Hochschild paints vivid examples of gender inequality within the household in The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home. Hochschild outlines inequalities between the amount of work mothers do at home compared to that of fathers, and states that with more women moving into the economy, families have been hit by a “speed up” in work and family life; the speed up being that there “is no more time in the day than there was when wives stayed home, but there is twice as much to get done” (pg 572). Women are the ones who then typically absorb and deal with this speed up by working a “second shift”, which happens when women who have a salaried job outside the home (shift one) return home only to be confronted with their second shift of work (cooking food, doing laundry, caring for children, cleaning, etc.) all within their household.
Hochschild also found that working women averaged three hours a day of housework compared to their working male counterpart, who only spend "17 minutes on housework" (pg. 569). Working women also spent more time with their children, watched less television, and slept less then their working husbands. One of the major statistics Hochschild stresses as a summary of the inequality is that over a typical year, “women worked an extra month of twenty-four hour days a year” when compared to their husbands (pg 570).
When Hochschild tried to explain why women were the ones to feel the brunt of this “speed up”in the family, it seemed that gender role expectations and stereotypes were the base of her reasoning. Women felt more responsible for the homestead and children, women were in charge of gender specific tasks like cooking and childcare which took up more time then the male specific tasks like oil changes and general repairs, men overruled their wives in deciding who did what in terms of childcare (men doing more leisure and fun things with children, while women did more “maintenance” and routine tasks with the children) and so on. All of these tasks seemed to have specific rules attached to them as to which sex is allowed to do each aspect of home life. These rules are gender roles and gender stereotypes that seem embedded in both men and women, husbands and wives, which create the traditional gender ideology typically supported by an unequal, patriarchal society.
This Hochschild article reminded me of something I read about in my HEV 411 class (Family Relations) called “The Mommy Wars”, which is the “war” between the stay at home mothers who get treated as outsiders and sometimes deemed “lazy” and the paid working mothers who are looked at as not being 100% involved in their children’s lives. I remember the article mentioned how there is no “win – win” situation for mothers in today’s society, as both sides are stigmatized.
I believe that Hochschild presents good arguments for gender inequality in the household. I would have liked to see a more solid and clear conclusion when it came to the impact of this on children and the couple themselves, as this part remained a little vague, but was touched on. I would also like to see statistics on relationships with homosexual partners to see if there is a difference in gender roles/second shifts, etc between these groups when competing genders are eliminated from the equation.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
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I personally agree that there is a lot of truth to these statistics that we listed in this article about how parenting and work is not evenly split up. I am not married, nor do I have children but I know within my own family that I was these kinds of things go on. My parents split things up pretty evenly but still my dad cleaned the garage and my mom cleaned the kitchen. My dad took us to the park and my mom gave us baths… I think its probably the same for a lot of others. My mom said at home and my dad ran a business.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think there is anything wrong with a mother working full time if both the parents feel that they are spending adequate time with their children. I think if you are the type of person either male or female that does not want to end up being the one stuck bringing up the rear end with work and kids so to speak than you need to make that clear to the other person. Today in 2009 there are more stay at home dads than there probably have ever been. I think it depends on what you as a person are comfortable with. I know that I want to have a successful job but I would rather be in the kitchen than in the garage and I would rather do laundry than mow the grass… but that’s just my opinion. Still though society as whole places these responsibilities on women whether you want them or not. In the afternoons when soap operas are on what is being advertised? Cleaning products, diapers, make-up, ect, etc, why? Because women are watching and they are the ones that clean and raise kids right? Our society also makes it really hard to have both parents work especially if they don’t fall into the middle class bracket as Hochschild mentions. Most workplaces are not very accommodating to people with families who need duel incomes. I think that if things worked here they way they do in parts of Europe as we have talked about in class where companies provide extended paid maternity leave for both parents and even forms of daycare within the workplace than a lot of these inequalities would be able to be evened out.
I personally agree with this chapter and the argument. It is so true that things are not evenly split between the two parents. I can see this in my own family. Though I grew up partly with a single mother who was a teacher and worked another job to provide everything for me and my siblings, she was both mom and dad. Then my mom got remarried but he really does not have a dad role other than providing. I can see that my mom does the mothering and takes us on trips while my dad stayed back and worked. There is still that perception that dad’s should work as much as they can and the mom to be the nurturing and house cleaner, though my mom works full time. I am starting to see a shift in what dad’s do now with my older sister’s family. She works full time with her own physical therapy business while her husband works part time as a police officer so he stays home with my nieces when they do not go to daycare, he usually baths them, he really has become a stay at home dad. I like to see the shift because I hope to have a full time job and make enough that my husband can stay home and raise our children.
ReplyDeleteSociety does not see this shift as a good thing yet. We need to do more as a society to make it acceptable. Commercials that show the dad in the kitchen and bathing the kids and also the mom playing with the kids would help make this shift more acceptable. I think a working mother should be an acceptable part of our society and to not make it seem like is something lazy. These inequalities need to become even and show that it is acceptable to be a working mother.