Social Policy: European Perspectives

Caring for our young: child care in Europe and the United States By Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel

In “Caring for our young: child care in Europe and the United States,” Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel compare the child care systems in the U.S. and Europe. Highlighting the insufficiencies of the U.S. system, they discuss the successful systems in France and Denmark and discuss the aspects of those systems that the U.S. could use in order to establish a better U.S. system. This is a necessary action in the U.S. since almost half of American three-year-olds (46%) and 64% of four-year-olds participate in daycare. However, with so many shortcoming found in the system, more than one our of eight three- to four-year-old children with employed mothers are in three or more child care arrangements and almost half participate in two or more. Clawson and Gerstel discuss the French system, called école maternelle, which is a voluntary publicly funded system that is guaranteed to every child between the ages of three and six. The same national system with the same curriculum and good quality is offered to all classes and citizens of France, all with teachers paid good wages by the national ministry. The centers are open from 8:30 t0 4:30 and offer affordable care before and after those times. Bases on a approach of early education, the centers are not considered a place for working parents with no other options. In fact, the system is so popular that almost 100% parents—employed and non-employed—enroll their three-year-olds. The centers, which are completely publicly funded, can be pricey; cost for a child in Paris was $5,500 in 1999. France funds the system by devoting 1% of its GDP on government funded early education care programs. If the U.S. spent that much on its care programs, it would be spending $100 billion a year. Currently, however, the U.S. spends less than $20 billion a year on child care programs. Other European systems, such as that in Denmark, are established on different goals than educational ones. The lead staffs in Denmark are called pedagogues rather than teachers. Though the pedagogues have the same level of education and qualifications and are paid teachers’ wages, they play a different role than the teachers in French centers. They are meant to cultivate children’s playtime and act as mediators. Care in Denmark is offered to children from birth to age three as well as from ages three to six, unlike France who only offers it to the latter age group. Because the system in France is primarily intended to educate children, it is available to all children. In Denmark, however, the system is meant to aid parents and so it is only available to children of working parents. In the U.S., the child care system operates on a mother-substitute model rather than an educational model like in France. In this model, parents choose child care when the mother cannot be there. 98 percent of child care staff are women. According to this model on which the U.S. operates, these women are meant to be substitutes to mothers and therefore have all the natural maternal feelings and capacities that a mother would have. Therefore, staff is not required to have special training and the primary measure for assessing the quality of the centers is the child-staff ratio. This, however, has proven to be a weak measure, for the European systems discusses have much higher larger child-staff ratios, yet have proven to be greater successes than the U.S. one. Furthermore, despite the importance Americans place on mother care, they have extremely weak parental leave policies. FMLA has guaranteed a 12-week job-protected leave to workers of covered employers, but despite its parading as a “gender neutral” piece of legislation, the majority of those taking leaves are women. These women endure a pay wage penalty for interrupting their careers. Sweden and Norway have confronted this problem by introducing a “use it or lose it” policy in which one of the twelve months families are given for paid leave is designated to the father and if he forfeits this month, the family loses it. Clawson and Gerstel, in discussing possible new U.S. systems, conjecture that U.S. policy makers and child care experts would be very much in favor of adapting the French system. American parents, on the other hand, would be more likely to favor the Denmark systems as most American have a strong idea of fostering and maintaining a child’s innocent childhood. Personally, I think the French system seems like the best possible solution. I do not think it would corrupt American children, as education does not need to take away childhood innocence. Rather, I think it would greatly benefit the children particularly those of low-socioeconomic classes. It would not favor any class, nor would it single out the less fortunate. The major obstacle, however, would be funding, which is inextricably connected to the obstacle of public favor.

Work-Family Policies: The United States in International Perspective By Erin L. Kelly

In the chapter “Work-Family Policies: The United States in International Perspective,” Erin Kelly reviews work-family policies and employer-based work-familu policies in the United States. She compares these policies to international ones in order to gain a better understanding of the American system. Kelly asserts that American work-family policies reflect “the liberal welfare state’s reliance on the market and its meager policies for those who do not fare well in the market system.” (118) As compared to other industrialized nations, the U.S. has much less comprehensive public policies and programs for working families. Furthermore, there is greater inequalities of access to such policies and programs in the U.S. than those other countries. Kelly begins by addressing the family leave policies, which is largely limited to the Federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). This act requires some employers to grants qualified employees 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for family members or to recover from worker’s own serious illness. However, there are many limitations to this program. To begin with, it neglects a large number of workers, most of whom are from the neediest families. Furthermore, the fact that it is unpaid means that these leaves are not an option for many families. These limitations prove that FMLA caters to middle- and upper-class workers, while remaining useless to lower-income workers. Other than FMLA, employers are required to provide disability insurance for pregrant women, which does allow them paid leaves. However, there are few efforts in the way of paid paternity leave. The family leave policies in Nordic countries, on the other hand, provide generous family leaves for both mothers and fathers, reflecting their “commitment to gender equality and to social citizenship that characterizes these countries.” (104) The policies of most of the Continental European countries provoke economic disincentive to fathers’ use of leave time, which is similar to the underlying economic logic of the U.S.. These countries, however, still provide generous maternity leave during the short-run and gender neutral, low-paid leave for longer periods. Asian countries have recently improved and expanded their family leave policies as part of an attempt to increase female employment and, in some countries, as part of improvements in their sex discrimination laws. Policies in Asia are therefore more generous now than those in the U.S. Next, Kelly addresses publicly supported child care. She says that, “the United States has a piecemeal child-care policy, with different types of government support for families at different income levels.” (105) While the federal government funds child care for low-income families through subsidies, it relies solely on tax breaks to aid the rest of the American families. The government, however, has lost more money through childcare related tac breaks than it has spent on supporting child-care programs. But supporters of the tax breaks insist that they are an unobtrusive way that works with the market for the government to aid families. These people are against child-care subsidies for low-income families as they associate them with ostracized “welfare” programs. Furthermore, the quality of child care varies dramatically from state to state as it is a state-job to regulate child-care services, and regulations. In most European countries, child care is available as a public service for children ages three and up. The government in these countries regulates childcare programs and staff is employed or licensed by the government. Furthermore, many of these countries offer a wide range of selection of child care. After comparing various countries’ policies, Kelly asserts that the U.S. provides much less support for its worker than do other countries. Even when workers to have access to work-family policies, they are hesitant to take advantage of them as they worried about negatively affecting their careers. Furthermore, because the benefits are contingent on employment, they do not provide security for working families. Kelly concludes that any change to work-family policies is unlikey to occur in the near future since the current system is beneficial to some workers, particularly more privileged and thus more powerful citizens. This was an important point that Kelly made as it showed that she is not an idealist. While many of the problems she pointed out are extremely relevant and change is necessary, I do not believe that anything substantial will happen until the policy makers and those who influence the policy makers directly experience negative effects of the current policies.

Creating Gender Egalitarian Societies: An Agenda for Reform By Janet C. Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers

In this article, Janet Gornick and Marcia Meyers attempt to explain the social and economic changes that have fueled the modern problems of work-family conflict, gender inequality, and dangers to children’s health development. In wealthy countries of the world, begin the two authors, employment of women beginning to equal that of men. Accompanying this change is the fact that the majority of children are now growing up in either single-parent families or duel income-earning families. In both cases parents must divide their time between work and caregiving. These authors acknowledge that these changes have afforded many with greater opportunity. However, the changes have also given rise to new problems such as the growing “time-poverty” problem of parents. They have also aggravated gender inequalities and led to many the placement of many children in inconsistent and poor-quality care arrangements. In addressing these changes and problems, the authors focus their analysis and policy recommendations on western, northern, and southern Europe as well as on Canada and the United States. These countries, Gornick and Meyers assert, typify the contradiction between historic gender assumption regarding caregiving and current economic demands and opportunities. Many Americans are view these problems in terms of tradeoffs among interests of women, men, and children that is fundamentally affected by women’s employment decision. The authors, however, maintain that these tradeoffs are not inexorable. Rather they attribute the source of these problems to the contemporary workplace practices and social policies who, in neglecting to respond to the changing social and economic environment, are incompatible with “our shared social interest in raising healthy children while promoting women’s full equality with men.” (114) The solution to these problems, they argue, is to rework our current social arrangements, which are based on “outdated assumptions” that the man will devote all his time to paid employment so that the women can give her time to unpaid care giving in the home. In outlining solutions, Gornick and Meyers propose “a blueprint of institutional reforms that would support gender egalitarian caregiving.” (114) In this blueprint, they assert that we must develop a “duel-earner/duel-cargiving” system on which our society would operate. Under this system, men and women would share employment and caregiving responsibilities. It would respond to the interest of everyone by providing equal employment opportunity for men and women, foster equal contribution from mothers and fathers at home, and ensure consistent high-quality care for children. In analyzing work-family policies, the authors point out that the European policies vary according to country. However, they maintain that there exists consistency across all countries policies of supporting gender equality in the workplace and at home and of making care equally available to all citizens. In applauding European policy efforts, Gornick and Meyers adapt and combine various aspects of policies from certain European countries, such as “paid family leave, regulation of working time, and early childhood education and care.” (324) The authors acknowledge how difficult it would to gain support and funding for any changes. However, they insist that the arguments for government intervention in this dimension of cargiving are very compelling since child rearing is a universal endeavor. Furthermore, though the costs of caring for a child are private, the benefits of a well-raised child are publicly reaped. I agree that the public should theoretical support such government aid. But in reality, it will be difficult to convince the public of the benefits of government intervention and increased funding since the benefits it would produce are for the most part realized in the long run. The fact that the public wouldn’t see all the effects in the immediate would probably lead to doubt.

Developing Earner-Carer Policies in the United States By Janet C. Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers

In conducting cross-national comparisons of family-work government policies, this reading asserts that government policies that support parents in their earning and caring roles are realistic. Gornick and Meyers put forth that such comparisons also expose the United States as exceptional in cross-national terms. The U.S. stands out socially for such reasons as its diversity of population, its high number of single parents, structure of labor markets, and its decentralization of policy-making authority. Furthermore, the U.S. is politically unique in relation to its European counterparts for its enthusiastic support of private market solutions and its virulent distrust of government—particularly federal government—intervention. These exceptional aspects create obstacles to government-sponsored child care in the United States. Though many European policies are successful, they all involve a lot of government intervention. This, as previously stated, arouses distrust and fear in Americans. Furthermore, its intensely racially and culturally diverse population means that America is a patchwork of differing values. With the staunch desire to retain their own values, parents are hesitant to place their children in care that would encourage opposing values. It is possible then that government instituted child care would be publicly accepted if it offered options that allowed parents to ensure that their values and needs were being met. There is also the fear such policies would lead to an increase in birthrates and a decrease in marriage rates, thus possibly increasing the number of single mothers. However, the authors point out that the contrary has occurred in European countries, which have been experiencing sometimes dangerously low birthrates. A further concern is that instituting these policies would have deleterious effects on employment and would in fact increase unemployment and thus severely harm the economy. However, there is no empirical evidence of this effect. Men and employers are two major groups from whom opposition is expected. It is believed that the former group may resent the changes in gender roles that would result from policy changes. However, many studies have shown that men would like to have more time with their children, but fear the disapproval of their workplace if they were to make such time. It is believed employers would oppose policy changes because out of fear that it would lower the productivity of their company. However, it is believed that easing the family-work conflict would make for happy employees and higher morale in the workplace. I do not think that either side presented in this article are entirely correct; they both seem to clear-cut. Those who oppose increased government intervention seem to have irrational and/or unsupported arguments. But the refutations of those arguments are based on comparison with other countries, which seems sometimes to be comparing apple and oranges. In surveying other countries’ child care systems, we cannot isolate them from the countries’ overall and general goals and values. Many of those systems seem ideal and, in just looking at them alone, seem like perfect solutions to the United State’s flawed system. However, the changes that instituting such system would require would affect the overall system the United States, which would require a reworking of American ideologies.

Social Policy in the United States

Welfare Debate: Who Pays for Procreation? By Dorothy Roberts In “Welfare Debate: Who Pays for Procreation?” Dorothy Roberts discusses the history and problems of the welfare system in America. She begins by discussing the welfare reform of 1996, which occurred under former president Bill Clinton. She says that this reform was the end of the view of welfare as charity and the beginning of the view of it as “means of modifying poor people’s behavior.” (202) She asserts that welfare reform has become the primary means of limiting fertility of Black females. In fighting to save parts of the former welfare system, Roberts tells us that people have ignored the system’s many flaws. She cites historian Linda Gordon who said that it was women reformers who established the foundation of welfare system as well as the debates regarding single motherhood that surround the system still today. However, though it was feminist who designed the system, it still failed as these feminists were conforming to the existing patriarchal family norm that established the adherence to the “family wage.” They therefore fought for a system that would allow the husband to be the breadwinner and the wife to fulfill the unpaid domestic labor at the home and thus prevented female independence. Roberts explains that another problem in the forming of our welfare system was the elitist attitude of the privileged white activists who led the welfare campaigns. They viewed welfare as a means of controlling poor urban immigrants, who activists saw as a threat to social order and the altogether neglected support for Black females. The New Deal thus “solidified welfare’s stratification along racial as well as gender lines.” (205) It wouldn’t be until the civil rights movement that Black women would obtain greater access to welfare benefits. However, Roberts insists that the new federal welfare laws threaten all the changes made during the civil rights movement and mark a turn back to the system created in the New Deal. Once again, the system is becoming a tool of social control, using federal government assistance as a means of forcing mothers to conform to familial ideals. Next, Roberts addresses the policy of “family caps,” which are aimed at limiting Black mothers’ fertility. One such policy limits or denies women further welfare support with any additional child she may have. Whereas legislators in the past made their motivations to limit Black women’s birthrate clear, Roberts explains that today family caps are not based on a view of recipients’ genetic inferiority, but they are are used as means of ridding America of the burden tat the poor impose. Roberts then spends some time debunking the various myths surrounding welfare that have been exploited by enforcing new welfare reforms. The first of these is the myth that welfare induces childbirth. Roberts says that “welfare reform measures are designed to discourage reproduction,”(218) based on the belief that welfare encourages poor women to have more children. However, Roberts asserts that there is no evidence providing a reliable correlation between welfare support and increased birthrate. Furthermore, Roberts tells us that regardless of welfare support, welfare mothers suffer a financial loss with each additional child. Child exclusion laws, therefore, only worsen the poverty for these families. The next myth Roberts refutes is one that says that welfare causes dependency on the system and fuels a cycle of poverty. This myth includes that notion that Americans would not have support poor children if the parents of those children would work. This notion stems from the idea that people rely on welfare because they lack incentive to work. However, Roberts points out that most welfare recipients work while they are on welfare. Finally, Roberts addresses the myth that marriage can end children’s poverty. Roberts maintains that America’s inadequate welfare system is a result of a “racist unwillingness to include Blacks as full citizens.” (243) She asserts that we cannot hope to end poverty by using welfare manipulation reforms. Rather moving closer to poverty’s end would require drastic economic and social changes. I liked how Roberts opened up the problem of welfare and its recipients beyond the programs themselves. It seems that all the discussion and debates surrounding welfare comforts policymakers, as they seem to provide an easy explanation and answer to poverty. But Roberts does a good job showing how this problem is a result of fundamental ideologies structuring the policies of our country and policymakers attempting to fix the problem of poverty are prisoners to such ideologies.

Emotion Work and Sex Work

‘Stepford wives’ and ‘hollow men’?

By Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden

            In “‘Stepford wives’ and ‘hollow men’?” Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden address the different kinds of emotion work men and women do in marital and couple relationships, exploring the question of how this work effects the authenticity of an individual.  The authors begin by quoting Hochschild definition of emotional work as “emotional effort made by individuals—both men and women—to ‘manage’ their feelings to bring them into line with the societal ‘feeling rules’ which prescribe how they ‘ought’ to feel in particular social situations.” (212)  They then address how various sociologists have described the emotion work of each gender. 

It is said that women work to tray to make men open up emotionally and that they are expected to nurture men and take care of their emotional needs.   They do so by perfeoming physical displays of happiness and intimacy such as smiling, laughing, hugging, kissing, and even faking orgasms.  Further, they seem to magnify their husbands importance and minimize their failures in order to build up their husbands image.  They also tend to take complete responsibility for maintaining relations with a wider network of kin and relationships.  Men, on the other hand, seem to direct their emotion work towards coping with the stresses of “being a breadwinner and in order to conform to their own ideology of masculinity. 

Duncombe and Marsden present Hochschild theory regarding the danger of behaving ‘inauthentically’ while doing emotion work.  They term her belief that there results an over-identification with the required role, “‘self-loss’ as a result of ‘deep acting’”(216).   The other result that Hochschild believes can arise is a becoming estranged and cynical, which the authors call “‘self-withdrawal’ and a refusal to do any acting at all”(216).  Next, the authors refer to the psychodynamic theory, which questions the validity of the concept of ‘authenticity’ that implies a certain ‘real’ feelings that arise from a ‘real’ self.  This theory asks whether the ‘self’ that develops from childhood and adolescent experiences is particularly authentic.  However, the authors do not believe that this theory provides a reliable structure of authentic feeling and behavior.  The, therefore, regard it as “elaborate metaphor which usefully stress that gender-stereotyped emotional differences may be ‘deeply rooted’ in childhood and adolescence, so that it is difficult for individuals to recognize consciously what they are doing and to change their behaviour by rational reflection.” (217)

The authors then refer to various attempts sociologists have made to combine the psychodynamic models and “new sociological theories of the cultural and historical variability of gender and personality,” in order to avoid gender stereotyping.  To begin with, there is the idea that the ease with which an individual is able to assume gender ideology depends on “how well it fits to the ‘self’ and ‘identity’ that have developed through the processes of socialization, development and attachment during early childhood and adolescence.” (218)  Next, there is the belief that gender is not static, rather an ongoing development that changes according to how certain actions and rationales conform to particular gender identity.  They call this latter theory “doing gender.”  According to “doing gender,” emotion work involves performing emotional skills and abilities to do emotion work in a way that conforms to the respective gender ideology.  The authors say that feelings of inauthentic behavior may arise from the inability to unite the “feeling rules of the gender ideology” with the “core self” or “core identity

In their own research, Duncombe and Marsden found that when men encountered problems in their marriage, they became aware of the pressures to change their emotional behavior. While many of the men they interviewed found that shallow emotion work helped their relationships with their wives, most of these men few felt inauthentic in doing this work.  Many women the authors interviewed had come to resent “what they had come to perceive as the unfairness and inequality of relationships where they did all the emotion work and seemed to get no direct emotional benefits in return.” (222)  Other women said that they had felt authentic about doing emotion work in the beginning, but more and more felt withdrawn from it.

I found this reading to be an almost philosophical account of the human person.  I found Hochschild’s account of authenticity to be very simplistic and general.  I do not believe that one can define “authenticity” universally.  Rather, I think authenticity is particular to each individual.  For this reason, I appreciated Duncombe and Marsden concluding remarks that in “lacking any independent guide to truly ‘authentic emotional behaviour—we have to accept that some individuals may derive their sense of authenticity from ‘core selves’ and ‘core identities’ which various other commentators might want to criticize as deeply inauthentic.” (225)

Whose Orgasm is this Anyway?

By Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden

In “Whose Orgasm is this Anyway?” Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden. explore how heterosexual couples in long-term relationships deal with the disparity between media heightened sexual expectations and their actual sex lives.  They address the concept of “sex work” in a similar way to how they addressed “emotion work.  They begin by presenting the argument of some feminists that marital sex is a form of aliented work.  While the authors approve of this perspective in so far is it successfully addresses address “the hierarchical and exploitive institutionalisation of the ‘male/female’ relationship,” they criticize it for often ignoring “the relevance of individual subjective experience of sex.”

Before presenting their own empirical findings, Duncombe and Marsden present that of others.  They begin by discussing Rubin’s large US survey and Mansfield and Collard’s study of 60 UK newly-weds, both of whiched found that while people tended to use media ideals as a measure of the state of their relationship and emotions, there is an inconsistency between that ideal and couples’ actual behavior.  Mansfield and Collard found that women in marriage encountered greater difficulty in refusing sex out of fear causing their husbands to feel rejected.  At the same time, husbands were less likely to express the emotional intimacy women required in order to experience fulfilling sex.  It seems that in the long-term, sexual activity tends to decline among married couples. 

Next Duncombe and Marsden use their own research to study the change in longer-term relationships.  According to much of the respondents, it seems that many couples are unable to recapture earlier passion and romance, but they do not know why.  Many women confessed that the had always, at some level, found their sexual relationships unfulfilling.  While in the beginning, many of these women blamed themselves, later in the relationship they often began to identify the problems as the fault of their husbands.  Men, on the other hand, who realized early problems usually blamed them on what they believed to be their wives’ low sex-drive.  The authors partly attribute the decline in sexual activity among married couples to the disruptions of work, childbirth, and family.  

Next, Duncombe and Marsden discuss the use of pornography among long-term couples.  They found that in most cases this use was intiated by men.  Many women accepted it in the early stages of their relationship, but later on many of these women rejected it as they felt a loss of intimacy or they felt less capable of allowing themselves to be sexually aroused.  Other ways couples attempted to improve their sexual activity was through experimentation.  Some men urged their wives to give them oral sex.  Some women flat out refused while others fulfilled their husbands’ request and some women even experienced a sense of power in doing so.  Many of these husbands turned to more frequent masturbation in order to avoid coercing their wives and thus a sense of guilt.  Women also turned to masturbation, but usually preferred to do so alone out of shyness and fear that their husbands would be insulted.  Rather than continuing to practice unfulfilling sex, some couples negotiated arranged period of celibacy, but their was usually resentment that followed this negotiation as it was most often initiated by one person.  However, Duncombe and Marsden point out that “in all these instances where couples had come to some kind of negotiated stand-off arrangements about sex, there was the ever-present danger that the marriage would be destabilized by one partmer becoming involved in a passion that would highlight the inadequacies of the marriage.” (233)

I do not know what to think after reading this.  I don’t know if there is such thing as “authentic” sex.  The optimist in me does believe in a romantic and passionate ideal of spontaneous sex.  But then even if this does exist for how long can it exist with the same partner? Duncombe and Marsden conclude with similar uncertainties; while this makes me value and respect their article more, it also leaves me a bit disappointed. 

Sex Work for the Middle Classes

By Elizabeth Bernstein

In “Sex Work for the Middle Classes,” Elizabeth Bernstein examines the phenomenon of the growing number of middle-class women participating in sex work.  She begins by addressing the economic considerations of such work, which she asserts are still significant today in middle-class sex workers’ erotic and professional decision-making.  This is true because of gendered inequality within the high technology sector, well-paid, part-time work was difficult for many women to find even during the zenith of the internet economy.  The relatively high pay of the sex industry as compared to other service sector jobs was enough to attract some women from middle-class backgrounds.  While this basic economic account is valid, Bernstein says that there are nonmaterial reasons too based on acknowledging the middle class as petit bourgeoisie who “seeks its occupational and personal salvation (and thus its sense of distinction) via an ethic of ‘fun.’”(477) Bernstein, therefore, argues that we cannot only study the middle-class sex workers’ pursuit of an ethic of sexual experimentation and freedom in ideological terms, but we must also study it as a means to obtaining class distinction.

            In her research, Bernstein found that the goal of most middle-class sex workers is eventually obtain professional autonomy.  She found that women working with third-party management tended to remove themselves from situations that promoted a purely instrumentalist relationship to the labor.  The internet, in reconfiguring the structure of sexual commerce, has benefited many middle-class sex workers, assisting them in realizing their goals.  To begin with, the internet has broadened their clientele.  It has also made it ever more possible for women able to combine technical expertise with sex work to operate without third-party assistance.

            Bernstein says that this new paradigm of middle-class sex work that has evolved in this modern, technological age, involves, within the commercial context, a greater amount of emotional and physical labor of what is bought and sold.   Within this context, an important emotional boundary for both the worker and the client is established through successful commercial transactions.  This boundary, however, is one that can be lessened in order to establish the clients’ desired authentic interpersonal connection.  Additionally, it is important to many sex workers that their labor be meaningful to themselves, not just to their clients. 

            I thought it was very interesting how Bernstein discussed the emotions and authenticity of sex work.  I wondered if this is the same sort of passions that arise in other, non-sex related jobs.  Though her article did seem to be very biased towards middle-class sex work.  All the women she interviewed were ones whom were in favor of and having positive experiences with sex work.  I believe that Bernstein successfully painted a economic and professional picture of sex work, which I cannot decide is good or bad.

 Whats Wrong with Prostitution?

By Elizabeth Bernstein

            In “Whats Wrong with Prostitution?” Elizabeth Bernstein attempts to construct an adequate theory of prostitution, which accounts for culture, context, history, race, and class.  She bases her own input on eighteen months of fieldwork and interviews she did among San Francisco Prostitutes.  She reviews recent feminist literature, classifying them into three main categories: (1) radical feminist critique; (2) pro-sex feminist defenses of prostitution; and (3) contextualized feminist approaches to various aspects of the sex-work industry. 

            In the radical feminist critique, prostitution is usually deeply criticized.  This critique says that the sexual objectification of women within this occupation makes it uncomporable with other, traditional wage labor.  Furthermore, women gain now empowerment from sex work.  Rather they become subordinate objects to men, paying for the service, who gain power in such transactions.  However, pro-sex feminist argue that women, in fact, gain power through sex work since it allows them to freely express their sexuality and in doing this work, they deny traditional gender expecations. Contextualized feminist approaches focus on prostitution as a last resort, pursued by women who are left with no other option. 

            Next Bernstein addresses the different classes of women sex workers, which establishes a hierarchical structure in this sphere.  She explains that class, which is determined according to race and appearance, assigns the type of work a sex worker finds, who a sex worker work for, and how much she gets paid.  High-class sex workers are unique in that they get paid more than they would in any other profession they could pursue.  These women generally encounter little legal trouble for work and express greater feelings of security than sex workers of other classes.  The lower the class a sex worker belongs to, the more dangerous becomes her job as the worse the area in which they work become and the lower the pay becomes.  Low-class sex workers are more likely to be as young as teenagers. 

            Bernstein spends sometime focusing on COYOTE, which stands for Call Off Your Tired Ethics.  Founded in San Francisco, COYOTE is a national prostitutes’ rights organization which works towards legitimizing the profession of sex work.  The group consists does not claim to represent streetwalkers and in fact disregard it as appropriate.  The group is more made up of college graduates or highly educated women who willfully chose this occupation and lifestyle.  Those involved in the group deny the term “prostitution,” replacing it with “sex work,” as they maintain that the former term carries negative connotations, with which they are trying to do away 

 

 

 

 

Paid Carework

The “Nanny” Question in Feminism By Joan Tronto

In “The ‘Nanny’ Question in Feminism,” author Joan Tronto addresses the morality and practices of upper-class and upper middle-class men and women who are raising children in two-career households. These households are unique among dual-income households because both professionals in the household have professional jobs in which time demands are excessive and unpredictable. Tronto explains that the two-career households, and others similarly situated, are more likely to use a paid full-time domestic caretaker who either lives in the household or does not. Tronto asserts that these particular families, though of narrow demographic focus, are important for two reasons. Firstly, they are the first families to benefit from the end of the gender-caste barriers. Secondly, their standards for intensive mothering reflect a broader ideology. Tronto discusses the moral uniqueness that exists among the use of domestic servants. The relationship within the household is much more intimate than that in other markets and so hired workers in the household take on a quasi-family member role in which they are involved in all the details of the lives of the families they serve. Tronto begins by giving the workers’ perspective. She cites Hondagneu-Sotelo who reported that job offers of $150 per week for a live-in worker are not unusual in Los Angeles. She estimates that live-in domestic workers earn less than minimum wage and work an average of sixty-four hours each week. Live-out nannies she surveyed averaged $5.90 an hour for approximately forty to forty-five hours each week. Tronto quotes Diemut Bubeck who wrote that "the exploitative mechanism, is the social institution of the sexual division of labor which constructs women as carers and thus systematically 'extracts surplus labor' in the form of unpaid care from them (to hearken back to Marx's definition of exploitation)" (1995, 181). This is especially true for domestic workers. It is hard for these workers to fight back since there work creates a bond between them and their charges. Tronto says this can have several effects on the children. It is possible that they could come to regard all people, regardless of their connection to them, as a means to an end, rather than ends in themselves. Furthermore, because race and ethnicity usually distinguish the employers and the workers, children cared for by domestic servants are being more completely absorbed in a racist culture. But parents, according to Tronto give man justifications for using domestic servants. The well-off women who hire domestic servants believe that they are acting in the best interests of their children. For the upper middle-class, "good mothering" is inevitably tied to children's success in the context of a highly competitive capitalist environment. Tronto ends with advocating for actions to be taken in order to improve working conditions of these workers. According to her, this includes enforcing labor laws that already exist as well as including laws for minimum wages and social security benefits. I think this was a very informative and detailed essay. I don’t like how Tronto seems to demonize the use of domestic workers altogether. However, I completely agree with her that laws need to be more closely observed for the protection of these workers as well as new laws created. Otherwise, I do not agree with Tronto that the children taken care of by domestic workers are more immersed in a racist culture. Rather, I believe being raised by a domestic worker of a different ethnicity or race can positively introduce the child to another race. However, this does have to do with the child and with the way in which the child’s parents treat the worker.

The Place of Caregiving Work in Contemporary Societies By Deanne Bonnar

In “The Place of Caregiving Work in Contemporary Societies,” author Deanne Bonnar discusses the problem of caregiving being pushed to the margins of importance. She says that this has occurred out of the development of the industrialization and wage economy, which values work according to the production and servicing of goods. She also attributes this problem to the early stages of feminist theory, which held that activity in the domestic sphere is less important than activity in the public arena. Bonnar explains that reproduction and care of people has been traditionally female activity in most societies. As such, for the most part, particularly in Eurocentric cultures, care for people has been looked upon as love, duty, or biological destiny and rarely as work. Women, therefore, have rarely been entitled to direct access of economic resources. Socialists and feminists are the only two groups that have addressed this issue up until recently. However, both groups have ignored or devalue the work done in the domestic sphere. According to Bonnar’s account of early feminist theory, it was believed housework would be collectivized or purchased on the market and it would eventually disappear. In reality, it has not disappeared, but rather women are now burdened with dual workloads. This has caused feminists to turn their attentions to household work. This means looking at housework in a new light. Bonnar discusses the problem that homemaking has been narrowly described for its physical roles. “Thus, one sees “cook” listed repeatedly in studies,” says Bonnar, “but rarely “judge,” “negotiator,” “family historian,” “accountant,” “philosopher,” lobbyist,” “lawyer,” “spiritual guide,” “policewoman,” “healer,” or even “counselor.” While housework refers to the care of goods, caregiving for humans is a much more arduous and intellectually consuming job. The market has had a hard time reproducing care of people, because this care is not equivalent to production of goods. Bonnar says that understanding the amount of thought that is involved in parenting and other caregiving activities important for four reasons. Firstly, the familiarity of these activities gives us the illusion that we understand them, though in reality we rarely have a conceptual intelligibility. Secondly, this lack of clarity leads people to assume that the market can easily reproduce these tasks, which would easily end the inequalities existing between men and women. Thirdly, because of the responsibility involved in caregiving, women have limited career choices. Finally, ignoring the requirements of caregiving has allowed it to be labeled simply as “housework.” It is thus not deemed as important enough to be accommodated for with the market and corporate policy development has focused attention only on paid employment and not personal caregiving. Bonnar outlines possible steps that can be taken to overcome this problem. she begins by discussing the modification of the time dilemma. A “system of guaranteed parental leave,” maintains Bonnar, “that permits extended care after birth and occasional leave for childhood emergencies. ” (Bonnar 1990). She also advocates the expansion of flextime arrangements, pointing to Sweden and Israel who have proposed shortening workdays. Next Bonnar discusses the modification of the wage variable. She argues that we need a model that starts with a flat rate and adds increments according to intensity of care, amount of time required for care, the number of people being cared for, and whether or not the caregiver is the household’s only earner. Some feminist have objected to waging caregivers, arguing that it would reinforce women’s traditional roles and intensify isolation that women experience in partaking in domestic sphere. However, Bonnar asserts that could actually increase women’s “mobility, their identifications as a class of workers, their interest in unionization, and their political position.” (Bonnar 8). “The waging of caring work is not ‘buying love,’” Bonnar says, “but buying the circumstances of life that make love possible.”

Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence By Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo

In the two chapters from Doméstica that we read, author Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo addresses the domestic work in the United States ad the immigrant population that does this work. She attributes the growth of domestic work, which she limits to nanny and housekeeper work, to the increased employment of women in the U.S. With the negative feelings many middle-class Americans hold for day-care centers, they prefer to have private caregivers in the home. The use of private caregivers gives parents a feeling of control and flexibility. Furthermore, they may believe that their children receive more attention this way. With such phenomena, many immigrants, particularly Latinos, have immigrated to the United States in order to find paid domestic work. The domestic work that Hondagneu-Sotelo discusses is work that is seen as women’s work, which would be done out of biological instinct and love. This belief justifies for many the low pay these domestic workers receive. Furthermore, domestic work carries a stigma of low-status, which further justifies low wages. Whereas in the past Black women had done this work, today it is largely completed by foreign-born Latinas. The legal status of many of these women leads to their increased exploitation, since they are at the whims of their employers. Their legal status also seems to validate their “social, economic, an political subordination” (18). Hondagneu-Sotelo addressed three types of domestic paid care work. The first is live-in nanny positions. This type of work seems to lead to the greatest feelings alienation and exploitation on the part of the workers. It prevents them from forming their own families and confines them almost entirely to their work. The second type of domestic work discussed in this reading is the live-out nanny. These workers tend to make more money on average per hour than do live-in nannies. In fact, they have reported a better situation overall and expressed greater satisfaction than the latter workers. The last type of domestic workers that Hondagneu-Sotelo explores is the housecleaner. These workers, Hondagneu-Sotelo asserts, make the most money out of the three types of domestic workers. They tend to report the greatest satisfaction among these domestic workers. Parts of this is do to the fact that they have the most freedom and are generally not confined to one employer. This was a very important reading. Hondagneu-Sotelo addressed a group of people that goes ignored by most of the public. In America we are all about bettering the workplace for Americans and ending inequalities between genders, but we ignore this vast group of marginalized immigrants. Most of America were immigrants at one point, immigrants are Americans and so to ignore the plight of the most recent immigrants is to ignore the foundation of America.

Extended Kin Ties

Using Kin for Child Care: Embedment in the Socioeconomic Networks of Extended Families

By Lynet Uttal

This article examines the differences among the childcare employed by Mexican American, African Americans, and whites.  It focuses heavily on each racial group’s uses and views of childcare by relatives.  The author begins by discussing the declining use of relative childcare by employed mothers.  This type of childcare has declined by about fifty percent since 1958.  On the other side, use of daycare homes and childcare centers as a means of childcare for young children has more than tripled.  Still, the author explains that relative childcare is more widely employed among minority families than it is among White families. 

            There are many explanations for these differences, but Uttal discusses the three major ones: (1) the cultural explanation, (2) the structural explanation, and (3) integrative explanation.  The second explanation, which says that the type of childcare used is decided for economic reasons, criticizes the first one, arguing that it fails to recognize that cultural practices may be responses to structural conditions rather than differences in cultural values.  The last of the three explanations is a combination of the former two.  It criticizes both explanations for being overly simplistic, arguing that the differences arise from an intersection of both cultural and structural situations.

Division of Unpaid Labor

Joey’s Problem: Nancy and Evan Holt

By Arlie Russell Hochschild

            In “Joey’s Problem: Nancy and Evan Holt,” Arlie Hochschild discusses the marital dynamic between the Holt couple.  Throughout the whole account, Nancy describes herself as a feminist.  As the marriage progresses, the author witnesses growing conflict that she realizes is the result of “a conflict between their two gender ideologies.” (39).  Hochschild then sees how they come to resolve their conflict.

Upon entering her marriage, Nancy’s goal was always to maintain equality between her and her husband, both in the house and at work.  However, she experiences mounting passive resistance from Evan, her husband, to sharing in the household tasks.  Hochschild explains how their respective gender ideologies are a result of their respective early experiences.  Nancy had a mother who Nancy perceived as a depressed housewife and Nancy’s life goal was to avoid becoming that.  So Nancy developed a career about which she was very passionate.  Evan respected his wife’s passion for her career, but he did not understand how her own decision meant that he had to change his own life.  As conflict between the couple continued to mount, separation arose as a possibility.  While this idea frightened both husband and wife, it scared Nancy more.  And so it was Nancy who took initiative to change.

Nancy explains to the author that they have developed an “upstairs-downstairs agreement,” in which Nancy takes care of the house, the child, and the cooking and Evan takes responsibility for the garage and the dog.  Hochschild explains the process Nancy underwent in order to “bring herself to believe the myth that the upstairs-downstairs division of housework was fair.” (46).  One way in which she did this was to stop comparing herself to her husband and rather, and instead she began comparing women to women and men to men.  Also, she focused on the advantages of what giving in to her husband provided.  She spoke of the house as hers and Joey as her child.  Further, she began to attribute the division of housework responsibility as a result of Evan’s and her differing personalities.  He was lazy both Evan and Nancy explained, while Nancy was organized and energetic.

I found this reading to be very frustrating.  It made me feel a certain hopelessness, like it is not possible to change our situation, but rather we can only change ourselves.  Further, it upset me to think about the delusions of which we convince ourselves in order to reconcile our beliefs with our actions or way of life.  

Domesticity and the Political Economy of Lesbigay Families

By Christopher Carrington

In “Domesticity and the Political Economy of Lesbigay Families,” Christopher Carrington investigates the lives of 52 lesbian and gay families.  From his investigation, he provides an account of the egalitarian myths many of these couples believe and the ways these couples actually divide work.  In his work with these couples, Carrington found that perceptions of egalitarianism continue among most of these couples, despite evidence that often points to the contrary.  One reason these couples maintain these perceptions are to portray a positive image of lesbigay families to the public.  Another reason is that domesticity is often invisible, thus the division of it is invisible.

            Most lesbigay families do exhibit a division of domesticity that heavily favors one individual.  However, according to Carrington, “a minority of lesbigay families do achieve a rough equivalence in the distribution of domestic work.”  Among wealthier lesbigay families, this equal division is achieved through the purchase of domesticity on the market place.  Thus these families rely on the labors of mostly working-poor people.  Other than the wealthiest of couples that Carrington followed, he found the egalitarian system to be stronger among couples in which, regardless of gender, both partners work in traditionally female-identified professional occupations.  Carrington believes that this is because these jobs have more family-friendly policies which allow the workers to devote more time to family work.  However, the downsides to these jobs are that they provide lower wages, less room for promotion, and less control over the matters of one’s work.  Finally, Carrington found this egalitarian pattern to be prevalent among families that he describes as a part of the “the downsized family.”  These families are usually composed of male couples, often living in urban environments.  They are mostly in their late twenties and early thirties and in their first committed relationship.  They achieve the system by living cheaply, doing little consumption work and sharing their living space with other people. 

However, Carrington found that in among longer-term families, a pattern of specialization usually emerges, in which one member of the couple focuses on domesticity, while the other focuses on paid work.  Carrington explains that “paid employment exerts the greatest influence upon the division of domesticity in most lesbigay families.”  He adds that it is usually the partner with less earning potential or less occupational prestige who ends up specializing in domestic labor.  Carrington believes that the families who establish this pattern do so in order to maximize both income and domesticity so that they may reap the greatest quality from the household lives. 

Carrington then explains that while few individuals choose to become more involved in domesticity, some actually do make the conscious choice.  Some of the reasons listed for making such a decision were a growing detachment from paid work, concern about saving troubled relationship, and simply a love for domestic life.  Overall, those individuals who gravitate towards domesticity do share common socioeconomic traits.  For the most part their partners earn, have greater career opportunities, and have a more demanding job than they do.  Carrington concludes that not all families are able to pursue a domestic life.  This is one of the many dilemmas of domesticities, dilemmas that Carrington maintains to be one of the reasons many lesbigay relationships do not survive.

Autonomy, Dependence, or Display?

The Relationship between Married Women's Earnings and Housework

By Sanjiv Gupta

In this article, Gupta discusses the relationship between women’s earnings and their time spent on household chores.  He begins reviewing the two dominant theoretical models of the relationship between women’s earnings and their housework.  These are the economic dependence hypothesis and the gender display hypothesis. The dependence theory responded to the latter descriptions by attributing the gender gap in housework to women’s economic dependence on their husband.  This explanation relies on the fact that women’s earnings are usually lower than that of their husband’s.  The display theory gives an inverse relationship than that of the previous theory.  It says that women who earn more than other women contribute a greater amount to housework in order to assert “their gender identities in the face of their gender-atypical relative incomes.” (400) 

Both theories, Gupta explains, arose in response to the functionalist and “new home economies” descriptions of the dynamics of heterosexual households.  In these descriptions, men and women are describes as joint agents, working together in order to achieve common goals.  They do so, according to these accounts, by developing specialization patterns whereby one group dedicates their efforts in the labor market and the other focuses on the domestic sphere.  The division occurs in these patterns according to each partner’s “respective skills, productivity, and the actual or expected rewards for time spent on particular activities.”  The accounts explained that men, who usually have higher earnings relative to women, gravitate towards paid work.  Where as women, who are generally better at domestic labor, tend to focus their efforts in the domestic sphere.

Gupta, identifies several problems with these theories.  To begin with, both theories rest on studies that only focused on women’s earnings relative to that of their husbands.  They, therefore, ignore the possibility of a relationship between women’s housework and their absolute earnings, separate from that of their husbands.  Gupta explains that it is necessary o study the latter possibility as recent studies have found that women with low earnings tend to have higher relative earnings—earnings compared to that of their husband’s—than other married women.  The dependence and display theories, with their narrow range of focus, do not provide an explanation for this phenomenon.

            Like the latter two theories, Gupta emphasizes the fundamentally gendered nature of housework in his studies.  However, he does not confine his studies to women’s relative earnings.  From his modified studies, he found that as women’s earnings increased between 1965 and 1995, their time spent of housework declined.  This finding does point to a correlation between women’s earnings and their time spent on housework.  However, he also found that effects of women’s absolute earnings on housework similar among married and single women, which supports his perceived need to study women’s earnings as autonomous from that of their husband’s.  Gupta maintains that we cannot determine the system by which women’s earnings result in their level of housework efforts.  He does, however, present “the use of their own earnings to substitute for domestic labor, bargaining over its allocation, and the practice of gender display,” (414) are three possible means for this.  Gupta asserts that in order to better understand the relationship between women’s earnings and their time spent on housework, we must investigate the relationship between potential, not just actual, earnings of women and their time spent on housework.  

 

 

The Time Bind

Overworked Individuals or Overworked Families?: Explianing Trends in Work, Leisure, and Family Time

by Jerry Jacobs and Kathleen Gerson

 

In this article Jacobs and Gerson address the debate concerning the rise in working versus leisure time.  They argue that the debate is incomplete, as the analyses of trends of working time have focused almost exclusively on the individual worker.  This would be sufficient if the increasing anxiety over balancing work and family was entirely a result of changes in the length of the workweek.  However, Jacobs and Gerson argue that it is a result of shifts in greater social trends, which can be condensed to the shift from the male-breadwinner system to dual-earner couples and single-parent households.  They therefore focus on the collective work schedule of the family as a whole.  They draw their findings from a survey of dual-earner couples and single parents in 1970 and in 1997.

            Jacobs and Gerson begin by presenting two theses.  The first maintains that Americans today are working more hours than their predecessors.  The second thesis claims that Americans today are actually logging more leisure hours than workers in previous times.  After criticizing the quality of data and conclusions of these theses, Jacobs and Gerson argue that both theses are vaguely accurate.  They agree that there is the “growing sense that family’s are squeezed for time.”  However, in their investigation, Jacobs and Gerson found only a minor increase in hours worked among individuals.  They found that the overall increase in hours worked was therefore insignificant.  Rather, they insist that this phenomenon is a result of a “decline in support at home rather than an increase in working time.”  This is a result of the evolving family structures and gender relations. 

            Jacobs and Gerson then go on to discuss the perceived increase in leisure time.  They attribute this trend to several previously ignored social trends.  Over the years more students are choosing to remain students for a longer period of time.  On the other end of the age spectrum, men these days are retiring earlier.  Furthermore, Jacobs and Gerson explain that “over the past 30 years, the average age of marriage has increased, the age at first birth of children has increased, and the number of children per household has declined.  All these demographic trends give people more leisure time without reducing their time on the job.”

            I found this article extremely informative.  It reminded me how easily data can be manipulated to support a certain conclusion.  Jacobs and Gerson did a really good job of taking apart such data.  They introduced and supported their own findings with strong research and appropriate attention to context.  Additionally, I liked how they pointed out the fallibility we encounter in only studying the individual.  The individual does not exist in a its indivual framework; the individual exists in many frameworks.  We, therefore, cannot debate or analyze the family—one primary frameworks in which the individual exists—by referring to the individual alone and by ignoring the family.

The Career Mystique

By Phyllis Moen

In this article, Phyllis Moen and Patricia Roehling address Betty Friedan’s concept of the feminine mystique in the context of their own concept of the “career mystique.  The feminine mystique presents the ideal wife as one who devotes her efforts to domestic upkeep.  The career mystique establishes the image of the ideal worker—usually seen as the husband—as one who devotes his “prime” adult years to his work, under the assumption that he will gain promotion and seniority.  Moen and Roehling discuss how these two mystiques promote and feed each other.  In their discussion, they sculpt their conclusion, which maintains the impracticality of the career mystique

            Moen and Roehling explain that fulfilling the image that the career mystique paints was only ever possible for a select few as it was economically unfeasible for most.  However, today it is even more unrealistic.  To begin with, in todays unstable economy, there is little assurance of job security regardless of how hard one works.  There is a greater risk of layoff accompanied by greater workload and fewer benefits available.  Furthermore, the age of retirement has greatly decreased even though the average lifespan has greatly increased.  With these phenomenons along with the rising price of college and graduate school, people are required to work harder in order to maintain the lifestyle of the their predecessors. 

            Previously, when there was less pressure on the worker, the feminine mystique was supported the career mystique, as it provided an environment in which husbands were able to devote all their time to work.  However, today, when there is greater pressure on the worker, the feminine mystique has undergone a fast process of deterioration as more and more women, who overwhelmingly include mothers, enter the workforce.  There have been no indications or burgeoning signs of a decline in the career mystique and so both women and men are struggling to conform to its ideals.  This has left the domestic sphere unsupported as women struggle to meet the expectations of their bosses.  Companies claim to have made efforts to aid this family struggle.  However, as Moen and Roehling point out, in reality these effort do not support the family system so much as they do the work system. 

            One cannot deny the struggle parents are increasingly facing in trying to balance work and family.  For the most part the debate on how to solve this problem focuses on how to do so in the context of our current social system.  Moen and Roehling assert that such solutions are insufficient.  According to them, we must not work for change with in the current system of the career mystique, but rather we should work to change that system.  I think this is really insightful.  It is so easy to see the problems a system creates and to focus energy on fixing those problems.  However, we are so often blind to the system itself that is creating these problems, that is the problem.   

The Time Bind

By Arlie Hochschild

In chapters 14 and 15 of her book The Time Bind, Arlie Hochschild examines the relationship of workers to their jobs.  She does so by exploring the different types of workers in relation to the different types of family-work models.  She establishes the workers situation as a result of their pre-existing environment as well as of their own choices.

According to Hochschild, the first type of family-work model is the “haven model,” in which the worker finds his or her job unpleasant and considers his or her family to be a haven.  This model usually consists of workers of low occuputational levels, such as factory hands.  The second model is the “traditional family model,” in which the work sphere and the family sphere are divided according to gender.  Those partaking in this model “make pleasurable ‘homes’ for themselves at an office to which they devote most of their waking hours, while their real homes become like summer cottage retreats” (202).  Hochschild presents a third model she calls “no-job, weak-family” model, which consists of poor people who cannot find jobs and identify their family as the source of their need to find a job.  The prevalence of this model depends on the economic situtation of the time.  The former two however, particularly, particularly the second one, are in decline as a new model seems to be emerging.  Hochschild calls this model the “work-family balance” model and identifies it as a reversal model in which home is becoming work and work is becoming home.

In this shift, parents are devoting greater amounts of energy to work, while establishing a “cult of efficiency” in the home.  Hochschild acknowledges that it is monetary necessity and the fear of losing ones job as a result of this necessity that keeps people conforming with growing norms.  However, she insists that it is people’s personal choice that keeps them in the workplace.  Hochschild attributes this widespread personal choice to the fact that workers often feel more comfortable in the work place than at home.  Many workers say this is because they feel that emotional support is more available at work than at home.  Hochschild stresses the value that work assigns a worker as the reason for the comfort the workplace provides.  Work in the workplace is more widely acknowledged and rewarded than is work in the home.  People are more visibly and immediately commended in the workplace than in the home and they therefore may feel more appreciated, competent, and valuable in the workplace than in the home.

In chapter 15, Hochschild identifies the ways in which parents—particularly mothers—establish their work-family relations.  Since parents are less willing to compromise their work life for their family life, more and more they are choosing to hire outside workers to complete the domestic duties, such as housekeepers to tend to the cleaning and nannies or daycare to tend to the children.   

Maternal Employment and Time With Children: Dramatic Change of Surprising Continuity?

By Suzanne M. Bianchi

 

            In this article, Bianchi addresses the impact that the phenomenon of the working mother has on the children.  She argues that women’s increased participation in the workplace has not reduced their time spent with their children.  Furthermore, she insists that children of working mothers do not experience negative effects. 

            According to Bianchi, the argument that children of working mothers experience less care is based on several flawed assumptions.  The first of these assumptions is one that overestimates the amount of time non-working mothers spend with their children.  These mothers do not allocate all the hours to her children that a working mother devotes to work in the workplace.  Rather, stay-at-home mothers devote much of this extra time to domestic chores such as cleaning.  Bianchi explains that working mothers report less time spent on themselves, i.e. less sleep, less leisure time, and less time given to personal care.  However, Bianchi also claims that these women guard their time spent with their children as it is more confined and do not fill it with other activities.

            Bianchi identifies two other rising trends that counteract any negative effects children might endure from having a working mother.  The first is one of fathers’ increased participation in child rearing.  The second is the increased emphasis of and subsequent participation of children in pre-school, summer camp, after-school programs, and other such programs.  These programs make children less available to their parents and while they allow parents to focus to more time to work, they also provide children with enriching educational experiences.

   

Childhood

Children’s Share in Household Tasks 

By Goldscheider and Waite

In Children’s Share in Household Tasks, Goldscheider and Waite investigate the role of children in the home, focusing on how much they participate in household work and on the nature of their participation.  The authors describe how current definition of childhood is one that stresses the need for a child’s preparation for adult roles in the workplace rather than at home.  Children therefore take little responsibility in household work.  In order to better understand the role of children in the home, Goldscheider and Waite examine the results from their study, National Longitudinal Studies (NLS) of Young Women and Mature Women.  In this study, women answered a variety of questions about household chores.  Overall, the study indicated that children contribute about 15 percent of the share of household work.  However, the participation of children in household work varies according to the family structure, type of task, and age and gender of the child

In two-parent household, Goldscheider and Waite found that teenage children partake in a greater amount of household work than do younger children.  Further, the study showed that females contribute an overwhelmingly greater amount than do their male counterparts.  In fact, according to the study, Girls between the ages of 12 and 18 do the greatest share of work among children.  Upon further investigation, Goldscheider and Waite found that girls generally take part in such household tasks as cooking and cleaning, while boys are more likely to contribute to yard work.  When asked why parents assign “chores” to their kids, the overwhelming response was in order for their children to develop a sense of responsibility. 

Goldscheider and Waite found very different responses among single-mother homes.  In these families, all members are expected to contribute a greater amount.  Boys, in particular, contribute a greater amount.  This is partly because these boys often take on the roles of the absent father.  But this phenomenon is also due to the fact that in these families, the allocation of the tasks is less gender-specific. 

            I found this reading very relevant.  While I have always been exposed to the division of household tasks according to gender, I had never been aware of it.  Because of my own experience, I have always thought of fathers and children as useless around the house. 

Children’s Perspective

By Ellen Galinsky 

In Children’s Perspective, Ellen Galinsky confronts the issues of work and family through the lens of her Ask the Children study, which provides data from employed parents and children.  In studying this data, Galinsky found disparity between public opinion and research findings.  There our four debates that, according to Galnisky, expose this disparity.

            The first of these debates is based on the question of whether it bad for a child to have an employed mother.  Galinsky found that 76% of employed parents are do not think that an emplyed mother is deleterious to a child’s development.  Most of the 24% who disagreed with the majority were fathers.  The data revealed a greater opposition of mother employment among families in which the wife was not employed, which implies that people are more likely to support their situation.  While the parents of this study contributed passionate and divergent responses regarding this issue, there was relative uniformity of answers among children with employed- and unemployed-mothers.  Galinsky concludes that a children are more likely to be attached to their mothers according to how warm and responsive their mothers are, not according to their mothers’ employment statuses. 

            Galinsky then turns the attention to fathers.  The effects of employed fathers on their children are rarely debated.  Rather, the concern focuses on the negative effects of unemployed fathers.  According to Galinsky, this is due to society’s gender expectations, which demand economic responsibility of fathers.  Just like her conclusion of employed mothers, Galinsky maintains that it is not so much the father’s status of employment that matters as it is his attention to his children. 

Next Galinsky addresses the heated debate about childcare.  Is it good or bad for children’s development? According to Galinsky, childcare is often bad for children, but it is not because it displaces parental care.  Rather, it is bad for children if the care is of low quality.  It is the wuality of the childcare that determines the nature of its impact and Galinsky believes that it is in society’s power to establish good quality childcare.

            Finally, Galinsky discusses the debate of quality versus quantity.  According to the children in the study, they do not yearn for more time with their parents.  Rather, the wish that their parents were not so stressed and exhausted.  It is therefore the quality of time the parents spend with their children that matters.

            Adding children’s perspectives to the work and family debates added a very personal and innocent angle to the debates.  On the one hand, I was weary to accept some of the responses, as I did not feel that children could objectively assess their situation.  But then, on the other hand, I guess no one can provide objectivity about his or her situations.  

Fathering

Lost Fathers

In “Lost Fathers: The Politics of Fatherlessness in America,” Cynthia R. Daniels examines the roles Black fathers play in the sponsorship of marital fatherhood as the solution for children’s well being.  Daniels maintains that fatherlessness in America is identified as a Black trait and seen as a Black problem.  She points out that unwed White mothers are seen as a cultural or racial defect and they are shamed.  Black unwed mothers, on the other hand, are defined as a major social problem and the are blamed rather than shamed.  “Black fatherlessness,” Daniels says, “is understood as a symptom of rebellious Black mothering, a symptom that dooms Black people to ruin” (Daniels 148).  But according to Daniels the high occurrence of fatherlessness in the Black community is partly the result of different notions of child rearing.  Black women have a distinct idea of motherhood that consists of sharing the responsibilities of child rearing with other women in the community.  Furthermore, “many presumably ‘absent’ Black fathers actually play a important role in child rearing” (Daniels 153).  Therefore the condemnation many Black fathers have received comes not from his under involvement with his children, but rather from his marital and economic status. 

            However, society continues to associate fatherlessness with the Black community because it is an easy explanation for Black people’s problems.  “Curing” fatherlessness, therefore, would an easy fix to their problem.  Daniels criticizes such policies as welfare and child support laws who maintain that goal.  She insists that “racial inequality—not fatherlessness—is the leading cause of Black children’s deprivation” (Daniels 157) and that “we cannot begin to judge Black fathers until we address the institutional forces that keep marriage a patriarchal system, devalue the work of child rearing, and deprive families of the social resources necessary to raise healthy children” (Daniels 158).

            At one point in this reading, Daniels tells us where the belief about the degenerate Black family as being the cause of Black people’s poverty comes from.  That information made me realize how much that belief, as ashamed as I am to admit it, has been ingrained in my own belief system.  Daniels made me realize that such a complex problem as poverty cannot be explained by such a simple situation as an “absent” father.  Further I believe he successfully conveyed the problem of broad cultural definitions of such personal things as family and parenthood.

Having It All: The Mother and Mr. Mom

In her book “Having it all: The Mother and Mr. Mom,” Francine Deutsch examines alternating-shift couple.  This group is comprised of blue-collar families in which the husbands and the wives work different shifts so as to share the responsibilities of caring for their children.  Deutsch identified two reasons for why these couples choose to alternate shifts.  The first was the issue of money.  since alternating shifters tend to have lower incomes, the shifts are necessary to the families’ economic wellbeing.  The second reason was the belief that family is the only group that should be taking care of children.  Deutsch identified a fear among these working-class couples that day care would stifle their ability to influence their kids with their own values.

Deutsch found that when middle-class families rejected day care, the mothers usually stayed home in order to ensure child care.  When working-class families rejected day care, however, the solution was for the father to forgo work time for the family.  This difference did not arise because working-class parents are revolting againt gender identities.  Rather, Deutsch that these blue-collar men still feel compelled to embody their traditional gender roles.  They still consider the domestic work they have taken on as women’s work, but they have accepted the work out of economic necessity.  The women from families also have not consciously separated themselves from their gender identities.  In fact Deutsch tells us that among these alternating-shifts families, the women are still seen as the primary caregivers. 

I thought it was really interesting that these alternating-shifts families established their family pattern according to traditional gender identities.  However, these very patterns ended up defying such identities.  I think the egalitarianism of these couples is truly impressive and I believe that families across all social classes would be better off adopting such a system.

 No Man’s Land

In her book “No Man’s Land,” Kathleen Gerson discusses the ongoing revolution taking place in the lives of modern day men.  In 1960, Gerson explains that ““the reigning ideology defined mature manhood almost exclusively in terms of achieving economic success and providing for wives and children” (Gerson 4).  However, since then, there has been a decline of men as the primary breadwinners.  Gerson explains that this decline has led to ambiguity about men’s identity and their proper place in society. In studying this phenomenon, Gerson focused on the differences among men, rather than the differences between men and women.  This is a necessary distinction, for according to Gerson the meaning of gender is undergoing a change and to understand this change requires an understanding of men’s perception.  Thus, she began her exploration by interviewing138 men chosen from alumni lists of a private university in New York and from a labor council’s lists of workers in order to chronicle the change and to better understand men’s behavior.  These men were between the ages of twenty-eight and forty-five and varied in their social background, though they were mostly non-Hispanic white.  In conducting the interviews, Gerson found that the difference contrasted less between the groups of middle-class and working-class men than within the groups, which contradicts reigning belief.

Gerson’s identifies several trends that comprise the change.  “Staled revolution,” she says is one that is comprised of men who refuse to partake in domestic work.  “Male rebels” is the trend of men choosing autonomy over marriage.  “Estranged dads,” Gerson states, are men who have families, but are absent from them.  Then there is the nurturing father, who is one who has accepted increased involvement in the domestic sphere.  These trends, Gerson argues, cannot be explained by either “masculine personality” or “cultural masculinity.”  The former implies that men have set psychological orientations that define them; this is inconsistent with the vast disparity found among the psychology of individual men.  Gerson explains that the latter explanation is a ““the cultural tradition that idealizes male flight from commitment is as old as American culture itself” (Gerson 263) and so it cannot account for the recent changes of patterns in men’s lives.  Further, Gerson maintains that this cultural tradition does not establish a definite behavioral outline.  Rather, Gerson outlines three social shifts that have largely contributed to the revolution: (1) the decline in men’s economic privilege, (2) the increasing attachment of women to employment, and (3) the growing presence of alternative options to marriage.  Gerson insists that neither the past nor “culture is…static, consistent, or determining” (Gerson 265) and so the roles that future men will play in society and their families is mostly indefinable.