120: Soc Marriage and the Family
Lecture 16: Work and Families II Prof. Elwert
Review
Female labor force participation
Reasons for increase (pull/push)
today- far more acceptable for women to work in the labor force about half of men think children are better if mommy doesn't work majority of women think that it doesn't harm the children if mothers work push factor- decline of earnings. increase in LFP is probably not due to a desire of women to work but rather they have no choice
Mothers time with children
Remarkable fact: despite higher fem LFP, time spent with children may not have declined
difference between the time working and nonworking mothers spent with their children is far less than people think between 1960-1990: amount of time spent with kids, even though it has declined, declined very little (as female LFP steadily increased) since 1990: even though female LFP has increased, mothers have not compromised their time spent with kids (no decline in time spent with them)
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Preview
Mothers' time with children
Why has it not systematically decreased?
Housework & care work
Second shift
Accommodations, strategies, reasons
Power & authority Family myths
Hochschild: Nancy and Evan Holt
Mothers' Time With Kids
Bianchi: female LFP hasn't systematically reduced mother's time with children.
Recently, there's even been an increase in mom's time with kids
What's going on?
fact: women have spent less time on housework over the years
1. People overestimate time non-employed women spend w/ kids 2. ~half of employed married women w/ young kids only work part time partially explains why they don't spend any less time with their kids 3. Mechanization & outsourcing housework
Less housework in general over time Employed women do even less housework
LFP- mother is either employed (at least 1 hour of paid work/week) or unemployed looking for work
4. Men do more housework (but still gender gap), freeing up mothers' time to spend with kids 5. Rise of preschool enrollment 6. Fewer children black and white women are having on average 2 kids
1. More time per child 2. Fewer years w/ young children enables rising LFP
7. Less leisure time for working mothers (preserving time with kids)
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non-employed mothers today only spend about 25 hours a week on housework, which is about how much employed women spent in 1965
Source: Bianchi 2000
Source: Bianchi 2000
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Gender Division of Household Labor
Let s look housework in greater detail
Less housework overall
Mechanization Lower standards Outsourcing
Gender gap in housework has declined steeply Women still do more housework then men Continuing gender division in tasks
Benefits men as there s less outdoor/repair to do
Housework by Gender
decline in overall of number hours of housework
Sayer and Bianchi (2000), p. 297
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Care Work and Housework
Care work: face-to-face activity in which one person cares for dependent other
E.g. childcare, eldercare Mostly done by women Care housework as public good product beneOits everybody.
95% of child care workers are women
Care work increasingly outsourced Problem: care work wage penalty
Care workers earn about 25% less than people with comparable non-care employment.
Women s work, normatively devalued Creates public goods, free rider problem Job satisfaction vs. wages
Care work movement
The Second Shift
Important concept
Men work a single shift in the LM; working women work a second shift at home after hours Describes gender division of HH labor until 1990s
do equal hours mean equality between men and women? total they work the same but they don't do the same stuff. women still work more at home than men
women still do more at home= second shift
Evidence for equalizing hours
Total hours worked (LM market + house) by men and women about equal in most recent studies (~65h/week) Less second shift concerns for current generation
Big question: do equal hours imply equality?
Men and women may work the same hours, but they don t perform the same tasks. Ask: who gets to decide who does which task?
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Power & Authority
Power: ability to force a person to do something even against their will
Needn t involve constant open enforcement. May look like voluntary compliance if person anticipates enforcement
someone has authority if everyone agrees they have authority
Authority: the acknowledged right of someone to supervise and control other s behavior
Recognized legitimacy, importance of social construction
Evaluation of gender division of housework often hinges on negotiating difference between power and authority among spouses
Income, Gender Division of Labor, and Power
Men s greater LM participation confers power at home
Income from market work: fungible Care work at home: not fungible (even liability)
Children as relationship-specific investments
not fungible: if household breaks apart, women's work is no longer worth the same, while a man's work is fungible (work is still impressive if household breaks) -way work gets divided makes sense in household but liability if household breaks
Exchange theory
Gender division of labor - self-reinforcing dependence of women on men (read textbook!)
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Accommodating Inequality
Hochschild: Nancy and Evan Holt
Inequitable division of labor - marital dissatisfaction "Solutions"
Family Myth Politics of (suppressed) comparison
Q: How did they get there? Q: How fair do you consider this arrangement
Leftovers
Make sure also to read passages in book that we didn t discuss explicitly today (e.g. role conflict, spillover, unemployment, care work movement etc).
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