Arlie Russell Hochschild - The Second Shift, Chapter 4, "Joey's Problem"

In The Second Shift, Hochschild studies the ways in which couples negotiate housework. She refers to this work as the second shift that most women put in, approx. an extra month of 24 hour days per year. She discusses, in-depth, several families who have different gender ideologies (traditional, egalitarian, and transitional) and how they work out who does what work. She points out gender strategies which are the ways people attempt to apply their gender ideologies to their lives. The economy of gratitude is also important. Often, the struggle between husbands and wives is more over the exchange of gratitude than over who does what. Finally, family myths are an important factor. These myths help manage tension between husbands and wives. For instance, a couple with traditional ideology may be forced out of necessity to be more egalitarian in practice. Family myths allow the couple to maintain an illusion of traditional gender roles while do what is necessary for family survival. (These concepts are introduced in Chapter 2 and used throughout the book).

Chapter 4

This chapter is about Nancy and Evan Holt and gives a detailed description of their family's life. Evan has a traditional gender ideology and Nancy is more egalitarian. Hochschild describes the conflict that results from these differences and how the Holts resolve it.

The first thing Hochschild finds troublesome about the Holts is "Joey's Problem". Joey is their 4-year-old son and he has an extreme attachment to Nancy as she has to him. She is completely devoted to his every move, while Evan has a significant emotional distance from their son. The story that the Holts give for this problem is the natural oedipal attachment of a son to his mother. Hochschild, however, finds this explanation unsatisfactory and begins to look at the problem as a symptom of the tension between Nancy and Evan and the conflict of their gender ideologies.

Nancy believed that her life should be a happy balance between work and family. She fears the traditional marriage because she grew up watching her mother's depression and position of subordination as a housewife. Her biggest fear is that if Evan does not help with the housework, he will expect her to serve him as her father expected her mother to.

Evan, on the other hand, was happy to support Nancy's work as a social worker, as long as he did not have to change his own life. Her decision to work outside the home should not mean that he has to work more in the house. She makes 2/3rd of his salary and even Nancy admitted that they could do without it if necessary. Sharing the second shift meant a lowering of Evan's standard of living. He would help out, but would not commit to sharing.

Hochschild suspects that two other beliefs also fueled Evan's resistance. First, a suspicion that Nancy would dominate him if he shared the housework and second, that she was avoiding taking care of him. He felt he was offering Nancy a gift by giving her the chance to stay home, but Nancy did not see this offer as a gift because of her own strong feelings about the importance of work. Also, Evan had a weaker sense of career than Nancy. She truly enjoyed her work, but Evan did not feel this joy about selling furniture to salesmen. After about seven years of marriage, the tension came to a head and divorce became an option. The struggle entered their sex life and they became frightened. Nancy took stock and asked herself "'Why wreck a marriage over a dirty frying pan?' Is it really worth it?"(pg. 43).

Upstairs-Downstairs: A Family Myth as "Solution"

A dramatic release of tension occurred not long after this crisis. The solution: Nancy did the upstairs housework and Evan did the downstairs. This created the illusion of equal sharing when in reality the "upstairs" included the entire house and the "downstairs" meant the car, garage, and dog. Evan had won. Nancy had given up in exhaustion and found Evan to be so good in other ways that it did not seem worth it to throw the marriage away because of this conflict. This illusion allowed Nancy to feel that she was the kind of woman whose husband did not abuse her and avoided the truth of the matter that Evan had quietly but solidly refused to share. Once the upstairs-downstairs myth was taken up, the confrontations ended and were nearly forgotten. But Hochschild argues that the suppressed conflict lived on as "Joey's Problem".

Nancy's "Program" To Sustain the Myth

Nancy had to do a lot of complex "emotion work" to maintain the idea that everything was fine when, in fact, she had lost the battle. Most importantly, she had to believe the upstairs-downstairs myth and accept the arrangement that she truly felt was unfair. It was a matter of denial, but also a matter of intuitive genius. She had to disassociate the unfairness in the second shift from the inequity in their marriage and marriage in general. She had to decrease the area of anger-inducing territory. Now she got mad if Evan did not take care of the dog. She could still be a feminist and an egalitarian, and believe in equal sharing of housework, but she anchored these beliefs on a more minor matter: Evan's care for the dog. For Evan, also, the care of the dog became extremely important, a fetish. Hochschild notes that other men also have second shift fetishes (baking pies or bread, grilling fish, etc.). These men substitute a single act for a multitude of chores. It was a token. Nancy also had other strategies such as reducing her workload to halftime and to avoid comparing her leisure time to Evan's.

Suppressing the Politics of Comparison

In the past, Nancy compared her responsibilities, her identity, and her life to Evan's. Now, to avoid resentment, she compared herself to other working mothers and by this standard she was doing great. She also compared herself to single women who she thought of as a completely different category than married women. She compared Evan to other married men. Was he more or less helpful than other husbands? Evan argued that, compared to most men, he did more housework. Most men being his old friends who had traditional marriages. He was given credit for doing more than other men rather than doing the same as Nancy. The economy of gratitude fits in here. By comparing Evan to more traditional men, Nancy felt a lot of gratitude towards Evan because his support was so rare in the world. Evan, on the other hand, did not feel that grateful to Nancy for her work around the house. In fact, he thought she wasn't doing enough.

Another result of this "solution" is that Nancy became possessive of the home: "my kitchen", "my son", etc. She could then be the winner: she got the house and the child, Evan only got the garage and the dog. Their division of the second shift became rationalized as a result of their personalities rather than a struggle. Nancy was more energetic, Evan was not oriented to domestic work as a result of his upbringing.

How Many Holts?

Finally, Hochschild argues that the Holts were typical of many two-job couples because "their family life had become the shock absorber for a stalled revolution whose origin lay far outside it- in economic and cultural trends that bear very differently on men and women" (pg. 55). On the other hand, they were atypical because Nancy pushed much hard than most women to get her husband to share the housework. Evan pursued passive resistance with more tenacity than most men and allowed himself to become more marginalized in his son's life than most fathers do. Hochschild sees the Holts as an extreme case that can "tell us a great deal about the subtle ways a couple can encapsulate the tension caused by a struggle over the second shift without resolving the problem or divorcing" (pg. 57). In short, they created a peace through the use of family myth and a lot of rationalization and denial on Nancy's part.

Key Words

-family myth

-gender ideology (traditional, egalitarian, transitional)

-gratitude