Perspectives on the future: Combining work and family care in 2040

The work-family interface is in constant flux and faced with numerous future challenges. Yet much work-family scholarship problematizes current work-family issues or analyses past experiences with little detailed consideration of the risks and opportunities individuals are likely to encounter in the future. This perspective is needed to challenge and extend current work-family scholarship to how external developments are likely to affect the ways in which workers will combine work and family life in the future. We contribute to extant work-family scholarship by exploring this future work-family perspective in 2040. We do this by considering crucial demographic, technological and climate developments and relating these developments to potential future work-family scenarios. Respondents participating in a scenario workshop were asked to consider: What might work-family futures look like depending upon societies' orientation to 'more' or 'enough' in life against the extent of individualism versus social solidarity? We study the feasibility of the resulting work-family scenarios and consider potential work-family policy responses that make certain scenarios more or less possible. We argue that "future proof" policy needs to address (i) work-family policy accessibility; (ii) policy fragmentation; and (iii) the increasing complexity of work-family demands. We conclude with a research agenda on what is needed to translate future visions into effective support for optimally combining work and family life in the future.