Kathleen Gerson

Overworked Individuals or Overworked Families? Explaining Trends in Work, Leisure, and Family Time

Although debates over the growth of work-family conflict tend to center on the experiences of employed parents and dual-earner couples, analyses of trends in working time typically focus on individual workers. We reexamine the debates regarding the growth of working versus leisure time and then analyze trends in working time by focusing on the combined paid work of family members. We use the 1970 and 1997 Current Population Surveys to investigate the distribution of working hours across dual-earner couples and single parents. Our findings demonstrate that the shift from male-breadwinner to dual-earner couples and single-parent households, rather than changes in the length of the workweek per se, have created growing concern for balancing work and family. This analysis suggests that debates over conflicts between work and family need to focus more on the combined work schedules of family members than on changes in individual work patterns.

Moral Dilemmas, Moral Strategies, and the Transformation of Gender Lessons from Two Generations of Work and Family Change

Modern societies have reconciled the dilemma between self-interest and caring for others by dividing women and men into different moral categories. Women have been expected to seek personal development by caring for others, while men care for others by sharing the rewards of their independent work achievements. Changes in work and family life have undermined this framework but have failed to offer a clear avenue for creating new resolutions. Instead, contradictory social changes have produced new moral dilemmas. Women must now seek economic self-sufficiency even as they continue to bear responsibility for the care of others. Men can reject the obligation to provide for others, but they face new pressures to become more involved fathers and partners. Facing these dilemmas, young women and men must develop innovative moral strategies to renegotiate work-family conflicts and transform traditional views of gender, but persisting institutional obstacles thwart their emerging aspirations to balance personal autonomy with caring for others. To overcome these obstacles, we need to create more humane, less gendered theoretical and social frameworks for understanding and apportioning moral obligation.

Understanding work and family through a gender lens

Since gender change is reshaping work and family life, a gender lens is needed to understand work–family links and transformations. A gender lens enriches the study of work and family issues by prodding researchers to transcend gender stereotypes, to see gender as an institution, to recognize the multifaceted nature of recent social change, and to acknowledge the strengths and needs of diverse family forms. A gender framework also helps researchers focus on the link between individuals and institutions, the dynamics of social and individual change, and the structural and cultural tensions created by inconsistent change. This framework is illustrated with selected findings from my research on young womens and mens experiences growing up in diverse families and their emerging strategies for integrating family and work.

Unpacking Americans’ Views of the Employment of Mothers and Fathers Using National Vignette Survey Data SWS Presidential Address

Drawing on findings from an original national survey experiment, we unpack Americans’ views on the employment of mothers and fathers with young children. This study provides a fuller account of contemporary attitudes than is available from surveys such as the General Social Survey. After seeing vignettes that vary the circumstances in which married mothers, single mothers, and married fathers make decisions about paid work and caregiving, the respondents’ views swing from strong support to deep skepticism about a parent’s work participation, depending on the parent’s specific job conditions and family circumstances. When a mother, whether married or single, is satisfied with her job and her family depends on her income, respondents overwhelmingly support the option to work. Conversely, when a father is dissatisfied with his job and the family does not depend on his income, respondents generally support the option to stay home. These findings provide insight regarding the “gender stall” thesis by showing that Americans’ views depend heavily on the circumstances they believe parents are facing. This more nuanced view highlights the importance of social context in the allocation of paid work and caregiving for both mothers and fathers.

Viewing 21st Century Motherhood Through a Work-Family Lens

Publisher Summary A demographic and social revolution has propelled most mothers and would-be mothers to join the paid labor force and establish committed work ties over the course of their lives. This irrefutable social shift has transformed the experience of motherhood and undermined mid-20th century assumptions that home and work are inherently separate, gendered spheres. Despite these vast social changes—or perhaps because of them the idea of a “working mother” remains highly contested. Work and family remain the two most prominent axes on which womens lives are structured, and equally clearly, they continue to be viewed as “oppositional” domains. Through a review of the burgeoning scholarship on motherhood, it considers how a work–family framework can expand our understanding of contemporary mothering and help explain and potentially resolve the contradictions in womens lives. This chapter examines contemporary variations in motherhood, with an eye to disentangling prevailing myths about past patterns from genuinely new developments. It considers some of the persisting theoretical debates about the nature, causes, and consequences of mothering practices and beliefs, asking how these debates frame our current understanding of contemporary motherhood. The gendered and cultural role of mothers and what it means to engage in “mothering,” and caring are still often seen to be in direct conflict with earning. That women are penalized on the work and earning front for engaging in care work, and they are criticized for their care work when devoting too much time to work.

Expansionist Theory Expanded: Integrating Sociological and Psychological Perspectives on Gender, Work, and Family Change

The expansionist approach continues to offer a powerful framework for recognizing the benefits of blending paid work and caretaking, but it remains undeveloped. I propose to expand the argument by adding a sociological perspective that focuses on the social contexts that either enable or inhibit the integration of paid work and family tasks. Drawing on my research with several generations of American women and men, I show that the successful blending of work and caretaking depends on having supportive social contexts at home and in the workplace. To adequately address the theoretical and policy challenges of the still-unfolding gender revolution, we need to refine our theories of work–family change to take account of the varying resources people possess and to develop social policies that address the institutional obstacles to successfully integrating work and care.

No Man's Land: Men's Changing Commitments to Family and Work.

Mens Quiet Revolution Introduction The Changing Contours of American Manhood * Paths Of Change The Child and the Man Turning Toward Breadwinning Turning Toward Autonomy Turning Toward Family Involvement Dilemmas of Breadwinning and Autonomy Dilemmas of Involved Fatherhood * The Causes And Consequences Of Change The Myth of Masculinity Men and the Politics of Gender