The Second Shift by Arlie Hochschild, with Anne Machung A Readers Guide for the Sociology of Gender The

Second Shift is a great book about a mundane, but fascinating topic: the tensions experienced within American families between the demands of work and the demands of childcare and housework. The book is very well-written and its author, sociologist Arlie Hochschild, is renowned for her research on gender, work and family. For the purposes of our class, though, the book is somewhat long (almost 300 pages). Although you must read the entire book for this course, not every single chapter is equally important or relevant to our studies. Therefore, Ive written this readers guide to help you focus your energies on particular themes in the book. Note that this is a very general guide to the book, not a replacement of it! Note: In Chapters 4-12, Hochschild details the beliefs and behaviors of different dual-earner families. For each couple, keep track of their social location in terms of race/ethnicity, educational attainment and social class. How do the particular class constraints on these families shape how they allocate their second shift? Does the family outsource childcare? housework? Do they eat take-out food or frozen dinners; do they hire a nanny; do they use day care or a cleaning service? Use the worksheet at the end of this handout to help you keep track of the marital ideologies, conflict and gender strategies of each couple. Chapter 1. A Speed-up in the Family. Among employed people with families, women work a double day or second shift or an extra month a year, comprised by the additional time women spend on housework and childcare compared to men. Hochschild describes her research housework and child care among dual-earner married couples: systematic and snowball sampling to identify couples; structured interviews and participant observation. (See Appendix, especially pp. 287-292, for more details.) As real wages fell for male bread-winners, large numbers of women moved into the paid labor force to compensate for budget shortfalls. Families (women, especially) absorbed the accompanying speed-up in work and family life. Chapter 2. Marriage in the Stalled Revolution. Womens roles have changed substantially to include both family and work, while mens roles, work demands, and demands of childrearing have changed very little. Women, who bear the brunt of this stalled revolution, tend to see their double day as an individual hurdle, instead of the shared social problem which it is. Women and men adapt different gender strategies to make sense of conflicting role demands and their deep and shallow gender and marital ideologies. (The supermom strategy is a gender strategy in which the working mom does it all.) Three ideal types of marital/gender ideologies are relevant to the study. Traditional is the belief that the husbands role should be as sole breadwinner and the wifes role should be as sole homemaker/childrearer. The traditional person believes that, even if the woman works for pay, she wants to identify with her activities at home (as a wife, a mother, a neighborhood mom)and have less power than her husband and that, even if his wife also works for pay and even if he does do housework and childcare, the man has his base at work and wants his wifes base in the home (p. 15). The person holding a purely egalitarian ideology expects that men and women identify in the same spheres (of work, of family, or some combination of the two) and share power within marriage equally. Between the traditional and egalitarian ideologies is the transitional ideology in which the husband identifies as the primary breadwinner who supports his wifes desire to work (to help earn money) as long as she also identifies primarily with the home. Transitional women want to balance work and family for themselves while they want their husbands to identify with work, while transitional men want to identify with work and expect their

working wives to balance the demands of work and family. (Other important terms: ideologies on top or underneath, economy of gratitude, and family myths.) Chapter 3. The Cultural Cover-up. Conflicts between the demands of work and family are treated as personal issues of individual women instead of treated as social problems shared by women and by women and men. Chapter 4. Joeys Problem: Nancy and Evan Holt. The Holts, Nancy and Evan, are first couple Hochschild profiles. Nancy holds an egalitarian ideology while Evan holds a transitional ideology. Like many dual-earner families, the Holts have a leisure gap in which the husband/ father Evan has more leisure time than wife/mother Nancy. The couple maintain two myths about childcare and housework. Evan frames his sons and wifes mutual attachment, to his own exclusion, as Joeys problem, not the lack of his own involvement as a father in his sons life. After much tension and struggle, Nancy maintains that she has an egalitarian relationship with Evan regarding housework: she does the upstairs while he does the downstairs. Chapter 5. The Family Myth of the Traditional: Frank and Carmen Delacorte. Frank and Carmen, a working-class couple, both traditional ideologies. Unlike the Holts, the Delacortes share the same ideology with regard to how theyd like to behave with respect to work and family. Like so many families, Franks pay check isnt large enough to make ends meet, so Carmen must work for pay. One gender strategy Carmen and Frank use to ease the sting of her economic power in the family is her submissiveness and feigned incompetence. Chapter 6. A Notion of Manhood and Giving Thanks: Peter and Nina Tanagawa. The Tanagawas both started out as holding transitional ideologies. Peter sees his role in the family as supporting Ninas parenting, not parenting himself. He takes this stance despite his more intuitive emotional connection with his daughters and even when his eldest child is in crisis (pp. 93-94, 98). The couples main conflict is that Peter is less interested in his work than he intended, while Nina is more interested in her work than she intended (pp. 82-83, 94-99). Ninas career success (and her salary) surpassed her husbands. While she saw this as an opportunity for him to switch careers to something more rewarding, he couldnt accept her generosity because her success impugned his masculinity (p. 86-90). Chapter 7. Having It All and Giving It Up: Ann and Robert Myerson. The Myersons each straddle the line between egalitarian and transitional ideologies. Both successful professionals, at one point Ann earned more than Robert. Unlike Peter Tanagawa who resented his wifes earning, Robert felt like he struck gold (p. 108). Although the couple shared power within their marital relationship and they shared the family myth that they shared equally their home and family responsibilities, in reality Ann actually did more of the second shift. Ann eventually quits her job as struggles with her gender and marital ideologies. Be sure to read her poignant advice to young women contemplating entering a two-job marriage (pp. 114-115). Chapter 8. A Scarcity of Gratitude: Seth and Jessica Stein. Both lawyers, Jessica held an egalitarian ideology while Seth held a transitional ideology thinly disguised as egalitarian. Jessica wanted her husband to want to share the second shift and to want to be a more emotionally involved parent, while Seth wanted his wife to not resent taking on and managing the second shift. Seths gender strategy, his unquestioning belief in the centrality of his career and its demands, allows him to dwell on his leisure time sacrifices; Jessica instead dwells on her career sacrifices (pp. 119, 123124). The Stein family relies especially heavily on paid help for their housework and childcare needs (pp. 126-129). Chapter 9. An Unsteady Marriage and a Job She Loves: Anita and Ray Judson. A working-class couple, the Judsons both hold transitional ideologies. Their personal histories filled economic and racial struggles are part of their conflict. Rays masculinity is tied up with his role as breadwinner

in the family. Anitas insistence on her economic independence stems from her mothers life lessons. Chapter 10. The His and Hers of Sharing: Greg and Carol Alston. The Alstons, a high income family, share an egalitarian ideology and most of the childcare and home life activities. However, Carol, not Greg, cut her work hours back considerably to care for their children. Even in sharing the second shift, Carol did more of the daily tasks, while Gregs tasks were less crucial to daily routines. While Carol and Greg believed that they co-parented their older child, Gregs awkward interactions with baby Beverly fed the family myth that the baby didnt like men (pp. 1556). Despite their beliefs in sharing, from Hochschilds observations Carol was the primary parent. Chapter 11. No Time Together: Barbara and John Livingston. The Livingstons, Barbara and John, a middle-class family, dont quarrel about how they divide housework and childcare tasks. Like many couples with children, wife/mother Barbara is the primary parent and manager of child activities while husband/father John is an avid participant who shares the second shift in time, but not responsibility (pp.169-170). The Livingstons primary problem is the lack of time theyre able to spend together as a couple. Demands of first and second shifts take a toll on their marriage, as do fears about being caught up in contemporary divorce trends. Note how ideologies on top can conflict with those underneath (pp. 173-4). Chapter 12. Sharing Showdown and Natural Drift: Pathways to the New Man. Two husbands are profiled in this chapter: both Michael Sherman and Art Winfield fully share the responsibility and the real work of home and family. Michael and wife Adrienne handle change in their marriage and balance the strictures of two academic careers (and twins). Art Winfield firmly identifies in his father role. His devotion to family along with his lesser emphasis on career sometimes gave his wife Julia pause. Hochschild posits a third stage of fatherhood (pp. 194-5). Chapter 13. Beneath the Cover-up: Strategies and Strains. In this important chapter, Hochschild expands her analysis of couples behaviors and the symbolic meanings of their behaviors. Gender/marital ideology did not determine how a couple shared the work of the second shift. Instead these ideologies operated at two levels: cognitively on top as thinking rules and emotionally underneath as feeling rules (pp.198-200). What people actually did about the second shift (in relation to their ideologies) comprise their behavioral, gender strategy: sharing showdown, play helpless, supermom, cut back on work, cut back on housework, cut back on childcare, seek help, etc. Strategies include cooperation (sharing the second shift to some degree) and resistance (disaffiliation, need reduction, substitutions, and selective encouragement). Chapter 14. Tensions in Marriage in an Age of Divorce. Divorce can be un-named option that couples face in resolving (or surviving) their differences. Another broad dimension of social changethat womens roles have changed faster than mens rolescontributes to couples tensions and conflicts, their experience of the stalled revolution within their family. Chapter 15. Men Who Do and Men Who Dont. How do we sociologically understand the differences between men who do the second shift and men who dont? The emphasis on money/income/earnings does not completely explain who does the second shift within or across families. In general, the men have restrictive ideas about what it means to be a good father (pp. 238-40), they tend to have limited ideas about the real needs of their children (pp. 240-2) and mistaken ideas about how their children are cared for (pp. 242-249). Chapter 16. The Working Wife As Urbanizing Peasant. This chapter forms the basis of some of Hochschilds subsequent research: the role of paid domestic labor in privileged families in relation to an exploitative, global economy. She covers a short history of work and family in the U.S. (pp. 251-255), as well as social class and domestic employment (pp. 255-260). Chapter 17. Stepping into Old Biographies or Making History Happen? How will future families face competing demands of work and family?

Worksheet on Marital Ideologies, Couple Conflict & Gender Strategies in The Second Shift.
Couple Nancy & Evan Holt Wifes Ideology
egalitarian

Husbands Ideology
transitional

Conflict

Gender Strategy

Comments

Carmen & Frank Delacorte

Nina & Peter Tanagawa

Ann & Robert Myerson

Jessica & Seth Stein

Anita & Ray Judson

Carol & Greg Alston

Barbara & John Livingston

Adrienne & Michael Sherman

Julia & Art Winfield

Marital ideologies are: Traditional, Egalitarian, or Transitional.