Families at Work

by Gerstel, Naomi; Clawson, Dan; Zussman, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780826513977
• ISBN10: 0826513972
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-05-01
• Publisher: Vanderbilt Univ Pr

Summary

What is the relationship between work and family in a world where employment creates endless tensions for families and families create endless tensions for the workplace? This collection of reprinted and original articles broadens this discussion by addressing issues from the perspectives of often neglected populations: from white middle-class women with young children to people of color, to poor families, to the new sorts of families gays and lesbians are struggling to construct, to fathers, to older children.To discuss work and family is also to discuss gender. Ranging from California's Silicon Valley to a remote fishing village in the northeast, part one shows how new work arrangements have created new expectations for what it means to be a woman or a man, and how slow and uneven the pace of change can be. Nowhere are the tensions of work and family more potent than around childcare. Part two takes up these tensions, showing how various "solutions" to caring for children of all ages (whether infants or teenagers) create new problems. Parts three and four turn outward to show how the new relationships between families and work are changing the relationships between families and the communities in which they live and generating new social policy dilemmas.

Author Biography

Naomi Gerstel, Dan Clawson, and Robert Zussman Are Professors of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Naomi Gerstel
Dan Clawson
Robert Zussman
Part One Family Labor and the Construction of Gender	1	(108)
Being the ``Go-To Guy'': Fatherhood, Masculinity, and the Organization of Work in Silicon Valley	5	(27)
Marianne Cooper
My Wife Can Tell Me Who I Know: Methodological and Conceptual Problems in Studying Fathers	32	(27)
Annette Lareau
Constructing Gender and Occupational Segregation: A Study of Women and Work in Fishing Communities	59	(23)
Carrie L. Yodanis
Domesticity and the Political Economy of Lesbigay Families	82	(27)
Christopher Carrington
Part Two Employment and the Care of Children	109	(90)
Halving It All: The Mother and Mr. Mom	113	(26)
Francine Deutsch
I'm Here, but I'm There: The Meanings of Transnational Motherhood	139	(23)
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo
Ernestine Avila
Using Kin for Childcare: Embedment in the Socioeconomic Networks of Extended Families	162	(19)
Lynet Uttal
Work-Family Issues of Mothers of Teenage Children	181	(18)
Demie Kurz
Part Three Family, Community, and Social Context	199	(86)
Black Picket Fences: Growing Up in Groveland	203	(22)
Mary Pattillo-McCoy
Single Mothers and Social Support: The Commitment to, and Retreat from, Reciprocity	225	(26)
Margaret K. Nelson
The Third Shift: Gender and Care Work Outside the Home	251	(15)
Naomi Gerstel
Producing Family Time: Practices of Leisure Activity Beyond the Home	266	(19)
Marjorie L. DeVault
Part Four Policy, Politics, and Working Families	285	(72)
Challenges for Studying Care after AFDC	289	(13)
Stacey Oliker
Living with Violence: Women's Reliance on Abusive Men in Their Transitions from Welfare to Work	302	(15)
Ellen K. Scott
Andrew S. London
Nancy A. Myers
Unions' Responses to Family Concerns	317	(26)
Naomi Gerstel
Dan Clawson
The Contradictory Effects of Work and Family on Political Activism	343	(14)
Rebecca E. Klatch
Contributors	357	(4)
Index	361