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Chapter 5: The Costs and Benefi ts of Family Ties
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102 Chapter 5 The Costs and Benefits of Family Ties Although researchers have examined the relationship between gender and work networks (Aldrich and Reese 1994; Brass 1985, 1992), few have included the effects of family relations on work networks in their analyses.The social science literature that does exist in this area largely suggests that family ties limit women’s opportunities to form work networks . For example, researchers have argued that professional women who are wives and mothers may “pay the price of being defined as uncommitted” to their careers (Saltzman Chafetz 1997; see also Lorber 1989). With regard to ties with those in higher-level positions, Moore (1987) finds that married men with children name more advisors as “close ties” than women in the same situation. As more women become involved in corporate lobbying, and because work networks are crucial in establishing strong business-government ties, it is important to ask whether and how family ties affect work experiences and interactions. This chapter examines gender differences in family relations and responsibilities among corporate lobbyists and explores the effects of these differences on work networks.To what extent do marriage and family create obstacles to interacting with key people in government and business? Are married women, or women The Costs and Benefits of Family Ties 103 with children, limited in the particular kinds of networking in which they engage? For example, are they less likely to attend social events as compared with talk on the phone with key people in business and government? More generally, for both corporate lobbyists and legislative staff, how does the character of women’s family connections limit or enhance their chances to establish workplace interactions? Family Ties: Expressive or Instrumental? Much of the work and family literature argues that women are limited in the workplace as a result of an unequal division of domestic labor. Researchers generally agree that women shoulder the brunt of a variety of domestic work, ranging from direct forms of housework and childcare (Coverman 1989; Ferree 1991; Manke et al. 1994; Pleck 1985; Saltzman Chafetz 1997; Shelton and John 1993;Vanek 1983; Wharton 1994), kinkeeping (DiLeonardo 1987; Gerstel and Gallagher 1990), and the emotion work involved in all these activities (Hochschild 1983). Even when employed, women’s share of family work far exceeds men’s (Coverman 1989; Pleck 1985; Reskin and Padavic 2002; South and Spitze 1994). It has been argued further that dual-career couples negotiate a relatively egalitarian division of labor in the home (Hertz 1986). Moreover, Gerstel and Gross suggest that some married women professionals might be more productive in their professions than their single counterparts. But these researchers also argue that “typically these women feel desperately pressed for time, giving up their own leisure and sleep to meet demands of both employment and family. Unlike men, these women discover that their job and family constantly intrude on each other” (Gerstel and Gross 1989, 107, 108). Others suggests that, even though professional women may have relatively egalitarian ideologies,“surface ideology,” actual feelings, and, ultimately, practice may collide (Hochschild 1983; see alsoYogev 1984). [44.221.46.132] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 17:11 GMT) 104 Th e B e s t - K e p t S e c r e t Not only is family work typically viewed by social scientists as limiting women’s success in the workplace, but relations in the home tend not to be characterized as useful in general.This is the case regardless of women’s social class.Although only certain kinds of relations in the workplace are likely to be labeled “expressive” (“friendships” with other women, for example), most relations outside the workplace, and particularly those in the home, are characterized this way (Scott 1996). The classic argument is that the spheres women and men occupy are accompanied by distinct and different roles; specifically women’s expressive specialization in the home and men’s instrumental specialization in the marketplace (Parsons and Bales 1955). An exception to this “family-as-constraint” perspective is provided by social capital theorists,who argue that family ties are potentially instrumental. Marceau (1989, 141), who studied elite families, notes that ties to well-connected relatives are important for providing useful information and resources. “Not only are the actual contacts important,” she says, but “the claims and obligations of kinship work to multiply the economic resources to which couples in this milieu have access and on which they can call.”The volume of social capital possessed by any particular...