was presented as the outcome of‘obligations’ to others:

‘because he [his brother] works typical hours he thinks I can meet up for adrink at 5. If I don’t he thinks I’m avoiding him, that my job’s more impor-tant than he is . . . So I will try and meet up and I either rush everything toget it finished before I leave or know it’s waiting for me the next morning.’(Ashley)

Ashley, who worked flexible hours, neatly illustrates the difficulty of aligningpersonal schedules in conditions where others work fixed (shift) hours. It alsoillustrates how senses of harriedness were exacerbated by senses of obligationto overcome temporal dis-organisation and create time for significant others.Normative expectations surrounding obligation was also found in statementssuch as ‘quality time’, ‘chill time’ and ‘bonding time’.

Finally, density of practices allocated within time frames acts as a thirdsense of harriedness. Temporal density accounts for experiences of time thatcan be described as ‘juggling’ and ‘multi-tasking’. As Sarah and Cindy illus-trated when describing their day, it suggests an uneven experience of tempo-ralities in which parts of the day are packed with activities while other partsare relatively ‘empty’. Take Chloe’s description of times when she felt harried:

‘Some mornings are chaos, after getting them off to school I’ll have a cup oftea and a sit down, then I’ll try and get all the housework done so that I canget off to work for 12.00 and that’s as busy as getting the kids off, you know,start the washing, do some ironing, make the beds, then the washing finishes,so I stop what I’m doing and peg it out . . . Work is easy, the most relaxingpart of the day because I only have to do one thing . . . Tuesdays and Thurs-days are not so bad because I don’t do housework, I’ll meet friends or goswimming or shopping’.

For Chloe, temporal dis-organisation is apparent in that she rushes to meetan institutionally defined meeting point (school), but the multi-tasking ofhousework is equally an experience of harried because of the density of tasks.However, when asked if she felt ‘generally pushed for time’ she answered: ‘no,I’m busy some of the time but not others’. This helps explain why having smallchildren did not necessarily register as significant in relation to reportingfeeling ‘usually pressed for time’ in the survey. Interviewees such as Sarah,Cindy and Chloe did describe being harried but were always quick to pointout the partiality of that experience, and in doing so avoided describing theemotional work of childcare as being substantively harried.

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Isolating mechanisms that explain why people might feel harried or pressedfor time and distinguishing between different forms of harriedness is instruc-tive in accounting for multiple experiences of time. It suggests that whenanalysing time it is important to account for the mechanisms that impact onexperiences of time, recognising that different methodological approachesoffer insights into particular experiences. In this case, the survey data gener-ated understandings of the factors that led to outcomes of being pressed fortime while qualitative data shed light on the mechanisms that generated mul-tiple experiences of being harried. Moreover, while scope for analysing whichmechanisms and forms of ‘harriedness’ were most applicable to specifiedsocial groups was beyond the scope of this article, the identification of multi-ple experiences does offer a framework for exploring the (changing) socio-structural circumstances that lead to particular senses and experiences of the‘time squeeze’.

Conclusion

Approaches to the analysis of a ‘time squeeze’ tend to account for ‘experi-ences’ of time through one-dimensional processes that explore the changingdistribution of time spent on certain practices to the detriment of others. Thishas produced valuable insights into changing time use and provided indica-tions as to why particular social groups might feel increasingly harried.However, such accounts are limited in their capacity to either generalise theirfindings beyond specific groups or to provide sufficiently nuanced accounts ofdifferential experiences of time. Consequently, while insight is gained intomany social changes that might generate substantive shifts in the distributionof practices within time for many social groups, little progress has been madein the identification of key mechanisms that generate senses of ‘harriedness’nor of distinguishing between different senses of ‘being harried’.

Analysis of the HALS data and in-depth household interviews offered theopportunity to bring together the many theoretical and empirical accounts ofthe ‘time squeeze’ and to reveal underlying mechanisms that effect multipleexperiences of harriedness. Occupation in relation to the number of hoursworked, whether respondents worked flexible hours, supervised others anddegree of ambition all had significant independent effects on degrees offeeling pressed for time. Socio-economic status was also important, as wasgender, age, consumption orientations, and socialising with others. The mech-anisms which contributed towards how and why these variables impacted onsenses of being harried all related to the organisation of personal and collec-tive social practices within time and according to the temporalities of every-day life. Consequently, the volume, co-ordination and allocation of socialpractices were the key mechanisms that generated harriedness and eachmechanism was associated with different experiences of time. This demon-strates that when investigating the ‘time squeeze’ it is important not to con-

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flate experiences related to being ‘pressed for time’ to factors concerning only‘lack of time’ for the conduct of particular activities (such as domestic workor sociability with friends and family).

By identifying different mechanisms that generate, and different forms of,harriedness, this research also suggests a framework for future investigationsof the ‘time squeeze’. Of particular importance is analysis of which forms ofharriedness are most closely associated with specific social groups, and underwhat conditions are the mechanisms that generate harriedness produced (forexample, is the mechanism of allocation most pertinent to housewives or doesit also have general currency in, say, the workplace). Further understandingof the mechanisms of co-ordination and allocation is also required, and analy-sis of the organisation or sequencing of practices is one potentially instructiveapproach. This would not only provide insights into how temporalities, or therhythms of daily life, are changing, but also further demonstrate how it is therelationship between the conduct (and particularly the temporal challengesof collective conduct) of different types of practices (rather than increases oftime spent on one set of practices at the expense of another) that is crucial inaccounting for the significance of these two mechanisms in contemporaryexperiences of time.

Notes

1 Many time use diary surveys contain a survey component that enquire into subjective experi-ences of being time pressured. HALS data is not superior in quality to these other data setsbut is longitudinal and therefore allows for pooled analysis of two points in historical time.

2 Data were supplied by the Data Archive, Colchester, Essex and the interpretation of the datais solely our responsibility.

3 The pooling of the cases means that the 1992 responses are all 7 years older than the 1985, andsince there is no replacement of cases this means that there are a lot fewer respondents in theirtwenties in 1992 and a lot more aged over 59. As a result, and given that over 59 year oldsreported feeling less time pressured, it is likely that the marginal decline in overall senses offeeling ‘pressed for time’ is a consequence of the panel survey sample. Secondly, further analy-sis that uses the panel, rather than pooled, data is possible. This would allow us to answer ques-tions such as whether changed individual circumstances over the seven year period lead tochanges in degrees of feeling pressed for time. While these is not scope within this article toconsider panel data analysis, such an approach would provide an opportunity to model changesin ‘harriedness’ in terms of the mechanisms that generate harriedness as identified by pooleddata.

4 The term ‘respondent’ refers to those responses from the HALS data, ‘interviewee’ for thosefrom the qualitative interviews.

5 One may interpret these coefficients as one would interpret binary logistic regression coeffi-cients except here the dependent variable has more than two values. In other words a positivecoefficient indicates an increased chance that a subject with a higher score on the independentvariable will be observed in a higher category of being pressed for time. A negative coefficientindicates that the chances that a subject with a higher score on the independent variable willbe observed in a lower category of being pressed for time.

6 Base class is class V (unskilled).7 Base age is under 30.8 Base hours worked is less than 10.

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