Work and Family

The article I most identified with this week was “Love and Gold” by Hochschild as I have been a witness to this phenomena of women leaving their families and moving to a new country and looking after other peoples children in order to support the family that they have left behind. I babysit for a family in Westmount and have done so for about five years now and I am the only non-Philippine worker on the street they live on. All of these women have left their families although I do not think any of them have left their children behind and have gotten jobs taking care of other people’s children. I know they send home a significant amount of their salary home to their family and feel guilty that they do not visit more often. One such woman who I have gotten to know quite well only goes home every five years and was heartbroken when her mother was sick last winter and she could not afford to go home and help take care of her. I guess in a way these women could be viewed as domestic workers wifes because they complete all the domestic tasks that are traditionally performed by the wife. They cook, they clean, they take care of the children, help them with their homework and drop them off and pick them up from their activities. They form strong bonds with these children as the children spend most of their time with their nanny. One example of this bond was apparent when the boy that I babysit asked me if I spoke any languages other then English and French. When I responded no he sighed heavily and said he wanted to learn Filipino because all the boys had learned it from their nannies and he could not understand what they were saying during recess. I think this language acquisition by boys in grade one demonstrated who they spent the majority of their time with.

In the article, “Emotional Geography and the Flight Plan of Capitalism” I did not really find that all of the concepts applied to Canada. In my limited experience with men and women who chose to take parental leave after the birth of the child viewed it as their right and not as something that would hinder their career. I guess, it would depend on your career and the amount of stability you have in your job if you would feel comfortable requesting for the time off but I thought that in Canada people were understanding of someone wanting to take time off in order to spend time with their new family. This article also discussed the “Time-bind” syndrome that we discussed last class in which parents seem to prefer to stay at work then be with their family. But, this idea of parents choosing work over family was contradicted in the article by Becker, Edgell and Moen who found that parents were trying to scale back work hours in order to have more time with their family. I think these contradictory findings can be explained by the fact that each persons experiences with family and work differ which leads to different feelings of where a person would rather spend time. Also, Hochschild’s article only used data from one work environment so perhaps her findings are specific to those workers or people in the area where the company is located.

1) How would you define emotions? Do you agree more with the interactive or interactive account of emotions? Why?

2) At the end of the article, “Love and Gold” it was questioned how we could help stop the need for women to leave their families and take care of someone else’s children in order to provide for the family they have left behind. Do you think there is a way to put an end to this phenomena? Who else would take care of the children of women who have careers?

3) Do you think there is a difference between quantity of time and quality of time that a parent spends with a child? Do you think it is better for a parent to be at home when a child comes home from school and prepares dinners…etc but does not spend quality time with this child? Or would it be better for a child if a busy parent only spends an hour with the child every night but this time is spent doing quality activities?