Jo Lindsay

Money in heterosexual relationships

Money in middle-income Anglo-Celtic marriage is joint and nebulous, whereas money in cohabiting heterosexual relationships is separate and calculable. The move from cohabitation to marriage is accompanied by greater jointness in the management of money. As the nature of the couples commitment becomes more explicit in marriage, money becomes more nebulous and less calculable. However, in both marriage and cohabitation, the questions of equality, power and control are blocked so that the reality of womens lower income does not challenge the popular discourse of marriage and cohabitation being equal partnerships. The secular rituals of the marital joint account and purposive pooling in cohabitation channel information to reduce the gap between ideology and experience on the one hand, and the contradictions between coexisting ideologies on the other. These conclusions are based on two separate qualitative studies of 16 married couples and 15 cohabiting couples in Mel bourne, between 1991 and 1994.

Between provisioning and consuming?: Children, mothers and ‘childhood obesity’

Abstract Contemporary Western societies focus considerable policy and media attention on the ‘epidemic of childhood obesity’. In this paper we examine the mobilisation of notions of responsibility and consumption in these discussions, and consider the implications they have for women as mothers. In particular, we are interested to explore the potential conflicts mothers face as care providers and nurturers when responsible care is framed as withholding or managing the food consumption of children. We argue that the competing discursive frameworks around mothers’ food provision invite further theorisation that explicitly addresses nourishment and consumption as elements of maternal practice and care. We draw on the work of Neysmith and Reitsma-Street (2005) regarding ‘provisioning’ to undertake a critical examination of the discourses in the ‘childhood obesity’ epidemic, with particular attention to Australian media and policy discussions. According to Neysmith and Reitsma-Street, mothers are central to social ‘provisioning’, that is, the labour that secures the necessities of life. This provisioning framework captures paid market work and unpaid caring labour, policy settings and social locations, allowing for a rich conceptualisation of the conditions mothers negotiate as they provide for their children. Taking up the possibilities of this framework, we argue that, insofar as health risks and responsibilities are largely individualised, mothering is framed as primarily about giving, and childhood obesity is considered a disease of affluence and over-consumption, imperatives for maternal provisioning and nurture are potentially in conflict with critiques of consumption and excess.

Freeing Time? The ‘Family Time Economies’ of Nurses

This study uses the ‘family time economies’ concept for a nuanced investigation of family work-care experiences in 20 Australian nursing families. The family time economy captures information on the management and coordination of work and care responsibilities in families. Our study investigates how nurses were utilizing nursing flexibility to support time for caring for their families. We report on couple interview research which offered important insights into how shift work and family time are described and negotiated between partners caring for children. The study shows that the complex work schedules generated by shift work are reflected in domestic life, as nurses and their partners use available employment flexibility to ensure they have time for family care. The ‘taylorized’ allotment of time within the family competed with the desire to make, and preserve, free and unstructured family time, reflecting the incursion of, and resistance to, industrial temporalities in the familial sphere.

The intersections of work time and care time: nurses' and builders' family time economies

In post-industrial societies labour market de-regulation, the growth of non-standard work schedules and shifting gender patterns in the paid labour market are re-shaping family care practices and work/family balance. In this article, the work/family arrangements and practices of nurses are compared with those of builders in Melbourne, Australia. The concept of family time economies is used to explore the intersections of work time and family time. Some change in traditional gender divisions of labour was evident in the nurses’ families but in the builders’ families more traditional gender specialization was displayed. The article contends that the organization of work time shapes the temporal structures of family life. Gendered patterns of employment in sex-segregated industries intersect with gendered family care practices in complicated and sometimes contradictory ways, but gendered differences at work and at home have a significant influence on how time for paid work and care is distributed between parents.

‘There’s something wrong with you’:: How young people choose abstinence in a heavy drinking culture

Contemporary universities in Western democracies are renowned for heavy drinking youth cultures. In this context, abstinence is ‘accountable’ behaviour that requires justification. Some previous research has reported accounts of why young people choose not to drink and the social consequences, but there is limited research on how they achieve abstinence in a heavy drinking culture. Drawing on Heller’s notion of choosing oneself and Giddens’ concept of reflexive choice making, we show how young non-drinking Australian university students emphasize abstinence as an individual lifestyle choice, show determined strength in their decision not to drink and report eventual acceptance from their peers. The non-drinkers in our research use some similar accounts noted in other research such as ‘being sporty’ or ‘focused on their studies’, yet they do not position themselves as part of an alternative subculture such as those in straight edge or religious groups. They choose their abstinent selves both in an existential sense and as an act of everyday self-identity. We argue that the choice of abstinence needs to be viewed as a part of a positive claim to identity, alongside other alternative ways of being for university students.

Surnaming children born to lesbian and heterosexual couples: displaying family legitimacy to diverse audiences

Surnaming practices are a case study of change and continuity in patrilineal conventions in families and also alert us to the challenges of negotiating familial identities in an era of family diversity. Using data from two Australian sources, 430,753 Victorian birth registrations and 43 in-depth interviews with heterosexual and lesbian parents, we explore continuity and breaks with convention in surnaming children. For married and unmarried heterosexual couples, the dominant surnaming practice was for children to take their father’s name. By contrast, several surnaming strategies were more popular among lesbian couples including: using hyphenated or double-barrelled surnames, using the birth or non-birth mother’s surname or creating a new name for the family. Despite these differences, we contend that through their surnaming decisions both lesbian and heterosexual couples are concerned with displaying the legitimacy of their parental relationships to extended family and institutional audiences. For unmarried heterosexual couples, surnames display ‘intact’ families and paternal commitment whereas for lesbian couples the legitimacy concern is the recognition of the same-sex couple as parents.

First names and social distinction: Middle-class naming practices in Australia

Naming practices provide a novel way to explore contemporary gender and class processes in Australia. Names are important everyday symbols of social location and signify family history, gender, class, ethnicity and religion. In an individualised society a name is the ultimate personal ‘brand’ and is used to locate children in social space. In this article we draw on qualitative interviews with 41 parents to focus on class and gender distinctions in naming practices. Naming a child was considered to be an important responsibility and names were viewed as central to identity and social classification. Through our exploration of naming preferences and judgements by middle-class parents, contemporary processes of social distinction come to light. Discussion of name choices illustrated parental aspirations and fears and the drawing of symbolic class-, gender- and sexuality-based cultural boundaries in Australia.