Families at Work: Expanding the Bounds

by Naomi Gerstel, Dan Clawson, Robert Zussman

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826513984
Publisher:	Vanderbilt University Press
Publication date:	05/30/2002
Edition description:	1ST
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Robert L. Zussman is Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Dan Clawson is professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and is an editor of the ASA Rose Series in Social Policy.

Naomi Gerstel is professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and is an editor of the ASA Rose Series in Social Policy.

Table of Contents

Part I: Family Labor and the Construction of Gender
1. Being the "Go-To Guy": Fatherhood, Masculinity, and the Organization of Work in Silicon Valley
Marianne Cooper
2. My Wife Can Tell Me Who I Know: Methodological and Conceptual Problems in Studying Fathers
Annette Lareau
3. Constructing Gender and Occupational Segregation: Women and Work in Fishing Communities
Carrie L. Yodanis
4. Domesticity and the Political Economy of Lesbigay Families
Christopher Carrington

Part II: Employment and the Care of Children
5. Halving It All: The Mother and Mr. Mom
Francine Deutsch
6. I'm Here, but I'm There: The Meanings of Transnational Motherhood
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila
7. Using Kin for Childcare: Embedment in the Socioeconomic Networks of Extended Families
Lynet Uttal
8. Work-Family Issues of Mothers of Teenage Children
Demie Kurz

Part III: Family, Community, and Social Context
9. Black Picket Fences: Growing Up in Groveland
Mary Pattillo-McCoy
10. Single Mothers and Social Support: The Commitment to, and Retreat from, Reciprocity
Margaret K. Nelson
11. The Third Shift: Gender and Care Work Outside the Home
Naomi Gerstel
12. Producing Family Time: Practices of Leisure Activity Beyond the Home
Marjorie L. DeVault

Part IV: Policy, Politics, and Working Families
13. Challenges for Studying Care after AFDC
Stacey Oliker
14. Living with Violence: Women's Reliance on Abusive Men in Their Transitions from Welfare to Work
Ellen K. Scott, Andrew S. London, and Nancy A. Myers
15. Unions' Responses to Family Concerns
Naomi Gerstel and Dan Clawson
16. The Contradictory Effects of Work and Family on Political Activism
Rebecca E. Klatch

Editorial Reviews

. . . vivid portrayals of the lived experience of workers in these different contexts. On their own, many are exceptionally compelling narratives. As a whole, the collection is of a consistently high standard and relevance to the book's objects.
—Labour & Industry

From the Publisher