Many scholars have suggested or studied the idea that online jobs is an opportune way of combining activities for pay or profit with family and household production activities, including activities such as nurturing of spouse or child, child or other dependent care, cooking, and household management. It also includes propinquous production activities with outcomes that are important for the development of family members and/or for the social and spiritual vitality of families and communities.

Although some research indicates that, at least in the United States, online jobs does not eliminate the necessity of hired child care, child care, food production, and household chores (i.e., household production and propinquous production activities) can be combined with employment activities so that more total work can be accomplished. In addition, workers might find new creative talents, gain self-confidence, earn income that is in many cases quite important for their families, increase their social class and quality of life, and embark on entrepreneurial activities that allow them to restructure their lives. It has also been argued that the lack of commuting time can either make people more productive or allow them more leisure or family time (online jobs) In contrast, some scholars have suggested that such combinations of household production and work for pay have actually led to the stretching of the working day with the result that workers, especially women, are suffering exploitation by employers, family members, and even themselves (online jobs).

Time can be more easily allocated to a wider range of activities simultaneously or sequentially when online jobs is the paid-work option. Time can also be perceived as more flexible and less structuring of one's activities. It was concluded that for her sample of rural families running microbusinesses, it was the flexible use of time, rather than just its allocation, which was important for online jobs -workers. Rather than thinking of time as a finite resource to be allocated among competing demands, time for online jobs families was not uniform but flexible and integrated with daily functions. Participants reported variable work days of nonuniform hours, punctuated by breaks for specific needs--a child's violin lesson, decorating a birthday cake, doing laundry, or reading to a child. In their nonrountinized work days and schedules, these families display a distinctive concept of "work time." As such, it may more closely approximate the older premodern rhythm . . . than the time discipline imposed by the industrial structure.