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.