Week 8: Work and Family

After reading Hochschild’s article “Love and Gold”, I immediately thought about the SOS Children’s Villages. SOS Children’s Villages is an independent, non-governmental organization looking after children who are orphaned or at high-risk by providing homes and family-based care. There are numerous villages in different countries all over the world and basically a “mother” is brought into these villages to take care of up to 20 children each. One condition that exists for female volunteers is that they need to live at the village with their “new” family and if they have a family of their own outside of the village, they need to be ready to sever all ties with them—even with their own children. This could be seen as an extreme case of a “care drain”. In Hochschild’s article, we see women from the Third World coming to the First World to take care of someone else’s children (most of the times family who are better off than they are) and, in contrast, with the SOS Children’s Villages, we see First World women going to these secluded villages to take care of high risk children at the expense of never seeing their own children again. As we can see, this care drain is not a one-way phenomenon from the developing world to the developed world but rather a two-way phenomenon—happening at both end points.

In all the articles, there is a common theme of the “double bind”, especially for the women. There is this pressure for these career women to become both an ideal mother and an ideal worker. In Hochschild’s article “Emotional Geography”, she talks about how a certain corporation has different workplace accommodations to meet the needs of their workers. However, most of these accommodations do not include parenthood-related needs, which make it harder for women to cater to these male-orientated accommodations.

Q1) Do you believe that women do not feel any resentment towards their workplace environment, although it is largely catered towards the male workers? If not, could this be because female workers have internalized this male-oriented ideal worker model and they do not question it?

Q2) In the reading “Love and Gold”, Hochschild talks about the issue of sentiment (feeling of love and care) and commitment. What do you believe is more important for the family life—sentiment or commitment?

Q3) What are some patterns of sacredness in your family? Do you believe that there has been a shift within that pattern over the life