Working mothers: challenges and social impacts

Working Wives and Mothers: How Their Work Puts Strains in Their Marriage and Children

There has been a significant increase in the percentage of women who are taking part in the workforce in the last half century. Today more and more equality is being gained by the women in political, social and economic affairs however, when it comes to the household labor and its division, the inequity of gender is still there like it has always been. The children and household is still the primary responsibility of the women. This condition of a lot of women today has been described in the concept of "second shift" by Arlie Russell Hochschild. All the work that the women have to do once they get back home from work in order to maintain their house and take care of the children has been called the "second shift." A lot of attention has been paid by the feminist scientists and sociologists regarding the division of labor in the house with regards to the gender along with the psychological as well as emotional effects that this "second shift" has on the women and mothers who work. The studies that have been done on this topic have been summarized in this paper along with the implications associated with all these studies.

Introduction

In the past century or so there has been significant increase in the number of women who have started to work outside of their homes but it is amazing to see that still when it comes to the household stuff and taking care of the children, the studies have shown that even today it is considered to be the responsibility of the women. The Second Shift is a book that was written in 1989 by Arlie Russell Hochschild, who was a sociologist. This book is a very important source not only on the occurrence but also on the impact that this phenomenon has. Even though it has been many years since this book was published but this issue of inequality between the male and female when it comes to work in the home is still a great matter with regards to the society.

It was found by Hochschild that is the homes where both the parents had jobs the women worked approximately 15 hours more as compared to the man each week since she had to do the household chores as well. In light of this statistic, in 1989, an extra month that consisted of 24-hour days was worked by working mother (Hochschild 1989:3). According to a recent study the number of hours that a woman works each week doing the household chores on average is 27 while the average for men is 11 hours a week. This huge amount of time spent by women doing their household chores and looking after the children after they have worked outside of the house has been called as the "second shift" for these women by Hochschild (4).

Although equality today is being gained by the women when it comes to the workplace but when it comes to the work that needs to be done within the house their exists still a great deal of gender inequality as, it's the females who are, even today, expected to do the household chores. A lot of pressure is felt by the women regarding the maintenance of orderly and clean homes as well as to make a lot of efforts with regards to the activities at the school as well as the home in order to show that they are involved in the lives of their children and that they are dedicated to their families. Pressure is also felt by these women to not only be a success at their work but at the same time remain beautiful and fit.

It is very hard for the working women to fulfill all of these expectations of the people. Therefore, often times the psychological and physical health of these women gets affected due to the amount of energy and time that is required by them to perform their "second shift" when they get home from work. It has also been noticed that many women start to feel like a failure as; they feel that they are not fulfilling the expectation of the society to be a super mom and wife and be amazing at their job as well.

A Deeper Understanding of the "Second Shift" and its Effects of Working Mothers

The relationship which exists between the division of gender and household labor as a social stratification category can be explained in the gender-family nexus's concept. The definition of the gender-family nexus is that, "it's the continuous interaction between the most persuasive and oldest kind of stratification in the world, gender, and it is also one of the most persistent and oldest institutions within the world, family." The gender-family nexus is a continuous process in which family and gender play a part in shaping each other: gender itself defines and is also defined by and within the family institution. The shapers and the social life of a personhood are permeated by the gender-family nexus.

Socialization of the women and men, within the family, takes place in order for them to perform the femininity and masculinity, respectively, and in this way these behaviors become a very intimate part of the identities of people. Heterosexual imaginary has a deep connection with the gender-family nexus. Ongoing work is involved in it. It not only affects but also gets affected from the types of stratification as well as other institutions (Niebrugge-Brantley 2008).

Gender is a status itself and the other statuses such as father, husband, wife and mother are gendered too. Complementary and particular roles are entailed by the statuses of "man" and "women." Emotional and passive is the expected role of the women while the men are expected to be intellectual and active. Although these roles complement one another but they are valued differently. A higher degree of the social prestige, privilege and power is received by the status-role of "man" as well as the other male gendered status-roles in comparison to the roles which are considered to belong to the females. Complementary roles are entailed by the gendered statuses which are present in the family as well like "father" and "mother." It is the role of the father to guide the children morally, give them economic support, to be a positive male model for the children and to make sure they have access to the social networks (Coltrane 2007:452).

It is the role of a mother to feed and clean her children, to make sure that the house is clean and that the kids are being given moral guidance and love. It is considered to be the role of a woman to look after the house and children. These tasks aren't considered by the fathers and husbands to be their responsibilities even in the scenarios when the females of the house aren't able to do all these things. The female and male point-of-view when it comes to the housework has been explained by Arlie Russell Hochschild, according to her the way that a male sees housework is as something that a person will or will not do and as something that can be helped with if the task seems interesting. Whereas, the way a female looks at housework is as something that has to be done. (1989:53).

The way that the roles of men and women are valued in such different ways is obvious in the "second shift" as well. The growth of "second shift" occurred parallel to the increase in the number of women who started performing the roles which are traditionally though to be for the men such as working out of the homes. This was done by the women in order to get social prestige, economic advantage and feeling worthy of something. This continued gendered labor inequality which is present in the homes in part due to the unwillingness of the men to take part in the roles that have so little worth and which they feel are the responsibility of the women, along with the fact that they feel that doing such household chores would make them feel "emasculated." An example of this phenomenon can be taken from the Second Shift as well, in which the household labor division between Evan and Nancy has been described by Hoshchild. Evan and Nancy are full-time working parents of one child and when it came to sharing the household with the wife he refused to do any such thing as, he felt that this wasn't his responsibility and that he can refuse at any time to do some task which is his wife's responsibility to begin with (Hochschild 1990:40).

A family, if looked at from the structural-functionalist point-of-view is an institution: a system which has interrelated status-roles, sanctions and norms which are there to satisfy the primal social need/needs (Niebrugge-Brantley 2008). Within a contemporary American society a family consists of the gendered status-roles (mother, daughter, father, son etc.) who complement one another in order to achieve functions of the family. In the opinion of Stephan Beach and Linda L. Lindsey, who are the authored, "Essentials of Sociology," reproduction, socialization, provision of protection, regulation of sexual behavior, companionship for the members of a society all comes under the functions of family along with the social placement (2003:290).

It is gender according to which the roles are divided in the family so that the family's functions could be achieved. Although, it is only the nuclear families for whom this gendered division of roles work, in case of the heterosexual couples along with their adopted or biological child/children it is the father who works outside the house while the mother is expected to take care of the house and children. There are a lot of people who find this ideal unattractive or impossible. In case of the homosexual couples, single-parent households, extended and blended families as well as the dual-earner families the "nuclear" model can't be applied and the gendered status-roles which are attached to it can cause problems as well.

The "second shift" is created in the nuclear family by the heterosexual imaginary along with the gendered division of roles that is idealized in it. The pervasiveness and its influence on the heterosexual imaginary is highlighted by the fact that even if a woman is working outside the home she will still have to be responsible for taking care of her children and her house. Role strain is experienced by the women who have to perform the household chores along with working outside the house. There is very little time for these women to relax as they have to do their household tasks and work outside of home as well and therefore, these women have very inflexible schedules.

A situation of the "second shift" has been created by the gendered structure of workplace and family in the opinion of the theorists. It was in the beginning of the 20th century that it was written by Marianne Weber that the capability of the women to get economic independence is what the emancipation of women is dependent upon however, it was recognized by her that the primary responsibilities of the women to care for their children and household restricts their ability to be successful like men in the job market (Lengermann and Niebrugge 1998:206). The concept of "domesticity" by Joan Williams explains the observation of Weber and the idea of nuclear family that has been discussed above.

"Domesticity" is basically a gender system; it is an organization of the family life and market work that is rooted very deeply in the heterosexual imaginary. Within this system complete dedication is given by the male ideal to the market while the care of the house as well as the children is the responsibility of the female in house. Financially, this female caregiver is dependent on the male ideal worker's support (Williams 2000:1). We can describe the phenomenon of "second shift" by considering it to be the symptom of the decline in the applicability of "domesticity" in the modern Western families in particular the dual-earner families. It has often been tried by the females to have it all but it is a fact that with working outside of house some changes have to be brought within the homes and this can only be done by the support and understanding of both the sexes.

There are a lot of pieces which have been made a part of this literature review in which the issue of unrealistic expectations has been addressed that how the image of beautiful, successful and satisfied working mothers has given rise to these unrealistic expectations that fulfilling the demands of all the three roles of being a mother, worker and a wife is an easy thing to do. Even though today the number of women who have entered the workforce has increased significantly and is still increasing but no efforts have been made to bring about changes in the expectations that people have from the working women that they will be able to handle their household chores without any difficulty as well.

Constant efforts are being made by the working mothers and wives to achieve the impossible standards of being the best housewives and best at their jobs. These women suffer from anxiety, hopelessness, stress, depression, low self-esteem and guilt due to their constant efforts to be perfect in all the 3 roles of being a wife, worker and a mother and their failure in getting all these roles done perfectly (Allen & Quinn 1989; Burden 1986; Campbell & Moen 1992; Hochschild 1989; 2008; Keel et al. 1985; Kirk & Okazawa-Rey 2007; Westwood 2002).

It was discovered by Kandel et al. through their study that the working women felt that their own image and thoughts about themselves are greatly affected by the roles that they play in their homes and families. It was noted that high level of stress were suffered from by these women because of the fact that they weren't able to fulfill their roles of wives and mothers properly and they believe these roles to be the most important ones for themselves and their personalities (1985:74). It was also noted that when these women aren't able to fulfill their duties in the house and family they feel that they are failing as mothers and wives.

An absence of consciousness regarding the structural reasons for the struggles that working women go through have been noticed by the sociologists who studied stress and role-strain (Allen & Quinn 1989; Hochschild 1989; Keel et al. 1985; Westwood, 2002).When the working mothers aren't able to fulfill the expectations of the people around them they start to feel that the fault lies in them rather than the unfavorable social situation that they are in. This kind of self-blaming attitude gives rise to low self-esteem which the working mothers develop. As, the "second shift" isn't fulfilled by the working mothers their attitude becomes very resigned towards themselves and their conditions as well as the conditions of the women in general. Ann who was a working woman and was interviewed by Arlie Hochschild, expressed an example of this feeling in such a manner that she said, she felt infuriated with herself for being unable to stick to it (1989:106). She further said that, "I have two girls and it's really sad for me to know that they will not be able to contribute to anything until they don't fight against all the odds and at all the time. It doesn't really matter how driven or smart they are at the end of the day they will feel this same conflict as well"(109).

Theorists, by whom the gendered division of household has been studied, say that when it comes to the attitude regarding the housework there is a lot of difference in the way that the men behave to the household and the way that the women do. It's a general observation that in case of homes women are a lot more concerned about the cleanliness than the men. One of the reasons for this behavior of women towards clean house can be the socialization of the women for the status-roles of home-maker, wife and mother. From a very early age the women are trained to value the "tidiness" and "cleanliness" as they are being prepared to be the homemakers later on.

It was found in a study by Ogletree et al. that men usually reported "liking" the housekeeping a lot more as compared to the women whereas, it was further reported that in case of women they felt resentment and guilt when it comes to housework (2006). There are certain aspects of the household which can prove to be satisfying and enjoyable however, when a tasks needs to be done daily it can become boring, frustrating and repetitive. As it has been explained with the help of Hochschild's description above as well that when it comes to the household chores, the opinions of men and women are very different, men can avoid doing the housework if they don't feel like it or in case that they don't have the time however, in case of women this isn't true, women have a negative feel about the housework as, they don't have the choice of skipping it whether they have the time or not to do it and most of the times aren't appreciated for it either.