A gender strategy is a plan of action through which a person tries to solve problems at hand, given the cultural notions of gender at play. To pursue a gender strategy, a man draws on beliefs about manhood and womanhood, beliefs that are forged in early child­hood and thus anchored to deep emotions. He makes […]

E ach marriage bears the footprints of economic and cultural trends which originate far outside marriage. A rise in inflation which erodes the earning power of the male wage, an expanding service sector which opens up jobs for women, new cultural im­ages—like the woman with the flying hair—that make the work­ing mother seem exciting, all […]

The women I interviewed seemed to be far more deeply torn be­tween the demands of work and family than were their husbands. They talked with more animation and at greater length than their husbands about the abiding conflict between them. Busy as they were, women more often brightened at the idea of yet another in­terviewing […]

With my research associates Anne’ Machung and Elaine Kaplan, I interviewed fifty couples very intensively, and I observed in a dozen homes. We first began interviewing artisans, students, and professionals in Berkeley, California, in the late 1970s. This was at the height of the womens movement, and many of these couples were earnestly and self-consciously […]

S he is not the same woman in each magazine advertisement, but she is the same idea. She has that working-mother look as she strides forward, briefcase in one hand, smiling child in the other. Literally and figuratively, she is moving ahead. Her hair, if long, tosses behind her; if it is short, it sweeps […]

But something else is new as well—a new double-bind for men. On one hand, over the last quarter century, men have been urged to become the “new American man”—a lovingly involved father, a considerate husband who shares chores with his working wife, and a major family breadwinner as well. And many men have come forward […]

In some ways, a combination of social trends is actually moving us farther away from a solution, while a change in male attitude seems at the same time to be moving us forward—until recently. Since this book first appeared, the proportion of couples who work two jobs has increased. At the same time, the workweek […]

After The Second Shift originally appeared in 1989, an earthquake hit the San Francisco Bay Area where we live. My birthday fol­lowed soon afterward. My husband, who is both a journalist and an irrepressible practical joker, surprised me by writing and print­ing a mock edition of the scandal-laden National Enquirer, A ban­ner headline read hochschild […]

I owe thanks in many directions. First of all, thanks to the National Institutes of Mental Health for generous funding of this research and to Elliot Liebow of the Center for the Study of Metropoli­tan Problems for administrative support. Many thanks to Troy Duster, Chair of the Institute for the Study of Social Change, and […]

When I was thirty-one, a moment occurred that crystallized the concern that drives this book. At the time, I was an assistant pro­fessor in the sociology department at the University of California, Berkeley, and the mother of a three-month-old child. I wanted to nurse the baby—and to continue to teach. Several arrangements were possible, but […]