Culture Of Politics

Hochschild’s emotional perspective on institutional care is an interesting way to look at the culture of politics. How intimate, personal, and genuine is the care of daycare workers to nursing home attendants? I have been exposed to two kinds of daycares in Montreal where I have observed many differences; a government funded 7$/day daycare (I worked there for a short period) and a 35$/day private daycare founded by a parent (attended by the little boy I babysit). The government daycare was decorated with big-cartooned pictures and alphabet letters, whereas the private daycare was decorated with pictures of the children (on field trips or doing activities) and the children’s artwork and projects. How intimate and personal do/can caregivers be?

Hochschild suggests that our modern model for care requires “upgrading the status of public caregivers” (p.222) and “upgrade the value of their work” (p.222). How can this be done to get the desired results? Hochschild explains “to do this, they [daycare workers] need well-organized occupational groups to establish control over accreditation, monitor the entrances and exits of people from the field, and lobby for other measures to increase the public’s appreciation for their emotional labor” (p.223). But this depends on each person's view of the caregiver...

Family Politics and Policy

As societal norms change, institutions are required to change with it. There appears to be a disconnect between public demands and private needs, in that the institutions are not evolving with the modern times. The laws pertaining to the family are still lagging behind and exclude many of the new forms of family unions. In Culture of Politics, Hochschild describes four different models of care, and explains which one should be adopted. Although she claims that we are living in a world in which the cold modern model of care is the norm. She also talked about the gender-stalled revolution. It is based on the fact that over two decades women’s days have gone from being predominantly spent in the home to being spent mostly at work. Over the span of two decades nothing has changed in culture to make up for this difference in her day.

Skinner and Kohler’s article also point out the fact that we are lagging in regards to parental rights. The law in terms of custody over children is mostly exclusive to the biological parents. It excludes stepparents, grandparents, and same-sex parents. This is actually quite a sad fact since it is normal for these types of families to exist. I believe that we ended this semester's readings on a little bit of a sad note! The push for society to accept other forms of the family besides the nuclear family may never happen because of the restrictions of the law; we can also see that it is common to struggle to adjust to family diversification, when all semester that is what we have been talking about.

1. Do you think there are policies that can be created to help move society in the modern world? (Example: the growing acceptance and legalization of same-sex marriages)

2. What would happen if we eliminate the laws pertaining to the biological parents? Are they needed to ensure child safety?

3. Are these laws set in place in order to limit us in our family choices? What laws can be created to better suit the changing family? Will this effect our generation in how we think and perceive the family?

Family Politics and Policy

While I disagreed with some of Barbara Ehrenreich’s logic, I agree with her point that much optimism is unfruitful. As we recognize the agency we have as educated individuals, I think it is important to see what we can do with that agency; what are the most effective way to change perceptions and laws regarding the family and gender roles? Why do some quests, such as increased paternal rights and gay marriage pan out, while the American government can take away support from women on welfare who have children? The answer, I think, is public outcry and mobilization.
When studying social movements, some main questions are how to get a multitude of people vocal about an issue, and in turn what should they specifically be vocal about. As we have discussed in class, there are two main approaches: attempting to change ideologies through a legal structure, and attempting to change society through ideologies. Unfortunately, the two do not coalesce very often and we have seen, especially through the studies of emotion work, that changing laws, social structure, and even ideologies may not entirely change the way individuals and societies construct the family and gender roles.
Here is an instance where I feel that (cautious) optimism is necessary for a few reasons. As we leave university, we are entering a world where gender roles in education and the job market are changing rapidly and in ways never seen before. Years of feminist activism has changed gender roles at least at the legal level, however many prejudices seem to be ingrained. So knowing what we know, do we take a realist approach and work within the society that we have? We see this approach in legal battles for gay marriage and paternal rights; both use more conventional means of social protest and mobilization tactics, and both have made legal headway. I think we see this approach in Denmark and the Netherlands as well. As mentioned in the readings, these countries do not ask what the best way to raise a family is, but rather how we can support families. Their system promotes one of the most supportive, and gender segregated, structures. So should we be realists and work within our framework, or optimists and try to find a different approach, one to change the core of ideologies. We certainly need optimism attack this process.
What I mean to say here is not that there is one right way to go about this, or that we should be aiming for a Marxist Utopia. But rather, a recognition that the sociology of the family is integrated with so many other fields, and to change ideologies we cannot address one area. (If you haven’t noticed) I’m really interested in mobilization tactics in the “post” movements that emphasize the individual, however I think one of the strongest barriers to these social movements is our societal belief of what a social movement should be, what a law should be, and what is appropriate to promote change. But to change ideologies, I think we need to look at the definitions we hold, and parse their interactions with each other and society. Perhaps the question should not be "How might the law or expectations change to better suit the needs of family members?", but what can we do to change the idea of a law in society?


1. Is there a way for the definition of the family to be less “exclusive” in policy? What services would need to be employed to take family law on a true case by case basis? What are the problems with this?
2. What issues around the family do you feel are powerful enough to mobilize around? Why are some addressed while others not? Do you think the most important issues are addressed through legal battles?
3. Do you find yourself to be an optimist? Realist? Pessimist? Something in between? What effect does this have on your view of the family? Do you think it changes over the life course, and why?

Family Politics and Policy

The reading for an anthropology course the other day was “The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage.” The professor then proceeded to place “marriage” as the last topic which the class was to problematize, looking at the underlying structures which are leading to its breakdown within socially accepted norms. He called this the “denormalizaton of marriage”: changing division of labor (mentioning the “stalled revolution”), increasing childbirth out-of-wedlock and increasing rates of cohabitation. His lecture thus points to the exact topic of this week’s articles, highlighting the power of institutions to change individual perceptions on personal motivations and actions. However, as seen in the Skinner article, it is important to see the reflective action of individual’s actions on state and national policy. While Kiernan points to the fact that “marriage has had an important gate keeping function between the personal and the societal,” it is interesting to see how far marriage, and subsequently the family, has been moved from a privileged retreat away from the public eye to a point of contention loaded with governmental and community involvement (985). Issues such as ART and adoption point to the extent with social policy now overlaps with personal decisions.

Important to note, as Hochschild does, is the ways in which social policy can also work to limit couples’ ability to delineate the boundaries of their relationship. Although all the articles point to the wide variety of policies present globally, I found it interesting to note that even Hochschild sees a continuation of this cool modern approach. I would hope for a bit more optimism. Understandingly though, any change is going to have to come from multi-faceted shifts on individual, communal and national levels, as each becomes increasingly overlapped in both the public and private sphere. At the end of this anthropology class, a girl raised her hand and asked “Why are the laws of cohabitation and child-bearing out-of-wedlock so controversial?” The professor, in a slightly stunned way, answered “Well, that’s a bit of a hard question. There is the religious answer, the moral, the economic and the political answer. Actually I could teach a course on this topic alone.” I was tempted to raise my hand and give her the course code for this class.

Q1: What other factors outside the two mentioned [cohabitation and same-sex marriage] in Kiernan’s article do you see as being forces in redrawing the boundaries of marriage relationships?

Q2: An article I read for another class talked about the changing norms of families and how this may lead to changing norms for reconstituted and blended families. How do you think national policies will affect the establishment of new norms for non-traditional family types, bearing in mind ideas of exclusive status and the parental rights doctrine?

Q3: Gerson highlights that “Self-reliant women also concur that if a worthy relationship ultimately proves out of reach, remaining single need not mean rejecting motherhood or becoming socially disconnected” (744). If, hypothetically speaking, the “stalled revolution” eventually ends with a closing of the “lag time,” what do you think will happen to the value of marriage? Will it lose all value as an institution or strength in a position of prestige and exclusivity?

Family Politics and Policy

Within this week’s readings there were several issues that reminded me of my diametric perspectives on familial responsibility.  On the one hand, and similar to the cold modern approach outlined by Hochschild, I believe that females have a right to unburden themselves from their direct association as caregivers of the world.  Females, in the West, are modeled after this natural caregiver ideal, and rather than support females in these endeavors, I question whether social policies that support women in this role also limit their ability to shape themselves as anything else. 

On the other side of this debate raging in my conscious, is the reality that we, as humans, ought to care for one-another.  We ought to give care without non-gender-associated.  The fact that public society does not support private or public care is damaging to all those who were ever or will be children or elderly.  It is not that I question the importance of care work; I merely question the burden of that care being unavoidably female.  Must we support females in this work or support society in the care of its citizens?

When families do exist in this Western world, certain expectations outside of individual responsibility also exist.  Marriage, birth, death, divorce, dissolution, aging, and many other qualities impact and alter these responsibilities.  There seems to be two mutually influencing types of care highlighted in these articles: care as emotion and care as economic.  The responsibility of economic care is regulated, but it appears to be regulated without regard for the importance of emotional care.  The reality is that families need both to subsist, and even to thrive.  It would seem that when flexible gender roles allow females to pursue activities that promote independence and self-reliance (based on the mothers in Gerson’s article), they become better care-givers.  However, the inverse is also true: that independence and self-reliance in males may create a situation in which economic responsibilities become the basis of family ties.

       1.  To what degree is the responsibility of care synonymous with economic responsibility?  Is it possible to replace emotional care with economic care?

       2.  In the Gerson article, adult children viewed their mothers as having ‘financial stability and personal self-confidence’ due to the jobs that also created ‘long working hours, blocked opportunities, and family-unfriendly workplaces’ which ‘made their mothers feel overburdened and time-stressed’.  To what extent is the reality of having a working mother skewed by the framing of working women as independent, confident, and admirable?  To what extent is this acceptance also a coping mechanism, much like Hochschild’s negotiation of the benefits and costs associated with her stay-at-home mother?

       3.  Must divorce be harmful?  Various articles have suggested otherwise.  Most recently, Skinner suggests that divorced parents can work together to establish positive relationships with children, Kiernan investigates the social influence over public policy regarding recognition of cohabiting couples, and Gerson highlights the normalization of divorce as an acceptable, and even positive solution to marital strain.  Given this, is it possible to create public policies that promote emotional support following divorce?  What of the warm model of care in this effort?

Politics, Public Policy and the Future

Throughout the course of the semester, I have learned more about families past and present than I ever thought existed. From eavesdropping children, to the rise in cohabitation, to men mothering, the topics reached were both broad and fascinating. When looking toward the future of the family, I find it difficult to be as pessimistic to say that the trends we have seen, such as the increase of divorce, children out of wedlock, the rise of cohabiting, will continue to rise attributing to the decline of the family. Call me a romantic (and I know there are studies about children of divorce having an unrealistic view of marriage) but I see marriage as an institution that is not going anywhere. Although I understand people’s reasons and wants for cohabiting, in an ideal world I see myself using it as a form of trial marriage.

Kiernan suggests a reason for the rise in cohabitation: “the growth in cohabitation and the mergence of same-sex marriage have contributed to the deinstitutionalization of marriage… the result of longer term cultural and material trends.” (Kiernan 982). Don’t get me wrong, I understand that same-sex marriage hasn’t until recently been legal, so couldn’t this perhaps increase marriage? Couldn’t this change of policy shift rates of marriage in the future?

I think parental rights is an extremely difficult topic to broach, and fully understand, especially in modern times. Not only are there parents, step-parents, adoptive parents and biological parents, but there are surrogate mothers, and sperm donors and egg donors, and sometimes mistakes happen with reproductive technology wherein some people give birth using other peoples eggs and sperm by accident. From here, who has the right to parent? I find it difficult for legislation to bear meaning and cast down what they believe to be family. As well, I see huge problems within using precedence in court cases, because I see each family as an individual and unique case. An example of a mix-up is found here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36878268/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/

Luckily, it was solved and the result was mutually satisfying for both parties. From this example, it becomes clear that the some legislation, such as the exclusivity doctrine, is not applicable to all contemporary families.

As this is my last blog, I wanted to say how much I enjoyed taking this course! It was my first seminar course, and I looked forward to come to class and hear everyone’s (although very different) opinions on the family. Thanks everyone for everything and happy holidays!

1. How do you see marriage in the future? Do you think the increasing legalization of same-sex marriage will increase marital rates and decrease cohabitation?

2. Is it within government interest to create policy that promotes and encourages families? How would they go about doing this?

3. How do you see our generation and their families? What trends from the course do you see continuing, or what new trends may occur? Do you agree with Hoschild’s cold modern world?

Politics, Public Policy and the Future

The readings of this week provide us with a good conclusion to the course material since they are concerned to what is next and how to deal with family changes. They deal with issues we had discussed before implicitly: the role of policy in a topic where the public is intertwined with the private, politics and law.

The concept that I liked the most from these readings was that of families as pathways exposed by Kathleen Gerson (2009) and I wish we had read this before in order to include this dynamic perspective to our previous discussions. The notion of the dynamic processes that constitute family paths contrasts with the static view of family structure and this is interesting because it complements the rich perspective of the life course events within the family with the broader context. For Gerson “[B]ulky categories as traditional, dual-earner, and single parent mask more complex and subtle variations within family types. […] Family life is a film, not a snapshot” (2009, p. 739). In this sense, more than family form, the focus is on the social contexts for children.

If we use the framework proposed by Gerson of family paths to analyze the ideals of care (traditional, postmodern, cold modern and warm modern) that Hochschild (2003) defines, one could argue that this ideals of care are dynamic as well. I wonder how we could conceive the nature of care as pathways. I guess that Gerson would argue that within a same family, it may transit from one ideal of care to the other resulting in different contexts of support. Something somehow present in all readings, but explicitly dealt in Gerson’s paper is the issue that since there are differences between the ideal worker paradigm and intensive parenting, although men and women ideally want equality, there is conflict because each has different incompatible fall-back strategies. In this way, we could think that going from one ideal of care to another is hard due to this conflict. One of the issues I would have liked to see discussed more explicitly in the work by Gerson (2009), Kiernan (2004) and in this specific chapter of Hochschild (2003) is where does paid domestic work and childcare fit exactly within family pathways, the boundaries of marriage and ideals of care.

Finally, since it is one of the topics I work on, I found interesting how the readings may relate to family and migration. First, I wonder how we can incorporate into the family paths that Gerson talks about, the relationship between career and migration. For example, it would be an interesting empirical question to study how internal mobility affects women (which is already studied in terms of women’s income since they sacrifice because husband gets a better job) in terms of social context in the family, not only economically. Also, Skinner and Kohler (2002) talk about what happens when one or both parents are absent in terms of the law. But I wonder how family law deals with absent parents after migration and what happens legally when children are left behind. In this sense, what role can family law have on immigration policy (to bring children with workers and to allow family reunification) as well as how can migrant sending countries assure rights for children left behind?

Q1. Skinner and Kohler (2002) write that it is the “right of parents to direct the care, control and upbringing of their children. […] Parents have the legitimate authority to make various decisions regarding their child’s welfare, including such concerns as residence, what school to attend, religious participation, and medical treatment decisions” (p. 297). Do you agree that parents should decide about children’s religion? What happens in parents with mixed religious backgrounds? Should law establish that it is not parent’s right but that each one can choose their religion later in life (e.g. during adolescence or after being 18)?

Q2. How do you think that the literature on family and family change has dealt with issues coming from globalization? Think for example on managing parents with two careers in a globalized world or the effect of diffusion of ideas via the media or how the internet has changed the use of free time and how children and adults play.

Q3. Gerson (2009, p. 750) writes: “the direction of social change thus depends on whether the structures of work and caretaking can change to support the revolutionary and irreversible shifts in individual aspirations and family needs”. Barabara Ehrenreich’s video ends with the phrase “we have collective power and we could use it to end a great deal of unnecessary suffering in the world”. All this implies changes in law and policy. Do you agree? How can this collective power really challenge interest groups and politics? How do we deal with gatekeepers?

Week 10: Family Politics and Policy

In today’s world, even though the structure of the family have become even more diverse, the laws pertaining to the family is still lagging behind and exclude many of the new forms of family unions. Skinner and Kohler’s article on the parental rights that are based on the “exclusivity” basis clearly depicts the exclusion of stepparents, grandparents, and same-sex parents with regards to the custody over children. The solution, that Skinner and Kohler mentioned, may possibly be basing the custody on the best interests of the child—not by biological parental rights.

In contrast, through Kiernan’s article, we are able to see that in European countries, the policy and political discussion are more about issues concerning how best to support families, particularly in their endeavors to raise children regardless of the marital status of their parents (Kiernan, 980). In Europe, policy makers (on family matters) de-emphasized the “exclusivity” laws within the family. How is it possible for the European countries move on to embrace the different forms of families and concentrate on supporting the diverse individuals that make up the family while in the United States, the politics and policies of the family still concern themselves solely on the “traditional values”?

After reading Hochschild’s article, I felt depressed. She claims that today, with the regards to care, we are living the cold modern model of care. She assumes that women are the sole capable being to provide care to their children, which further frustrates matters. In addition, she emphasizes the relation between money and fathers with respect to the issue of care. If she is correct in providing this relationship, there is a commodifying of care (as we have mentioned in class numerous times) and that men show their “care” through the amount of the money they provide for their children.

Q1] Would eliminating the exclusivity clause as a basis for parent-child relationships work? What potential problems could arise from this elimination?

Q2]Are biological ties more important when it comes to parental rights and the custody of children? Why do you think that governments and policy makers emphasize these biological ties, even when it may not necessarily for the best interest of the children?

Q3]In present times, in your opinion, is there this sense of the de-romanticization of childhood happening with regards to care?

On Politics, Policy and Sociology in the Family

It is an unwritten rule in sociology courses on issues such as the family (or perhaps any specialization within the discipline, for that matter) to end the semester with readings and discussion of politics and public policy.  Tacitly, by doing this, we suggest that sociological knowledge ought to lead to social change—“philosophers,” as Marx dismissively declared, “have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it” (Theses on Feuerbach, thesis 11); we suggest, as well, that you are, in fact, free to define who you want to be and how you want to live your life, regardless of all of those messy social forces that seem to define everyone else.  The direct admission of this might go something like:  “I know that it seems as though everything we have covered over the course of this semester either explicitly or implicitly communicates how much our lives are conditioned by social forces and determined by institutions outside of our control, but, in reality, you can change things.  You can have agency.  Oh, and what of those really depressing statistics on your chances of success in relationships, including marriage, divorce, etc.?  Nah, they don’t apply to you now, because you have knowledge.  So cheer up, be empowered, you can do it!”  In this, we are perhaps practicing the “power” (i.e. delusion) of positive thinking which Barbara Ehrenreich finds so frustrating:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo

In fact, following Ehrenreich, it is perhaps our stubborn blindness to the real risks of intimacy and family life in the name of optimism (read: romance, love, etc.) which leaves us powerless to address change.  

In this week’s readings, therefore, I embraced the caution of realism.  These readings focus on the pressures of navigating messy institutions and policies that do not easily translate into the manifold dialects of our intimate relationships.  Comparative lessons from Europe and the United States demonstrate differences in social patterns even as they suggest that the state’s struggle to adjust to family diversification is common.  Interestingly, a few pages ripped from the headlines are most apt in drawing distinctions and sparking discussion.  First, from the society pages:  “Eric” and “Lola”, who after a 10-year relationship, three kids, and lots of drama, called it quits in Quebec in 2001.  As “de-facto” partners, however, Quebec policy stipulates that Eric has a financial responsibility to his kids after the separation but not to their mother.  If they had been married, it would have been a different story.  While the case seems headed to the Supreme Court, it highlights the significance of contracts and the legal (unromantic) issues of family support that so few expect to encounter:

http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Ruling+will+impact+common+couples/3781254/story.html

In another case, Alberta just passed legislation to render parenting relationships to children born with assistance from reproductive technologies more easily recognizable to existing law and thus assure child support responsibilities:

http://www.canadaviews.ca/2010/11/26/albertas-family-law-statutes-amended-to-promote-well-being-of-children/

In both of these circumstances, the cool modern approach points us in the direction of caution, even as most of us so carelessly cast it aside in the name of romance or love.  In facing intransigent or uncertain institutions with a clear head, however, it seems we can develop strategies for resilience that improve our chances for success.  Think gender flexibility = agency, I suppose.  Thus, as we end the semester on the heels of cautious optimism, let’s think clearly about the risks and rewards of family life in all its messy incarnations.  What questions should we ask?  Here are two suggestions to start:

1.        What rights and responsibilities do intimate partners have to one another?  What rights and responsibilities do they have to one another if they have children?  How should these change (if at all) in the aftermath of a break-up?  Most importantly, what role does the state have in assuring that these rights and responsibilities are respected?

2.       What explains the persistent gap between peoples’ expectations and experiences of family life?  How might the law or expectations change to better suit the needs of family members?

Please label your post "Family Politics and Policy"

Thank you!

Household Labor

Household Labor

During the evolution of sociology, or more specifically the evolution of cooperation, individuals seem to at one point or another compare their own efforts, pay-offs, and rewards to those of other people. In the article “Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay”, the comparison is with, as the title clearly states, monkeys! A nonhuman primate; the brown capuchin monkey; Cebus apella. This is what I find so unique about this article versus the other ones on the topic of household labor. It is always interesting when/how authors take a new perspective on a particular topic, just as Brosnan and Frans took this biosocial perspective on household labor. I do also very much like the title the authors chose for their scientific report, however I wonder how seriously it would be taken as the title seems like more of a newspaper headline..

This makes me think of philosophers such as Plato and Kant who believed in a rational basis for fair behaviour. I also think of the famous comment by Gordon Hewart in 1923: “it is of fundamental importance that justice not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done”.

Questions:

1. What do you think of the chosen title for the article by Brosnan and Frans: “Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay”?
2. What was the division of household labor like in your home? Was there gender division?
3. Thinking about Hook’s article, what do you think about policy-makers promoting equal division of household labor for women?

Week 9: Household Labor

Week 9: Household Labor

When it comes to the issue of household labor, we are able to see that there is no clear-cut answer to who invests more in this. There are research results which point out that nowadays, more men are doing more than they used to while females are doing less than they used to. In addition, we are able to see a decline in stay-at-home mothers while there was an increase of stay-at-home fathers. However, even if there exists an increase (with the percentage itself is significant), the number of stay-at-home mothers was larger than that of the stay-at-home fathers. Through these results we are able to see that there still exists discrepancies in unpaid work.

In her article, Hook claims that men participate more in unpaid work across diverse countries while policies and practices may either hinder or facilitate men’s unpaid work (Hook, 656). Even if they do participate in more household labor, could we assume that they are of same value compared to the labor that women partake in the domestic sphere? Men tend to do the “temporary” jobs within the family (i.e. mowing the lawn, fixing the house, taking care of the children on the weekends, etc.) while women are involved with the “permanent” household labor (i.e. cooking, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, taking care of the kids, etc.). Even in two-job families, women tend to partake in the permanent aspect of unpaid work—a second shift—after coming home from work.

Hochschild’s article on gratitude was a very interesting read. The idea of tracing gratitude in terms of a moral frame of reference, pragmatic frame of reference, and a historical frame of reference is interesting and seems to make sense. The life course theory seems to mesh well with what Hochschild is claiming with regards to the idea of exchanging "gifts" and the ripple effects it has within the larger society.

Q1] Can we measure or quantify the value of household labor? Why or why not?

Q2] What are your thoughts on providing a type of wage for the “unpaid labor”? Do you think that as a policy, it would work out and perhaps reduce gender inequality within the domestic sphere?

Q3] After the Second Feminist Movement, many claim that there is this “stalled revolution” in which women are exposed to a daily grind of household labor, leisure gap, and time famine. What are your thoughts on this claim? Will women be able to pull themselves out of this stagnant state and achieve complete equality with regards to the public sphere as well as within the household?

Household Labor

A common issue in all the readings is the notion of traditional versus non-traditional gender roles, household division of labor and childcare. I found very interesting the case of Salvadoreans Carmen and Frank and what Hochschild writes as a possible explanation of their notion of gendered gifts: “They were recent immigrants in the diversity of San Francisco, and maybe roses and pie made them feel more American” (2003, p. 109). To what extent consumption patterns and the “American dream” shape family relationships and gender roles of immigrants? How do American media and pop culture consumed out of the United States shape family relationships and gender roles of those in the rest of the world? How are ideas of gender diffused with the globalized media and migration? Do you think that this has had a positive or negative effect in other societies?

I was glad that this set of readings included an international comparison and I really liked Jennifer Hook’s paper since I think that it is important to understand how individual and household level mechanisms are related to national level policies and employment practices. It is interesting to think not only about cross-country differences but also on period and cohort differences. I found very important the methodological implications of her study (Hook, 2006, p. 655): “a reliance on typologies may conflate disparate national characteristics and policies, lead to faulty conclusions, and obscure what aspects of context matter most, […] researchers should expand inquiry beyond couples, [… and…] researchers should not assume that the effects of basic demographic characteristics are stable across time and space because they vary as a function of contextual factors”.

Something I found interesting from the readings and responses of other classmates is the notion of courtship. Hochschild talks about the gifts associated to this initial stage of the relationship and I wonder how this initial courtship and romance period will influence later stages due to the relation between gifts, money and power imbalances. It is interesting that what is “accepted as the norm” is that it is the man who proposes to the woman and although the woman has the decision, her role is less proactive. In “traditional” positions, she is the one receiving flowers and chocolates. Could this be because “capuchin females pay closer attention than males to the value of “exchanged goods and services” (Brosnan and de Waal, 2003, p. 298). I wonder if there has been empirical research that compares gender roles and division of household labor in couples that have started with different types of courtship and where the woman has been the one that takes the initiative. Also, after watching the video posted I have to say I spent some time in YouTube watching other videos related to that one and found an interesting one on gender stereotypes in the media that you may want to check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nIXUjzyMe0&feature=related

Q1. How do you think that the focus of only couples on the papers we read are affected by what Jennifer Hook found out and her methodological implications? Do you agree with her that “what is particularly interesting about a general change among all men is that it suggests a different view of gender relations than argued in some cross-national work focused solely on power, bargaining, or divorce threat” (Hook, 2006, p. 655)?

Q2. Hochschild discusses the idea of “lucky women and unlucky men”. What do you think about this idea of luck versus what was expected? How do you think the early stages influence later possible power imbalances and women’s position in negotiating within the couple and deciding who will the lucky one be?

Q3. To what extent differences in the papers read are due to social class, ethnicity or religion? How are gender codes related to political views, for example? Do you see misleading conclusions of the papers after reading the methodological implications of Hook’s work?

Household Labour

After reading for this week, I took a little time to think about Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay… now what exactly was it doing there? On readings about dual-income parenting and sharing of household duties, where exactly did this fit in?

I think after doing this weeks’ readings the findings point to a gender discrepancy when it comes to housework, or unpaid labour. It seems that women are assumed to be doing the housework, unless a negotiation or shift has occurred. Take for example the fact from Jennifer Hook’s research that “for each percentage increase in national levels of married women’s employment, men’s unpaid work time increases by 0.5 minutes.” So, it follows that only when women are not at home, a negotiation or shift needs to be made.

Coltrane also mentions that in ¾ of the couples interviewed, the women performed the majority of the early infant care. Coltrane also stresses that almost all the fathers stressed that they had to learn how to nurture, as if they were starting from scratch, and it was something that did not come naturally to them. There was also the example in which the man would set the table, and clear it, but not to his wife’s liking, so she still essentially cleared the table. This was interpreted as men doing domestic work, yet the house is still evidently the domain of the woman.

So, why is gender a factor in housework? Why, in a sense, don’t married women reject unequal pay for domestic work?

1. Reading Hook’s article, I came across a few items that made me pause and think of explanations. First of all, she says that married men do more unpaid work than single men. Also, she said when men are NOT employed, they do 19 minutes less of unpaid work per day than do employed men? How does this work? Any ideas?

2. How do you interpret the Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay article? Do you think it's relatable to human actions?

3. After reading all of the readings, are you convinced by Risman and Johnson-Sumerford’s finding that gender equality can be found in the home?

Household Labor

This week I found the gendered division of household labor to focus more on the negotiation of the husband/father ideology than the changing expectations of the wife/mother.  As Hochschild mentions in The Economy of Gratitude, wives are constantly navigating married life in reaction to the expectations and demands of motherhood and wifehood.  Hochschild implies that these wives respond to the role of husband and the promotion of the role of father/husband in a similar way as previous generations.  This resulted in my wondering: is this gratitude lag time or simply a sustained power dynamic with a different name?  The suggestion that women will come to embody the same power position as men seems uncertain.  Further undermining this shift is the cultural significance of the male breadwinner depicted in Coltrane’s article: Coltrane emphasizes the tendency of households with egalitarian divisions of labor to reference time availability as more important than gender when determining labor assignment.  Is feminism rooted more in ideology or practice? 

If women must often rely on the changing practices of their male counterparts to alter labor divisions in marriage, than Hook is correct in asserting that policy-makers must evaluate which factors, although ideologically sound, provide females/wives/mothers with the greatest environment to promote egalitarian relations.  If ideology is mute when challenging the embedded attitudes and structural forces that influence both home and work experiences, then it becomes less important to change opinion and more beneficial to focus on structural/environmental change.  The role of feminism is an interesting one; even for families that espouse gender equity on the home front, feminism is still dismissed as radical ideology.

1. To what extent does the state replace the male breadwinner?  How are fathers/husbands released from familial responsibilities in the presence of generous social policies?  Is there a lag between the changing expectations of children and fathers as well?
2. Coltrane mentions that when parents have more equally divided child care children tend to discriminate less between parents.  Recalling previous articles on divorce outcomes, could it be that poorly invested parenting is more to blame for the negative effects of divorce than the change in household dynamic or composition?  Are there state policies that can alter this situation to promote greater parent-child bonds after divorce?  Would these policies encourage healthier parent-child relations within marriage as well?
3. It is interesting that men may cite the desire for emotional care associated with traditional marriage, yet omit the pressures from external forces to abide by traditional norms.  When couples are probed, these realities are revealed.  To what extent do external pressures shape personal relations?  In an earlier article on happiness in homosexual relationships, relationships are said to be happier when there exists a great acceptance of homosexual families/partners from friends and family.  How much do broader social contexts shape individual action with regards to the division of labor?  Is change hidden behind a traditionalist façade still valid?

Household Labor

The juxtaposition of emotions with divisions of labor left me thinking about two issues relevant to the readings: how does “love” interact with perceptions of household labor, and how do these perceptions apply to family structures outside of marriage and even beyond cohabiting couples? The former question came from a quote in the Hochschild essay. She describes one woman as stating, “If you help me at home I will feel grateful for that and love you” (115). This struck me as odd; is love reliant almost purely on this economy of gratitude? Increasingly we see couples living together before marriage (if marriage occurs at all), so is this exchange and division of labor not established before marriage? Does it change drastically with marriage (previous readings would indicate that marriages do enforce traditional gender roles more so than unconventional arrangements). Perhaps this change can be explained by an examination of life course, or more simply time. Marriages and relationships can extend for long periods of time and require constant negotiation on the part of both individuals, and understanding each others perceptions of gratitude are a part of that.

However, I wonder if this “economy of gratitude” extends just beyond couples to all kinds of familial relationships. Reading all these accounts of the divisions of labor and the integration of gender roles, I couldn’t help but think about the importance of these relations in two other kinds of relationships: roommates and larger families than parents and children living in the same house. Even though Americans and Canadians tend to hold individualism as an ideal, sharing living space is a reality for many more than just college students. A few examples we have discussed are the prevalence of children moving back home, living longer without bring married, and multiple families living in the same home to save money. From my experience living with three men for four years, I can say that most people expect I am fully responsible for cooking and cleaning, while in reality we have established a much more egalitarian division of labor based on the fact that we’re all decent human beings who care about each other. I wonder how gendered divisions of labor change for other unconventional yet prevalent family structures. In general, I feel that it is important to examine the division of labor in married couples, but equally as important to recognize that these are not the only structures in which people situate themselves, and perhaps seeing the married couple as the ideal perpetuates stigmas which harm all sorts of familial relationships.
1) Hochschild discusses that the economy of gratitude can be applied to lesbian and gay couples as well. Research on this differs, so does anyone know if “gendered” or unequal power relationships are a factor of earnings?
2) What other family structures could provide a more egalitarian division of household labor, and how can they be more institutionally recognized?
3) Is love purely a factor of the economy of gratitude?

Household Labor

When someone gives the gift of performing housework, it is normally interpreted as the worst gift any woman can receive. To be fair, I can understand how men believe that women should be appreciative of their help if it is not what the man usually does around the house. In reality it should not be considered a gift. According to Hochschild, “74% of mothers with children 6-17 are in paid work” and they are still doing the majority of the housework so, they are working two jobs. In our readings this week, Risman et al., Hook and Coltrane examine families who are equally sharing household needs. All three of these studies tended to focus on the idea of spouses relying on equal sharing of tasks, or in other words they had created a gender-neutral household, in which not all daily chores were the responsibility of the female. In fact it seems like the readings give us a glimpse into the world where a man is showing his ability to act as a woman and for that he is receiving extra credit, because traditionally it is not his job to perform these household tasks.

In Household Labor and the Routine Production of Gender, it is clear what happens when men no longer depend on the fact that a man's masculinity is dependent on not doing the things that mothers do. Men help to take on a portion of the female role and remove themselves for their responsibilities of a traditional father’s role of begetting, protecting and providing for children. Even in this study where much of the housework is divided between both spouses, women still laid claim over the household, maintaining a manager-helper relationship. It may also be observed that when men step out of their perceived, socially constructed role of father, they are given extra gratitude. Whereas when a woman performs these tasks, they are expected of her. All these studies show that we are (slowly) moving to a world that even monkeys can understand; a world in which women should not accept anything but equality through all aspects of their lives.

1. Hochschild describes gendered gifts as flowers from a man and food from a woman, what do you think would happen if a stay at home father was brought home flowers as a gift by his wife?

2. Is it possible for couples to truly share the housework, or is there always someone in charge? Is there always one persons expectations that are required to be met?

3. What is a power-balanced couple? Is it possible to have one, or does one person always hold more power? Do you consider your family gender neutral?

Household Labor

Around these times of the holidays, thoughts of presents and wrapping paper fill the air. But what about “giving” in another sense? What about the daily gifts of gratitude and appreciation? The articles this week focus on the exchange of the concrete gift of household labor juxtaposed by the intangible gift of emotional and caring attitudes. Risman et al., Hook and Coltrane examine the fluid definition of equal sharing of household needs. All three studies claimed to find families in which the relationship between the spouses was supposedly either gender-neutral or who relied on “equal sharing” of tasks. However, it would seem that each study places the father’s role in terms of his ability to “play mother,” to take on the role of the female in place of his father identity. One woman even laments that “nobody really understood that Jennifer had two mothers” (Coltrane, 476). In placing the role of the father in terms of the mother, fathers received extra credit, extra ‘gratitude,’ when they stepped outside their perceived, socially constructed role of father. Even as fathers took on the “mother role,” women still laid claim over the household, maintaining a manager-helper relationship. Yet, despite this increase of father involvement, Hochschild points to a “lag time” between women’s advancement in the public sphere and husband’s lack of household help and emotional support.

As women increasingly break the gender-proof “glass ceiling,” new studies look at the effect of women’s employment on family stability. As 25-year longitudinal study found that women who earned at least 60% of the family’s income were 38% more likely to get divorced in any year, with no regard to their socio-economic position (http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/women_divorce_cur_SfyEHTdYT8khsy625mbJOL). As Hochschild explains in her essay, “Economy of Gratitude,” social and individual expectations of the role of the father as provider often lead to strain and distress within the family structure. Further strain is created by the multiple tensions arising around the ideal spousal arrangement between what both partners envision, the reality and their expectations, what Hochschild calls the “gratitude clash.” This “clash” can be seen in recent articles, such as http://www.huffingtonpost.com/juliette-frette/gender-equality-and-the-d_b_561724.html. Even popular media continues to perpetuate the separation of gendered spheres – just look at the Simpsons, Family Guy, or Everybody Loves Raymond. As women gain acceptance in the public sphere, miles ahead of their mother’s generation, the closing of the lag time gap will hopefully see the emergence of fathers placed in their own terms and roles bringing with it the possibility of a truly gender neutral relationship. Until then, maybe there’s hope - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raqNEIUVarI.

Work and Family

The readings this week discuss the relationship between the act of caring and the commercialization of family life.  Correll investigates the tendency for mothers and mothering to signify a lack of work-place competency.  While it is unclear the exact causes of this presumed incompetence (Correll speculates whether cultural values may play a large role), it is evident that mothers are not as valued as other workers.  It is ironic that this is the case: if mothers earn less due to compromised qualifications or abilities relating to motherhood, how is it that these same women are raised to a higher social standing than other individuals?  The iconic mother, upholding the values of a nation, can successfully rear future generations, yet cannot perform explicit workplace tasks efficiently and in a commited manner.  This paradox is evidently overlooked by those whose judgments promote the devaluing of employed mothers. 

Similarly, the ability of women to embody the qualities most often associated with the ideal Western mother is further marginalized by the removal of not only the individual, but the emotional demands of mothering from the domestic sphere and relocating these mothering qualities into the workplace.  Hochschild identifies two complementary mechanisms contributing to the devaluation of motherhood: first, the disenfranchisement of mothers, experienced in their separation from original families, and second, the reinsertion of these mothers into new families.  In these families, these mothers face a reality in which they are neither legitimate mothers nor official members.

For these readings I have three questions:

1. First: How well do the families in Becker’s article generalize to the broader population?  If the majority of the families studied were childless couples in their twenties or couples in their fifties or sixties whose children are young adults, how does this sample relate to families with small children, who must choose from a limited number repertoire of time-bind solutions?
2. Second: In what other ways does Western culture simultaneously idolize and demonize mothers?  Is it possible for equitably employed mothers to exist in this environment?  What policies would best promote this shift?
3. Third: What is the relationship between the “act” of emotion and the paid employment of nannies who embody the emotional work of caring?  If emotions are produced and reproduced, with individuals constantly legitimizing and undermining expected emotional behavior, to what extent is this occupation an extension of this expectation?    

Work and Family

After reading Hoschild’s Emotional Geography and the Flight of Capitalism, I immediately began relating it my family’s professional experience, which is actually completely different from Amerco. From personal experience, the companies and places of employment my family works at seems to be in a warm modern category. My mother works for IBM, as did my father when I was born, and she was able to take a year off when my sister and I were born, and then for the first three months back at work, she was able to work part-time. Although my father didn’t take parental leave, the benefits awarded to my mother seemed to remedy this. As well, after my parents got divorced, my mother was able to take on the added responsibility of being a single parent (with my father only having custody every Wednesday and other weekend) by switching to part time work. Once my sister and I were able to get to and from school on our own, my mother was able to work full-time yet again.

My step-brother actually shared parental leave with his wife, each of them taking six months after their son was born. As well, my step-sister, after taking her full year of maternity leave for each of her two sons (her husband is a professor, so he was able to be around a lot to help with the kids), she re-entered the workforce by job-sharing with another young mother.

My father’s common-law partner works at a company called Lexis Nexis, essentially a huge publishing company, and there are in place many family friendly policies. First of all, in the summer, every Friday ends at noon, to equal one half day off. However, if you do not want to take this half day off, you can bank them, essentially saving all the half Fridays from the summer, and take a week long vacation. Interestingly, this same company is an example of “the new company town” where the employees can socialize and utilize many services even within the same building. They have movie nights (where they supply the drinks and popcorn), catered breakfast every morning, and a masseuse that comes in each week.

In all of the cases depicted above were from dual earner couples, which most definitely do not fall into the work-as-home and home-as-work model. I’m not sure if it is my living experience that is out of the norm, or is it Amerco that is? I’m just finding Hoschild’s utilization of one major company to depict the need for more family friendly policies in America a little troubling. After reading Becker and Moen’s article, I find it frustrating that Hoschild would depict the dual-earner couple as cold and work-obsessed when that is not the majority case.

As well, I recently stumbled across an interesting article from the New York Times, called the Opt-Out Revolution, in which women with high levels of education, on a track to high status of employment, choose to opt-out of work in order to be a full time mother” http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/magazine/the-opt-out-revolution.html?pagewanted=all . It is definitely an interesting read, and gives some insight as to why mothers may be perceived as less committed to their jobs as depicted by the Motherhood penalty article.

1. Am I the only one who has experience a warm modern category? Or in your experience does the workforce fall into a cool modern or traditional stance? Which way should it be?

2. In Becker et al. it is stated that women often fulfill the job category and not the career category in a dual earning couple. How could you justify the work constraints put on women in a dual earning couple? Is the breadwinner ideology following yet again? Is this why in a career/job couple women are more likely to hold the job?

3. To play devil’s advocate, do you think women are more attached to their children and therefore are less committed to their profession? How does the motherhood penalty fit into professions where salaries are set based on seniority (e.g. lawyers and teachers)?