HOUSEWORK AND PARENTING

Hayes: Differences between two groups in what makes them good mothers:

Stay at home moms = emphasize the quantity of time that they're investing - Even though as they're often portrayed as being lazy, they are dedicated to raising their children and spend so much time with them - Working moms = frame being a good mother in terms of quality time - Might not spend as much time as stay at home moms, but working means she can provide material things

The Household and Happiness- Study on what makes a marriage work:

Study on what makes a marriage work: - Faithfulness, sex, household chores, adequate income = top 4 aspects - Younger, less traditional, more educated men are more likely to contribute to housework - Scenario that comes closest to equality in division of labour with housework — when the man stays home and the wife is employed full time - Lesbian couples tend to be more egalitarian than gay or heterosexual couples - Gay men still think it's equitable to give the higher earner more clout

"Deviance neutralization"

The majority of all women (all classes/races) work outside the home — novel historical moment

emerging adulthood linked to growing social acceptability

Wasn't perceived as a desirable arrangement prior to the 1990s - Percentage of young adults living at home (Canada) = 40% in 1981 age 20-24 — over 60% in 2011 (steadily been rising)

Leisure gap

Ways in which men have more leisure time than women do b/c they don't have the second shift

Theoretical Explanations: gate keeping

We see a gendered divide because women are acting as gatekeepers to men's involvement in domestic tasks - Use role as household managers to restrict men's opportunities to learn housework - Why? — some power to be gained in having control over something (private sphere, gain some status) - Validating the ideology of what it means to be a good woman

Hayes: Women are stuck between a rock and a hard place with conflicting cultural expectations:

Work: emphasizes rationality, task-driven, strategic - Motherhood: about being selfless and devoted - Different types of expectations they're supposed to fulfill End up having a society organized around the assumption that women should be fully responsible for children - Idea that it's natural, not challenged

Hayes reading

argues that being this intensive and attentive requires more time, emotional labour and financial resources than any time before - Happening at a time when women's workplace demands are also unprecedented - Idea that even if you're a single mom, you're expected to work

Stalled revolution

coined by Hochschild - 1st wave feminism = about women securing rights men already had - 2nd wave = about recognizing that public and private spheres are fundamentally entangled with each other - Must transform the private sphere, not just public - Idea that with second wave feminism (60s): we still haven't addressed what's happening in the domestic sphere (even though strides have been made in the public sphere) - Found that women thought being at work was less arduous than housework & found it to be more rewarding

Adoption:

currently in N. America only 2-3% of babies born out of wedlock are given up for adoption - Historically, the number is as high as 80% (diminished social stigma currently)

"Revolving door"

cyclical back and forth between going home and living alone

Delayed Parenting:

having a first child at age 30 or older - Couples who delay parenting: more likely to be white, highly educated, work in a professional occupation, have a high income

Infertility definition:

inability to conceive after 12 months of unprotected intercourse or inability to carry pregnancy to live birth

Surrogacy

is not a new concept: oldest and most controversial reproductive technology

Relationship between how much your earn outside the home and what you have to do inside the home

might think there is a linear relationship BUT when women out-earn men, this doesn't usually occur - When women significantly out earn their husbands — they engage in deviance neutralization - Threshold where men are willing to shoulder some of the work, but there comes a point where his labour falls off - Argument: what's happening is that women are concerned about the fact that men are no longer the provider (worried it's not normative) — so they try to offset this by "doing it all" and doing all the housework as well - Even if you change the material circumstances of a couple, there's something ideologically deeper about what men and women are

Same sex vs. heterosexual parenting styles

more equitable co-parenting among homosexual parents vs. heterosexual parents - Might be differences with the intentionality of parenting — homosexual parents have to be 100% sure (can't have a child by accident)

Reproductive labour

part of human activity both material and social that is responsible for caring for the present and future labour force

Different paths

some mothers stay at home to raise children, some are working mothers - Interesting because there's still the expectation on women to intensively mother regardless

Most common-

specialist division of labour and the husband helper division

ARTs

ssisted reproductive technologies - Most common = IVF (in-vitro fertilization) - More than 3 million babies worldwide have been born this way (1st one in 1978)

Time famine

women not having enough time to do everything they want/need to

Ideological shift

— if men really see themselves as "co-providers" vs. the sole provider, and women realizing they are also an important co-provider and not just relying on her husband: progress can be made -Seeing women's material realities shifting

Strategies/Male Ploys to Resist- "Disaffiliating"

(1) Exaggerating an experience/incompetence in a clumsy way - (2) Delaying the chore, out-waiting spouse, responding unpleasantly - (3) Downplaying the need, making a substitute offering, encouraging wife

Why is this the case?

(1) No contraception (2) Use contraception incorrectly (3) Contraception fails

Other issues of fear:

* Issues of control, power and status are common for resistance * Onus often put on the women to get husband to do work by asking

What is the best theory?

* None of these theories by itself is enough — must look at all approaches * Combination of gender + resources/exchange

Housework and its Diminishing Value

** Industrialization // capitalism **

Differences in language surrounding to mother vs. to father:

- "To mother" = to care for a child, care for it, protect it, connotes nurturing - "To father" = to engage in the physical act of procreation - Suggests that fathers have little to do with his behaviour or involvement with children - E.g. when a woman is a mother — "she's a working mother" vs. we never say "working fathers": implies a cultural conceptualization around these roles

3 fears at the root:

- (1) Fear of losing decision making power - (2) Fear of losing face with family and friends - (3) Fear of losing control in the marital relationship

TEACHER-COUNSELOR

- Act in accordance with developmental models - Children viewed as extremely plastic, blank slate, unlimited potential for growth - Parent is conceptualized as being omnipotent (it's up to them), think if they do the right thing their children will be happy, intelligent and successful - Puts a lot of emphasis on nurture

(Ambert 2012) - no nonsense

- Between authoritative and authoritarian - Something we see among Black Canadians and Americans - Higher control than authoritative but more warm, nurturing than authoritarian - Parent is vigilant but caring

The Domestic Division of Labour: A Typology 1. Egalitarian, non-gendered

- Both spouses employed, both participate equally in all aspects of the house functioning and care of children - Would likely be vital, total, or passive congenial (marital types) - More likely to be childless couples than those with children

What does a child's well-being depend on?

- Children's well-being mainly depends on their relationship with parents, social/economic circumstances, etc.

Ambert 2012- Wavering-negotiation

- Could be born out of the confusion of all the views on parenting - Parents don't really guide their children or make demands of them - Negotiate with them every step of the way, don't make decisions for their child (even when they're toddlers)

3. Specialist division of labour

- Could be equitable or not, gendered or not — means that one spouse is doing a particular thing and specializing in it - E.g. man is really good at cooking and does all of it (but woman does everything else) - May end up not having an egalitarian dynamic (but might be)

Parenting Styles: Typologies (Baumrind) Authoritarian:

- Demand full obedience from children, use things like physical punishment often to control kids - Class link: commonly associated with working class parents (belief they need to do this to protect kids from harm) - Children tend to become dismissive, unable to make decisions, can be defiant - These processes reproduce these class structures

Unpaid Work

- Domestic work = meal prep, cleaning, clothing care, repairs, etc. - Help and care = child care, adult care, etc... - Other = shopping, volunteering, transportation, management, etc...

2. Lack of planning/protections

- Even when protections are in place, they don't necessarily matter - E.g. sperm donor providing financial support/acting like a father figure (controversial)

4. Gender

- Focus on material and ideological basis in which relations between men and women are produced - Housework = the symbolic enactment of gender (we "do" gender) - Housework was never neutral, it's tied up with old ideologies - Doing and not doing housework/who does it and doesn't = an expression of power - Enactment of a relationship of power - To some extent women gain certain kinds of power from embodying certain qualities - Everything is through a gendered lens - Reality = women don't have the same resources as men

Birth rates

- Historically birth rates were higher — needed children to do labour & infant mortality was high - From when they were small they would do household tasks, help on farms... - America: average birth rate in 1900 dropped down to about 3.5 (down from 7.7) - Canada: mid-20th century = also dropped similar to the U.S.

3. Children 'made to order'

- Idea that children become commodities, gene selection/sex selection - Better off couples can afford to produce 'better' children (social privilege) - What does this mean for diversity and plurality of humans

3. Rational allocation —> time availability (demand/response capability)

- Idea that household labour time is a function of a household of demand and constraint - E.g. demand could be children, constraint could be paid labour time - Men/women are spending time in household labour to the extent that there are demands on them to do so and they're able to respond to those demands - People are rationally allocating what they have available - E.g. woman comes home and helps child with homework, man gets home later and puts the child to bed, woman does dishes — all responses to demands

- Uninvolved

- Indifferent parents who have few demands on their children - Provide little support - Children tend to have behavioural problems

- How many parents can a child have?

- Law in Canada = only 2 legal parents - Tri-parenting arrangements = historically have involved a teenage mother and her parents - Contemporary example: lesbian couple + biological father

2. Power relations —> relative resources

- Look at housework and think about it in terms of being something about the relative resources of household members - Those who have more resources (status, money, etc.) are expected to use them to avoid unpleasant and undervalued activities - Explain divide in housework because the woman has fewer resources - Consensual relationship, both usually aware of the power relation/allocation - Power rooted in resources - Based on a specialist division of labour — probably largely dictated by finances - Theory only really makes sense if the female (or one spouse) is much more financially disadvantaged than the other

Permissive

- More typical for middle class - For child: autonomy and freedom to express themselves, downplays conformity - More likely to have fewer rules and regulations, have less demands on children to conform - Children will often grow up with high self esteem, but might not readily recognize the rights of others or develop self-discipline

Cultural perspective (patriarchal dynamics):

- Moving away from the economic perspective

Does parenting older make a difference?

- Older fathers are less physically active than younger fathers, but more likely to engage in reading and pretend play - Mature parents are arguably more financially secure — can provide different experiences for children (e.g. arts, travelling, sports...)

POLICE OFFICER

- Opposite from pal - Making sure their children obey the rules all the time - Punish kids for even the smallest things - Doesn't have a good outcome either — also associated with juvenile delinquency and behaviour problems

PAL

- Parents mainly of older children feel like they should just be their kids friend - Saying they trust them, laissez-faire model - Many studies relate this type of parenting to juvenile delinquency and behaviour problems

LeMasters and DeFrain 1989- MARTER

- Parents say they would do anything for their child - Nag kids instead of letting them do it themselves, constantly buy things for them, do whatever they want

Double Day // Second Shift - (home/ work reversal)

- Pressure on mothers to join the labour force but also pressure on intensive parenting - Expectation that housework is part of who women are - Women are still seen as bearing primary responsibility for all the reproductive labour within the family

Material/Economic

- Production moved outside the home - Clothing/food production, etc. moved beyond the home - Increasing importance of male wage (dependence on men's earnings) - Technological advances - Products for household consumption become more available/affordable (e.g. washing machine) — changes the arduousness of women's labour in the home - Made women's labour less visible and less valued - Shifting role for women from producer —> consumer

4. Reinforcement of traditional family structure

- Reinforce the heterosexual, white, middle class couples who can afford these technologies and innovations - Implicit endorsement of a particular family type - Not equally accessible to all

Ideological

- Separate spheres (housework = woman) - Split public vs. private - Equated housework with woman as something that they are, and not something that they do - Cult of domesticity (or the cult of true womanhood) - Purity, piety, domestic ideals - Housework is now, by definition, gendered as female

Remaining Child-Free

- Shift to move language from "child-less" to "child-free" — child-less implies that you're missing something that you should want/need - Broader cultural/social shift in explaining why people either have less children or none at all (e.g. industrialization, women in the workforce...) - Shifting mindset/understanding towards people who just don't want to have kids

2. Equitable but gendered

- Spouses doing a similar number of hours of paid and unpaid work and childcare, but each does what's considered to be gender appropriate - E.g. taking out garbage = male vs. bathing children = female - Employed mothers tend to view this dynamic as being fair b/c what matters more is that the man is equitable in the quantity of work (doesn't matter what it is)

Other factors:

- Starting salaries are low, students have massive debt, rising housing market, harder to get jobs right out of school, rising age of marriage...

6. Delegated

- Tend to see more among families who are affluent — couples who hire a nanny/cook/ gardener/house keeper

ATHLETIC COACH

- View you have to invest and help kids grow - Parent is expected to have sufficient knowledge about the game (life) and to be prepared to help players (kids) succeed - Parents like coaches have their own personalities and needs — must establish team (house) rules and teach them to their kids - Must enforce appropriate penalties when rules are broken, but policing isn't primary concern - Children (like team members) must be willing to accept discipline and subordinate interests for the need of the team (family) - Encourage kids to practice, work hard, develop their own talents (but realize they can't play the game for their kids — players (kids) must do it for themselves) - Best style of the five given, most realistic

Economic perspective (pragmatic strategies)

- Way of looking of what happens in society through a functionalist perspective - Rationality - Individual abilities that count, not differences in opportunity structures between men/women

A Gendered DOL "Growing Up"

- We have conflated housework with gender — qualities of being a good woman are related to being domestic - E.g. must be something wrong with you if you don't know how to cook/clean Boys = 30% less time doing household chores than girls - Instead, they're playing and socializing (even their leisure time is constructed differently than girls) Girls = less likely to get paid to do chores - Compared to boys who often get paid for chores like shovelling/mowing lawn Gender divide continues into adulthood Young men get the message from childhood that their labour has value (even when they're doing domestic things)

5. Complete

- Woman is doing virtually everything - Likely to see women who are unemployed or only work part time - Intensification of the husband helper

4. Husband helper

- Woman takes on all responsibilities and is always available - Could be reversed — where the woman was the helper (e.g. she has more power in relationship or very demanding job) - Tends to be in scenarios where the woman isn't employed outside the home - Men in these relationships choose the activities that they like

- Industrialized society —> information based society

-From a time you got married, started a career, became a parent - To a period focused on self-development, building foundations to adult life - We don't have to engage in marriage in order to get those economic/sexual rewards anymore - Scripts that explain the life course aren't as formulaic anymore

2 kinds of surrogacy

1) Genetic surrogacy: baby is genetically related to the father, some link 2) Gestational surrogacy: no biological link between the surrogate and the baby and the parents to be

Fathering Roles

1. Aloof and distant 2. Breadwinner 3. Moral teacher 4. Gender role model 5. Active, nurturant parent (not seen as the norm)

Types of Fathering (Lamb 1987)

1. Engagement - Actions like feeding children, playing with them, bathing, homework... 2. Accessibility - Near a child but not engaged with them 3. Responsibility - Parent who makes sure the child gets what he or she needs - Don't see the same cultural ideals around fatherhood like we do for motherhood

The "Motherhood Mystique"

1. Ultimate achievement and fulfillment via motherhood - Middle class ideology 2. Work assigned — children, home, husband — fits together - Arguably there is a tension between these things 3. To be a "good" mother, must be enjoyed - Seen as a prerequisite 4. A woman's attitude matters "Intensive Mothering" (Hays 1996) - How you feel about it affects your children

Gendered Differences in Task and Time

1. Women — daily, time-bound (e.g. preparing meals) Men — flexible (e.g. mowing the lawn) 2. Women — multi-task (e.g. watching kids, doing laundry, talking on phone) Men — singular focus (e.g. cooking and not wanted to be distracted) 3. Women — time-and-motion experts (e.g. "mom calendar": responsible for org. activities)

Incidence:

12-15%

Causes

40% male, 40% female, 20% unknown - Tend to think of it as a female problem, but it goes both ways - Association between masculinity + fertility

linked to education, career market opportunities

A financial element Relationship to social/workplace policies (pro-natalist policies = encourage people to have children) * Both personal elements + larger constraints of institutions and social structures

Stages of parenting: (Rossi 1968)

Argues the transition to parenthood is much harder than the transition to other adult roles (such as marriage, job, etc.) 1. Cultural pressure 2. little to no experience in childcare 3. abrupt 4. requires changes in the couple's relationship 5. don't have clear guidelines about what constitutes good parenting - Many different resources with contrasting information

Treatment:

As early as the 18th century, people were seeking help with infertility - 1940: physicians developed a clear understanding between menstruation and ovulation

Consequences of same sex parenting:

Children as emotionally healthy and socially adjusted and at least as educationally and socially successful as children of heterosexual parents - No sexually exclusive parenting abilities - No correlation between the sexuality of one's parents and the sexuality of the child - Wrong idea to think that having same-sex parents will make the child gay - No difference in psychological well-being, school performance, substance abuse, how victimized they are, peer connections... - Some research says = young people with two moms do better than those with heterosexual parents

Authoritative

Encourage children to be autonomous/independent - Rely on positive reinforcements, stay away from oppressive ways of punishment - Element of control that's somewhat like the authoritarian parent, but more freedom - Children tend to do quite well: achieving, confident

Same-Sex Parenting

Hard to quantify these couples because many are apprehensive about disclosing - Of the 45+ thousand same sex couples in 2006 Canadian census = 9% had children - In the U.S. = estimate is around 19% - Difference between lesbian and gay parents

emerging adulthood linked to "hyper-invested" parents

Helicopter parenting, overly involved in kids lives - Idea that parents can't let go anymore, vs. previous generations who emphasized financial autonomy and educational goals - V.s. baby boomers see their children's emotional well-being as the main goal

Motherhood vs. fatherhood

Idea that if you just follow your instincts, you'll be a good mother = problematic - Suggests there's something wrong with a woman if she doesn't 100% devote herself to the task of childbearing - Discourages the involvement of other adults like the father - Mothers generally expected to be the primary psychological parent for the child and children socialized to believe in the rewards of motherhood

Reasons why people might not use contraception:

Many young people maintain the belief that they can't get pregnant the first time they have sex (then if they get lucky, they'll do it again) - Pattern called: "the illusion of unique invulnerability" - Idea that you're special and it'll never happen to you (psychological illusion) - Peer influence - Parents not involved, parents who don't talk about sex/contraception - Takes away from spontaneity of the moment - Might not use it in new relationships (doesn't make sense logically) - To use contraception is a signal that you're sexually active — might not want people to know that you are (goes against pure womanhood idea)

The Rise of Women's Employment (and the Dual Income Family)

Mothers' wages = 41% of total family earnings - Percentage lowers some with couples under the age of 6 - 29% of wives earn more than their husbands (as of 2003)

Deciding 'to Parent': emotional

Move away from historically economic reasons

Home production

Necessary daily grind - Expression of love or caring - Seen as requiring no skills - De-skilling of reproductive labour happened around late 1800s with rise of industrial capitalism (societally recognized as a low to no skill activity) - Form of discipline - Tool for self care - Unwelcome task preceding reward - For academics, thinking about housework didn't take place until the 1970s - 2nd wave feminism — brought problem to the fore (women doing labour that was going unrecognized)

emerging adulthood

New developmental stage between adolescence and young adulthood

Contraception

Of sexually active 18-44 year olds, over half at risk for unintended pregnancy - Almost 1/2 of the births in the U.S. are unintended pregnancies

Looking at ARTs with a Sociological Lens: 1. Reconstruction of parenting

Proliferation of terms for who is the real parent, what are the different figures involved - Biological parents, gestational parent, social parents... - Increasingly complicated for courts: who has rights/responsibilities/is accountable

Emerging Adulthood

Rising since the 1970s - Trend of young adults moving back in with their parents after schooling - "Boomerang generation, velcro kids, failure to launch..." - International phenomena in industrialized countries - Not strictly North America

Part of gender socialization

Seen as a natural, normal, expected occurrence Institutionalized heterosexuality — we get socialized into this idea