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 | | The Second Shift by Arlie Hochschild, Anne Machung ISBN-10: 9780142002926 ISBN-10: 0-14-200292-5 ISBN-13: 9780142002926 ISBN-13: 978-0-14-200292-6 Paperback 2003-04-29 Penguin (Non-Classics) Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description Fifteen years after its first publication, The Second Shift remains just as important and relevant today as it did then. As the majority of women entered the workforce, sociologist and Berkeley professor Arlie Hochschild was one of the first to talk about what really happens in dual-career households. Many people were amazed to find that women still did the majority of childcare and housework even though they also worked outside the home. Now, in this updated edition with a new introduction from the author, we discover how much things have, or have not, changed for women today. | ||
Reviews | ||
What about the THIRD shift? That's right the third shift. On a schoolteacher's salary, I was able to parlay what little extra money there was into 5 rental homes. I took on a lot of extra after school work to get the seed money (down payments) and I learned plumbing, electrical, carpentry and building code in my off-work (i.e. off day job) time. No princess, this was not a hobby, it was ball-busting WORK. No, I never fixed dinner but I fixed everything else. No, I did not wash dishes but I installed a lot of dishwashers. No, I did not help out with our kids show and tell but I spent countless hours showing homes to prospective tenants. A female colleague of mine once called my investing my "entreprenerial adventure". Yeah, doing all this after my day job was about as much of an adventure as fixing dinner is "cavorting in the kitchen" to you ladies. And yes, since my family benefits from it, it counts as work FOR MY FAMILY, not my hobby. Fixing things is my hobby as much as fixing dinner is yours. I like NOTHING about investing my time and sweat equity in real estate except the money it makes my FAMILY. It counts as housework when you give up evenings after a full-time day job to manage investments. If you really want the straight scoop on this topic read "Why Men Make More" as another reviewer suggested. The guy who wrote that is like a modern day Copernicus - telling people what is true whether they want to hear it or not. | ||
Great book! I read this book because I am working in a doctoral program and wanted to read a good example of qualitative research. However, I enjoyed this book so much that I am passing it along to friends who have no interest in academia. It is an excellent analysis of the negotiations that occur in many marriages regarding housework and childcare. The book was fascinatiing and depresssing - it made me wonder how we will ever find real equality in our homes when the majority of marriages do not have anything close to equality. I would recommend this book to anyone thinking of getting married - it is a great thing to start a discussion with a fiance. | ||
Good book Using it for a paper - excellent book for discussion of the conflict between family versus career for women. | ||
Interesting point, but lacks support for her theories As a student of sociology, we are taught two things when formulating theories: Never take your theory as being true. Always assume it is false. You must justify your theory with evidence that is not necessarily statistical, but should NOT be anecdotal. Which is the first problem with this book. She does not provide any statistical measures other than the trend that more women are entering the workplace. She gathers information across a broad spectrum of sources, but does not provide any evidence showing an overall trend that indeed, women are addled by a "second shift". When measuring domestic labor, she does not take into account other tasks which could be done by a male; for instance, household maintenance, technical work, etc etc, the hours involved, and the difficulty of said labor. Instead, she focuses solely on the tasks that are done by women. Furthermore, interpreting the findings of your data are just as important as the quality of the data itself. She assumes that men and women are bound by different social roles, and therefore women are relegated to doing housework despite entering the workplace. However, this is not necessarily true; it's only an assumption. For example, data has shown that african american males make up over 99% of the US prison population. Do you think that, automatically, the first conclusion should be that african americans commit more crime? she doesn't bother to explore other reasons why women are committed to doing housework: it could be that women simply elect to do so because they find these roles the most comfortable for themselves. Granted, that could be a product of socialization, but this is a very troubling aspect of sociology in general: is your behavior predetermined by society, or is it a product of your own choices? it seems as if she has the answer to this question, a question that has haunted academia in the past as well as the present. I guess no one bothered to inform us that she has the answer to one of the greatest philosophical questions of all time. And she provides no evidence that it's a product of socialization. Rather, she again simply assumes that this is true, despite how problematic it is for the validity of her thesis. Lastly, the answer to her problem is disagreeable. She says that the nuclear family has become an antiquated notion in a world without gender roles. She offers a solution to struggling families: rely more on communities for support and solidarity. Uh, what? if anything, what allowed males and females to transcend the roles of the nuclear family is the breakdown of local communities and the concentration of people into cities. After people moved to cities is when women entered the workplace en masse. It's a nice, quaint picture of American life, but what sustained the nuclear family was the dependency on communities. | ||
as always Hochschild reads wonderfully. Hochschild makes a wonderful job in bringing us into the lives of these couples. Her insights and comments on why people act a certain way are really great. I can't help but lose myself in her writing- often with tears in my eyes about why patriarchy is so embedded within us. | ||