CHAPTER 12
WORK AND FAMILY
I. The Labor Force – A Social Invention
A. The Labor Force in Postindustrial Society
1. Although human beings have always worked, it was not until nineteenth-century industrialization that people
became wage earners in a “labor force”.
2. Gradually, throughout the twentieth century, American society has gone from a predominant producer of
products (industrial) to a predominant producer of knowledge and services (postindustrial).
3. Today fewer jobs offer lifetime security and many pay less than did industrial work. “Downsizing” is
commonplace.
4. One way families have adapted to less security and lower wages is to have both spouses employed.
II. The Traditional Model: Provider Husbands and Homemaking Wives
A. Men and the Provider Role
1. Overview
a. Good provider role (1830-1970s)- in exchange for income, husbands receive homemaking, childrearing, and sex
from wives. Often results in men assuming narrow gender identities. Despite the postindustrial effects of
bureaucratization, divorce, and working spouses, most men today continue to believe they should be the principal
provider for their families.
b. Main /secondary provider- husband has the main responsibility for providing while a wife's income provides the
extras.
c. Co-provider couples- both partners are seen as equally responsible for providing.
d. Ambivalent provider couple-a wife's providing responsibilities are not clearly acknowledged.
e. Role-reversed provider couple-the husband is mainly responsible for homemaking and child care, while the wife
is the principal breadwinner.
f. Today the division of labor in most families still reflects the conventional pattern of paid employment more to the
husband and unpaid housework to the wife.
2. Rewards and Costs
a. Rewards for the male: social status, reinforcement of the husband's authority, homemaking services, sexual
availability, childrearing, and general husband care.
b. Costs for the male: higher risk for feeling like a failure as a "man” restricts family role that could create absentee
fathers.
3. Men and the Provider Role Today
Some men are choosing less competitive careers.
4. Househusbands
A small minority are househusbands who stay at home to care for the house and family while their wives
work outside the home.
B. Women as Full-Time Homemakers
1. Overview
a. Before industrialization, women produced goods and income.
b. With industrialization, employment away from home and increases in real income made full time homemaking a
reality.
c. Currently, more than one-third of married women are full-time homemakers.
2. The Economic Benefits and Status of Homemaker
a. There are important economic benefits to society provided by homemakers.
b. Since homemaking is not formal employment, no financial compensation is associated with this position.
3. Homemakers by Choice
a. A significant proportion of homemakers enjoy their work.
b. The critical difference between full-time homemakers who enjoy their work and those who don't is choice.
c. Some contemporary housewives consider this role a stage.
III. Women in the Labor Force
A. Overview
1. Women’s participation in the labor force has increased greatly since the
beginning of the nineteenth century.
2. By 1979, a majority of married women were employed outside the home.
3. Mothers of young children were the last women to move into
employment outside the home.
4. As women moved into the labor force, they fueled a revival of a feminist
movement that had been dormant for many years.
A. Women's Market Work
1. Occupational segregation is the tendency for men and women to be employed in different jobs. Even within
occupational categories, jobs are often sexually segregated.
2. Women dominated professions tend to be related to service or support (i.e., teaching, nursing, social work,
library, or recreation).
B. The Wage Gap
1. Women who worked full-time in 2003 earned 77 cents for every dollar earned by men.
2. The wage gap varies considerably depending on occupation, and tends to be greater in the more elite, higher-
paying occupations.
3. The motherhood penalty describes the fact that motherhood has a tremendous negative lifetime impact on
earnings.
4. Many women perceive themselves to be discriminated against in employment.
5. The future is difficult to predict.
IV. Two-Earner Marriages- Work/FamilyOptions
A. Overview
1. A two-earner marriage is one in which both partners are in the labor force, and this is the statistical norm among
married couples today.
2. Even though we may tend to think of two-earner couples as ones in which both partners are employed nine to
five, spouses display considerable flexibility in how they design their two-earner unions.
B. Two-Career Marriages
1. Careers differ from jobs in that careers hold the promise of advancement, are important in themselves and not
just as a source of money, and demand a high degree of commitment.
2. Most college students view the dual-career marriage as an available and workable option, yet the vast majority of
two-paycheck marriages are not dual-career.
3. For two-career couples with children, family life is hectic and often tense as couples juggle schedules, chores,
and child care.
C. Part-Time Employment
1. Women may choose part-time employment or be forced into it because of lack of full-time opportunities.
2. Part-time employment seldom offers job security or benefits and often results in comparatively lower wages
compared with full-time employment.
D. Shift Work
1. Shift work exists when more than half of an employee's work hours are before 8 A.M. or after 4 P.M.
2. When a partner does shift work, there is a greater chance that marital satisfaction with the sexual relationship will
be reduced and the probability of divorce will be increased.
E. Home Based Work
1. Seven percent of the labor force was self-employed in 2002.
2. Home-based work now includes working from home for an employer, perhaps through telecommuting.
3. Those who work at home can pursue either integrative or compartmentalizing strategies in terms of placing
boundaries between domesticity and work.
F. Leaving the Labor Force and Reentry
1. In 1988 for the first time, a majority of new mothers reentered the labor force in the year after their child’s birth.
2. Now, observers think they see a new pattern, which has been referred to as sequencing moms: mothers who
choose to leave paid employment in order to spend some years at home rearing children.
3. A majority of women still plan to return to work within the first year after their baby is born.
V. Unpaid Family Work
This work involves the necessary tasks of attending both the emotional needs of all family members and the practical
needs of dependent members.
A. Caring for Dependent Family Members
Our cultural tradition and social institutions give women principal responsibility for rearing children.
B. Housework
For women, but not men, marriage increases household labor hours.
1. Who Does Housework?
Despite changing attitudes among couples and media portrayals of two-earner couples who share housework, women in
fact continue to do more of it.
2. Race/Ethnicity and Other Factors
a. Research on racial/ethnic differences finds that the pattern of men’s spending considerably less time than women
in housework occurs in white, black, and Hispanic families. However, black and Hispanic men spend more time in unpaid
family work than do white men.
b. Participation in household labor is generally related to the degree of equality of earnings between the spouses
and the proportionate share of those earnings produced by the wife.
3. Is Housework Vanishing?
The University of Michigan researchers use the term “vanishing housework” in noting that as men and women are
both putting in more hours of employment, the total amount of time a couple spends on housework has declined.
3. The Second Shift
a. Many employed wives, and just a few husbands, put in a second shift of unpaid family work that amounts to an
extra month of work each year.
b. The second shift for women means a “leisure gap” between husbands and wives.
c. The stalled revolution refers to the situation where women, rather than men, adjust their time to accomplish both
paid and unpaid work.
d. Some two-earner couples hire household help.
4. Why Women Do the Housework
a. The time availability perspective holds that the partner with more time does the housework.
b. The rational investment perspective argues that couples attempt to maximize family economy by trading off
between time and energy investments in paid market work and unpaid household labor.
c. Resource hypothesis suggests that a spouse's household labor is a result of his or her resources compared to
the other.
d. The ideological perspective points to the effects of gendered cultural expectations on household labor.
e. The gender construction perspective looks to the meaning of housework, rather than the practicalities of time
and income, to explain a gendered division of labor.
5. A Reinforcing Cycle
Men employed full time average higher earnings than women employed full time.
6. Fairness and Marital Happiness
a. While, overall, unequal shares of household labor are associated with marital dissatisfaction, this
relationship is altered by perceptions of fairness.
b. Feeling competent and being considered competent by wives seems to make housework more enjoyable for
men, hence fairer.
VI. Juggling Employment and Unpaid FamilyWork
The concept of juggling implies a hectic and stressful situation.
A. The Speed-Up of Family Life
1. People are spending significantly more hours at work.
2. About one-third of all employees now work more than 40 hours per week.
B. How Are Children Faring?
1. Working moms are not detrimental and may be advantageous to a child's development.
a. Employed mothers foster independence.
b. Employed mothers provide structure to daily life.
c. Employed mothers are good role models, especially for teenage daughters.
d. Children benefit from additional income.
2. Employed mothers today consciously strive to make time for children by
reducing housework, personal leisure, etc.
C. How Are Parents Faring?
1. Work, Family, and the Single Parent
Trying to do everything involved in parenting in half the time takes its toll on employed single parents
2. Other Working Parents
Although the rough edges of the work-family conflict may be particularly sharp for single parents, two-
earner marriages assuredly have them also.
D. Two-Career Marriages-Juggling Even Faster
1. Overview
a. For two careers to flourish, equity in the marriage becomes crucial.
b. Many men acknowledge that although their wives provide less husband care, they appreciate the status and
excitement associated with an achieving wife.
2. The Geography of Two Careers
a. Trailing spouse- a spouse who relocates to accommodate the other's career (more often the wife).
b. Financial pressures when a trailing spouse cannot find job intensify strain.
3. To Commute or Not to Commute
a. Commuter marriage-a marriage in which spouses live apart.
b. Commuter couples report more satisfaction with their work life than do single-residence, two-career couples, but
commuters are significantly less satisfied with their partner relationship and family life.
c. Longer, more stable marriages are more likely to endure a commuter relationship.
VII. Social Policy, Work, and Family
A. What Is Needed to Resolve Work-Family Issues?
1. Researchers and other work-family experts are in general agreement that
single-parent and two-earner families are in need of more adequate provisions for child and elder care, family leave,
and flexible employment scheduling.
2. Child Care
a. Policy researchers define child care as the full-time care and education of children under age six, care before
and after school and during school vacations for older children.
b. In the mothering approach to child care, there is a preference for the wife caring for the children.
c. In the parenting approach to child care, family care is shared by parents.
d. In the market approach to child care, career-oriented couples hire other people to care for their children.
c. Family child care refers to care provided in a caregiver's home.
d. Center care provides group care for a larger number of children in daycare centers.
e. Self-care refers to children aged six to twelve taking care of themselves, without adult supervision.
3. Child Care and Children’s Outcomes
a. The consensus has generally been that children in nonrelative care and children cared for by their own parents
differ little in development and emotional stability.
b. The interpretation of data on child-care outcomes is mostly favorable.
4. Elder Care
The fact that more and more people now live longer means that middle-aged children (especially daughters) will not only
work outside the home and need child care, but will also be responsible for aging parents.
5. Family Leave
a. Involves allowing employees to take an extended period of time from work, either paid or unpaid, for maternity,
paternity, or elder care reasons.
b. The 1993 Family Leave Act mandated unpaid leave, but this will not solve the problem for most employees
because most working parents need their income.
6. Flexible Scheduling
a. Includes job sharing, compressed work weeks, flextime, and personal days.
b. Employees who get flexible hours report enhanced job satisfaction and loyalty to the employer.
B. Who Will Provide What Is Needed to Resolve Work-Family Issues?
1. A principal conflict in work-family issues is whether such options as child care and family leave are employee
rights or privileges for which a worker must negotiate.
2. Countries of northwestern Europe are far more likely to view family concerns as a right.
3. In the absence of any integrated federal family policy in the United States, the result is a hodgepodge of
piecemeal legislation aimed at solving specific, critical problems.
4. Selecting a child-care facility involves:
a. low-staff-to-child ratio
b. stable staff
c. a well-trained staff
d. cultural sensitivity
e. other staff qualities.
f. the right kind of attention
g. age-appropriate and stimulating activities
h. discipline
i. a relationship with parents
j. practical and financial considerations
k. recommendations from other parents
l. visits
m. accreditation
5. Family-friendly workplace polices- corporate initiatives that are supportive of employee efforts to combine family
and work commitments. They are not available to all employees.
6. Companies have tended to leave the administration of work-family policies to the discretion of individual
managers.
VIII. The Two-Earner Marriage and the Relationship
A. Gender Strategies
1. How a couple allocates paid and unpaid work represents a combination of each partner’s gender strategy– a way
of working through everyday situations involving paid and unpaid work that takes into account an individual's beliefs and
deep feelings about gender roles and employment commitments.
a. One gender strategy involves a husband praising his wife’s
homemaking skills rather than actually sharing the tasks.
b. A fairly common gender strategy is to develop family myths.
B. Maintaining Intimacy While Negotiating Provider Roles and the Second Shift
1. Study after study shows that marital satisfaction is greater when wives feel that husbands share fairly in the
household work.
2. When the transition proceeds from a mutual commitment to achieve an equitable, no-power relationship, the
result can be greater intimacy. There are a number of steps in this process:
a. Accept Conflict as a Reality
b. Accept Ambivalence
c. Share Feelings
d. Empathize
e. Strike an Equitable Balance
f. Show Mutual Appreciation