Book Report: (And Now for Something a Little More Intellectual) The Second Shift by Arlie Russell Hochschild

I went to Borders to pick up a copy of Julie & Julia the other day and was waylaid by a display of bargain books before I could even make it into the store. Thumbing through the selections, my curiosity was piqued by a sociology book called The Second Shift by Arlie Russell Hochschild, a Berkeley sociology professor. The title sounded familiar, and I stared at the cover, trying to remember where I'd heard it. Then I remembered. One of my particularly liberal male professors had raved about it. It wasn't a novel. And I wasn't in the habit of picking up nonfiction in pursuit of a good read. But scanning the back cover and perusing the pages promised that The Second Shift had all the elements of compelling fiction.

I wasn't disappointed. Hochschild's book is based on her interviews with working married couples with children. Her central question for each couple is the same: Who handles the second shift? The phrase "second shift" refers to the job that starts after the one you get paid for ends. You know. Cooking dinner. Grocery shopping. Scrubbing the toilet. Driving the kids to soccer practice and then helping them with their homework. Laundry. Trips to the post office. Buying birthday cards. Making angry phone calls to the insurance company. The couples being questioned came from all walks of life and subscribed to one or more of the three gender ideologies: traditionalists, who believed that the husband should earn more money and that the wife should handle all of the second shift; egalitarians, who believed that husbands and wives should equally share the job of earning money and handling the second shift; and transitionals, who fell somewhere in between. Now, you may be thinking, oh, so this is a man-bashing book. But it's not. If anything, it's a society bashing book. Hochschild delves in the everyday lives of dozens of different couples, pulling up a chair at their dinner tables to find out what makes them tick.

To me, the most interesting part of this study is the cross-section of couples being interviewed: Men who want their wives to handle the entire second shift instead of working who are married to women who want the same thing. Men who don't mind if their wives work as long as they handle the entire second shift married to working women who want their husbands to help with the second shift. Men who want to help their working wives with the second shift married to women who do not want their help, deciding instead to adopt a "supermom" strategy. Men and women who want each other to work and ignore the second shift entirely, paying housekeepers and nannies to do it. Within each couple, each husband's and wife's viewpoint was based on his or her ideas about gender roles coupled with the powerful motivator of financial need. Reading Hochschild's analysis of each couple was fascinating. She deftly peels back the onion-like layers of each husband's and wife's issues (and there are plenty) to reveal the psychological lies, or as she terms them, "marriage myths" they construct to keep their unions alive in the face of conflict. The conflict is usually between a husband and wife who have different ideas about who should do what. However, husbands and wives who believed in the same ideology dealt with a conflict between said ideology and either finances (traditionalists) or family life (workaholic egalitarians).

Not surprisingly, the most common couples were comprised of husbands who didn't mind their wives working as long as dinner was on the table and wives who wanted to rebel against this. (The book was published in 1989 and was based upon interviews conducted in the late 1970s and early 1980s.) Hochschild doesn't offer a solution to this problem at the book's end. Instead she expounds upon a theme woven throughout the book, which is that working women are part of an ongoing revolution to which men must still adapt. She says that these days women are changing more than men because they're moving from the home to the office, whereas back in the 1800s, men were changing more than women because they were migrating from farms to cities. At that point it was the women who weren't changing because they were always at home. So, the woman's revolution isn't over yet. That was what I got out of that.

The one thing I kept thinking while reading this book was, I'm glad I don't have kids yet. Kids, it seems, tip the scales in terms of the drama and bitterness that the second shift can create. You can ignore a sinkful of dishes and subsist on takeout instead of grocery shopping (I'm guilty of both more often than I'd like to admit), but you can't ignore a child. Not that a child can be equated with a dirty dish or a pizza. (Please do not to send hate mail.) But, if I was a working woman with children, then I probably wouldn't be able to do much of anything. This includes blogging. And reading books to blog about. And painting hippos and ice cream cones on tote bags. And writing. And spending the entire weekend in my pajamas. And living on Smartfood popcorn. Maybe such fears sound shallow, but at least I'm honest in acknowledging that life as I know it would change.

So, The Second Shift. Pretty compelling stuff by a lady who tells it like it is.

Saturday Night at the Acme

Yeah, you read that right. After a casual dinner on the island this past Saturday night, the bf and I headed to the Acme to load up on the week's groceries. Now, ordinarily I don't like grocery shopping. It strikes me as boring and tedious, and I often go on autopilot, efficiently grabbing the things on my list as fast as I can so I can get the heck out of there. The bf takes a different approach. He likes to take his time, exploring all of the possibilities and new products. True to form, he made one of his discoveries on this trip -- Atlantic City postcards for just ten cents each! "You could make something out of them," he suggested. But of course. Greedily, I rifled through the pile, settling on ten of my favorites and wondering how many times I'd barreled past them on previous trips in hot pursuit of JELL-O bowls or Smartfood.

The bargains didn't stop there. As we meandered down the toiletries aisle (one I dutifully skip when shopping solo), I came upon a wire basket brimming with Cover Girl cosmetics marked down to $1.99. Abandoning my thou-shalt-not-OD-on-purchasing-makeup mantra, I gleefully scooped up a powder compact, liquid foundation, and two eyeshadow quads, one all business (neutral browns called Country Woods) and one party ready (wild shades dubbed Tropical Fusion). Even as I type this post I'm contemplating returning for a lipstick or two . . .

So, about these postcards. They scream decoupage to me, and I have just the wooden box upon which to Mod Podge them. I can't promise results any time soon, though, as I'm waist-deep in totes and jewelry to be created for the upcoming shows.

Make and Tell Challenge, Day 86

Tonight I ate almost an entire bag of Smartfood popcorn for dinner, fell asleep on the couch for two hours, and somehow managed to finish this Violet Fierce Flowers Tote. It strikes me as girly yet edgy, perfect for any fashion-forward punk princess (and yes, that icky blue painters' tape does come off; I'm just waiting for the leopard to dry.) I'm excited that it's finished and am ready to move on to the next one. I have fewer than 10 blank totes left, which means I'm really churning them out. Time to hop back online and reorder.

Tomorrow jump starts the circus of holiday madness. But you know that. For me, it means that the bf and I will have Thanksgiving dinner with his grandparents and dessert with my parents; both houses are about 45 minutes away from ours, and their houses are about an hour away from each other. Then there was talk of my mom and I hitting some midnight Black Friday sales. I don't know. I've shopped on Black Friday for as long as I can remember, but never at that ungodly hour. I've always gone after noon, once I've had plenty of sleep and have refueled with leftover pumpkin pie . . . and the danger of being trampled has passed (didn't someone get trampled to death in Walmart one Black Friday? What a way to go.). It doesn't make sense for me to go early because I'm never looking for doorbuster items like toys or electronics, just clothes, cards, and trinket-type things. But I have to work this year, which is what brought on this uncharacteristic and madcap scheme.

Speaking of pumpkin pie, I've been called upon to whip up a batch of Libby's finest for dessert at my parents'. I mentioned this to a few people in passing, and they were like, "oh, you're not making them from scratch?," as if I were some kind of Thanksgiving dessert sell-out. It always annoys me when people act like you're not truly cooking if you're not starting out with flour and lard or something. It's not like I'm just buying a pie; I still have to mix the pumpkin pack with the eggs, sugar, etc, and bake it. Sheesh.

But back to the circus. Friday night the bf and I are dining on leftovers with my parents. Then Saturday my mom and I take on the mall again, followed by a Sunday casino trip chaser with my mom, sister, and grandmom. Somehow I don't think there'll be much making and telling going on. Or sleeping. It'll be fun and colorful, though. And hopefully blogworthy. :)