Postindustrial parenthood: Gender ideology and family strategy among low-wage hospital workers.

The last quarter of the 20th century in the United States has been characterized by a shift from an industrial- to a service-based economy. How has this affected family life and the way in which women and men think about themselves as mothers and fathers? I address this question through an examination of how low-wage service workers at two hospitals resolve the work/family dilemma. Data for this study are derived from qualitative interviews with 47 working women and men who were raising small children. I found that the workplace did not accommodate family life, particularly for low-wage workers. Parents were forced to construct their own creative strategies to meet the demands of work and family. Four general strategies predominated; these were (1) gender specialization; (2) shiftwork; (3) kin networks; and (4) persistant traditionalism. The structure of the workplace favored a gender specialization strategy and made alternative strategies more difficult to pursue. The adoption of particular family strategies had implications for gender at home and at work. The gender specialization strategy tended to reproduce assumptions about essential differences between women and men. The shiftwork strategy had the potential to transform gender relations in the home, as fathers learn to behave more like mothers; however, this did not occur in all households which adopted this strategy. The family network strategy, when successful, permitted women to mother with less fatigue and without a mandatory attachment to a male provider. Finally, the rarely adopted traditional strategy was used only by families with an exceptional, often religious, conviction that men and women's responsibilities were entirely distinct. Decisions about work and family could not be understood without a consideration of race, which influenced both women and men's constructions of ideal motherhood and fatherhood and contributed to the choice of particular family strategies. The stories told by working parents illustrated the reciprocal causality between gender ideology and family strategy; ideology clearly affected the choice of family strategy, but the experience of living out particular strategies sometimes transformed parents' ideology.PhDSociologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/105087/1/9635507.pdfDescription of 9635507.pdf : Restricted to UM users only