Social acceleration and gendered time: exploring the socio-temporal structure of everyday life for working sole parents

© 2016 Dr. Danielle Deanne NockoldsThis thesis explores two key areas of scholarship in the sociology of time: theories of social acceleration in modernity and conceptualisations of gendered time. Macro theories of social acceleration emphasise the impact of social changes in paid work and leisure practices, rarely considering caring-time or caring practices. At the same time, feminist theories of gendered time, or ‘women’s time’, highlight that men and women may experience time differently; principally through responsibility for caring. Additionally, the research emphasis has been on middle-class, dual-income couples’ experiences of time. Nonetheless, while quantitative research clearly shows that combining paid work with caring responsibilities is critical in both processes of acceleration and conceptualisations of ‘women’s time’, there has been minimal consideration of how social acceleration and gendered time may intersect. This research seeks to address these shortcomings by exploring the socio-temporal structure of everyday life for Australian working sole parents and contrasting their practices and experiences with theoretical conceptualisations of time in contemporary society. Working sole parents who manage both paid work and the care of their children often without a partner’s support provide a heightened example of the intersection of paid work and care, and a valuable perspective on the socio-temporal structure of everyday life which has received limited scholarly attention. Using an empirically grounded approach based on in-depth qualitative interviews with 17 working sole mothers and 10 working sole fathers, this thesis provides a nuanced understanding of the processes that underlie both the gendering and acceleration of time. This study finds that while the temporal dimensions of paid work may be becoming more fluid, this does not necessarily apply to caring institutions and parenting practices. Caring practices are embedded in a complex web of emotional and moral concerns and are highly relational and interdependent, yet at the same time, they are enmeshed in institutional times and institutionalised practices which are routine, synchronised and often focused on clock-time. This finding diverges from conceptualisations of ‘women’s time’ as fluid, circular and contrary to clock-time. It also suggests that the theorised progressive erosion of socio-temporal structures in contemporary society is more pertinent to the practices of paid work and leisure than to the practices of caring. This thesis contends that caring practices are temporally different from paid work and leisure practices, and that they have a significant impact on the socio-temporal structure of daily life for many social actors, particularly mothers. When everyday practices are interrogated and caring-time is recognised as a separate analytical category, it is evident that the practices which embody these times are not necessarily changing in the same way as workplace and leisure practices. This thesis argues that as long as macro-level theories of temporality overlook caring practices, they will not incorporate the multiple times that exist in many women’s (and some men’s) everyday lives