Chapter 13 Balancing Work and Family Life

Summary

This chapter looks at the impact of employment on the family. It observes trends in employment by type of employment, by income relations, and gender. It recounts the various roles and/or functions of mother and father in terms of their earnings and physical proximity. Furthermore, it analyzes interactions between adults and workplaces with regard to inequality and caring for dependents.

People work in order to support themselves and others and also to derive meaning and personal satisfaction from their position. People who work have different experiences in the workforce based on both their positions and their family dynamics. Some jobs are shift-work, where there is no set work schedule but rather one that changes periodically. There exist, of course, income differences among jobs. The chapter discusses this influencing the (i) various economic roles of an individual within a family, (ii) the income gap by gender, and (iii) the income gap by economic class.

(i) There are a number of combinations that can be made among the following criteria: who works for a career, who has or gets paid for a career, the physical proximity of spouses, and the unpaid or domestic labor that a spouse does. These combinations result in different roles with different social values and connotations. Roles include breadwinners, homemakers, two-person single careers, stay-at-home dads, duel earners, trailing spouses, and commuter marriages.

(ii) There exists a large income gap between male and female workers, both generally and controlling for the incoming differences is types of career fields. Men make more money than women. A number of theories have been proposed for this, some deemed more accurate than others. Concerning women in the workforce, the chapter also discussing how women are working more now than historically, but that most recently there has been a decline in female workers due to the adoption of traditional gender roles. The chapter also discusses practices of discrimination in pay, position and benefits, sexual harassment, and the mother penalty.

(iii) There also exists a huge income gap between the mega-wealthy and the middle class, with the richest 1% of Americans earning 34% of all the nations wealth.

The converse of working peoples being supportive and happy is that people who do not work cannot support themselves and have less personal satisfaction. Along these lines, the chapter discusses unemployed, impoverished, and homeless peoples. Not being able to support themselves or others leads to financial strain on these peoples families that could possibly further lead to the disintegration of the family. Concerning unemployment, the chapter shows the rising rates and makes some conjectures as to why, including offshoring and mass layoffs, discouraged workers, and deindustrialization. Concerning poverty, the chapter describes the disputes over the issue of defining the poverty line. Then it discusses how poverty may be from either as a culture that perpetuates its own values and beliefs (as in Lewis' culture of poverty), or as from longstanding societal factors where poverty functions for classes of people who are not in poverty. Concerning homelessness, the book provides surprising demographics on homeless peoples; for example, that 13% are veterans and that 30% are families with children.

The chapter also describes the interactions between spouses and their workplace with regard to their responsibilities to care for dependents, whether they be children or elders. The general message behind this section of the chapter is that these interactions, which are often mediated FMLA policies, often fail to let those peoples depended to leave work. It further stresses that America is one of few developed countries without Child Care policy/programs.

What I learned

The chapter surprised me several times – first as I said in its demographics of homeless peoples, second in its claim that women/families are reverting to more traditional (gender) roles. I plan on researching for more information on this.

Questions/Concerns

It is interesting to think that the direction of affect is not just from employment or the economy to the family, but also the other way around – from the family, including what the family as a collectivity needs, wants, or altogether values, to what businesses are successful and economic outcomes.

It is also interesting to distinguish between paid labor or employment and unpaid labor. This distinction for me leads to the following question: how does family relate to the (rather Marxian) tagline that one should ‘live to work, not work to live’? What practical implications would it have for the family that one did not have to sell their labor in order to survive?