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Preface
- Rutgers University Press
- Chapter
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Preface This project has its beginnings in my graduate-school experience. I was close to finishing my course work in sociology,and wondering how to go about choosing a topic for my dissertation. I knew I was interested in doing work that examined the influence of gender on family relationships . One of my advisors suggested that I read Arlie Hochschild’s “new” book, The Second Shift. Of course, Hochschild’s findings are now widely known, as her work was well received both inside and outside the academy . She documented the staggering load that women in dual-earner families face as they continue to be responsible for housework and child care. She gave us a concrete way to think about this double burden by talking about the “extra month of twenty-four-hour days” that wives put into domestic labor, in comparison to their husbands.The vignettes she presented brought to life the difficulties these women faced in trying to balance work and family obligations; this load taxed women both physically and emotionally and often put a tremendous strain on their marriages. As a young woman and scholar, I was stunned and depressed by her report because it was too easy to see my future in Hochschild’s couples.At the time I read The Second Shift, I was twenty-five, had just celebrated my fourth wedding anniversary, and had a six-month-old daughter. My husband was in medical school,and though it was a struggle to be in training at the same time (and to be new parents), we were preparing for professions that we both wanted to pursue, and we knew all the sacrifices and hard work would eventually be worth it. In short, we were paying our dues, on our way to“having it all”—the perfect balance between work and family— and here was Hochschild, telling me that it was all a lie. Fortunately, my personal pessimism was temporary—eroded by my husband’s continued commitment to being an involved father and doing his share at home. However, I remained disturbed that women’s incomes did not seem to “buy” them very much in their private lives.After all, the ix women’s movement promoted higher education and employment as the keys to personal empowerment for women, as well as increased status and power within marriage. But as I began to review the literature on marital power, it became clear that working outside the home had not done much to increase women’s power within the home.Women did not seem to have much more influence in decision making or financial matters in their marriages, and they were not getting much relief from housework and child care. Employed wives were getting a raw deal. I started asking, Under what circumstances would it be possible, or likely, for women to get a better deal in their relationships? It seemed clear that simply earning an income was not enough to ensure equitable treatment. Perhaps this was because women typically earned a rather small fraction of the family’s total income. If this was the reason, then what would happen if women earned the bulk of the family’s income? If men have enjoyed more control in their marriages and relief from domestic labor based on their income advantage, could women with the same kind of advantage enjoy the same privileges? As the rest of the book makes clear, the short answer to this question is no.The higher-earning wives profiled are unable or unwilling to use their substantial incomes to dramatically alter the balance of power in their marriages, and I admit that I am disappointed to report these findings . I did not set out to tell the story of the intransigence of gender inequality in marriage. On the contrary, I thought I would be profiling gender revolutionaries who could show the rest of us how men’s dominance could be dismantled or undermined. I did not expect to find marriages dominated by women, but it seemed likely that wives could use their substantial resources to bargain for more help on the home front and more equal control over household decisions. Surely their incomes would be important enough to their families that these women would be in a better position to negotiate more equitable treatment. However, much like Hochschild, I found that my optimistic assumptions about the progress toward gender equality were largely unwarranted. Rather than toppling the gender structure, these couples with higher-earning...