Assignment #8 - The Second Shift

1. According to Hochshild, what is the “Second Shift?”

According to Hochschild (1989), the “Second Shift” is the end of one’s day when a person is finished working their “First Shift”, typically at one’s full-time job or just the time of their day during which they are away from home. A “Second Shift” consists of various different tasks that one still has left to do after completing their “First Shift” of the day. These tasks and responsibilities include jobs such as “shopping, cooking, paying bills; taking care of the car, the garden, and yard” (Hochschild, 1989, p. 2), maintaining satisfactory relationships with relatives and neighbors, and taking care of the children and pets, if any (Hochschild, 1989, p. 2).

Hochschild (1989) also discusses the significance of a couple’s ability to maintain an appropriate emotional balance between one’s life at home, their job outside of the house, their spouse, and their children in regards to the “Second Shift” (Hochschild, 1989, p. 2). Evan and Nancy’s story express the importance of being able to equally balance the “Second Shift” tasks between husband and wife to avoid one spouse, in many cases the wife, from feeling as if they are completing all of the “Second Shift” responsibilities by themselves (Hochschild, 1989). Their story supports the belief that “girls and women perform more household labor than their male peers – even when they work full-time” (C. Gager, personal communication, July 6, 2011).

2. Briefly describe the story of Evan and Nancy Holt.

Evan and Nancy Holt are a married couple in their thirties with a four-year old son named Joey. They are a dual-earner family, with Nancy working as a social worker and Evan, a warehouse furniture salesman. Nancy describes herself as a feminist, an egalitarian, and a liberal throughout Hochschild’s article (Hochschild, 1989). She is very compulsive and in many ways, I believe, strives to be a perfectionist both at home and with her career. Nancy is very involved with her family and her extreme attachment to Joey is very evident. Evan, on the other hand, is more isolated from Evan and Nancy’s “home life”. He expresses a fairly distant relationship with his son and believes it to be normal and typical. At one point in the article, Evan claims that “little kids need their moms more than they need their dads” (Hochschild, 1989, p. 1). Although he eventually shows more effort towards developing a closer relationship with Joey, Joey still exhibits much more closeness to Nancy. Both Evan and Nancy state that Joey has a “problem”, which is explained as his desire to stay awake all night rather than going to bed at 8:00 when Nancy and Evan begin trying to put him to sleep. Not surprisingly, Joey’s problem because Nancy’s problem and she becomes fully responsible for getting Joey to sleep each night. As a result, the couple believes that Joey also has a negative impact on their sex life, especially when Joey decides he only wants to sleep in their bed with them during the night (Hochschild, 1989).

Nancy and Evan Holt display a lot of struggle with balancing the tasks which need to be finished during their “Second Shift”. When asked about the division of household labor between the two, Nancy claims that “she was doing 80 percent of the housework and 90 percent of the childcare” (Hochschild, 1989, p. 2). Not ironically, Evan only believes that Nancy completes “60 percent of the housework, 70 percent of the childcare” (Hochschild, 1989, p. 2). Nonetheless, this still leaves Nancy doing more than half of the “Second Shift” all on her own, giving Evan much more leisure time than Nancy is allowed. This leads to frequent conflict between Nancy and Evan.

Both Nancy and Evan bump heads when it comes to their gender ideologies (Hochschild, 1989, p. 3). Due to the fact that Nancy had a mother who lived her life as a housewife and as a result, was treated inferior to Nancy’s father and in turn, was very depressed and lacked self-confidence, Nancy had ambition to be anything except for like her mother (Hochschild, 1989, p. 3). Nancy wanted to have her own life, her own dreams. She believes that her desires should be just as important as Evan’s, yet Evan feels somewhat differently. Nancy states that “if you want to be happy, develop a career and get your husband to share at home” (Hochschild, 1989, p. 3). She attended college and works as a social worker because she loves doing that. Evan does not have a problem with Nancy having her own career, as long as she can take care of the family as well (Hochschild, 1989, p. 1). As much as Nancy strives to get Evan to help with the “Second Shift” at home, he finds excuses not to do so. Eventually, Nancy ends up creating a program which they refer to as the “upstairs-downstairs agreement” (Hochschild, 1989, p. 5). Although Nancy still wishes Evan would do more around the house than just taking care of the dog and maintaining the cleanliness of the garage, she fears divorce and convinces herself to believe that this agreement is the resolution to Evan and Nancy’s tension regarding the balance of the “Second Shift” (Hochschild, 1989).

3. Hochschild argues that families create “myths” about their division of household labor. Describe the family myth created by Nancy and Evan Holt.

The family myth created by Nancy and Evan Holt focused on an “equal” arrangement or balance of household chores and other family tasks in order to exhibit equality of roles and responsibilities between the husband and the wife to prevent conflict. Their agreement was described as an “upstairs and downstairs”/“inside and outside” arrangement, in reference to the tasks that Evan and Nancy were each responsible for fulfilling. The “upstairs-downstairs agreement” means that Nancy deals with the upstairs of the house which includes “the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, two bedrooms, and two baths” (Hochschild, 1989, p. 5). Evan, on the other hand, gets the downstairs of the house which consists of the garage, their car, and the dog (Hochschild, 1989, p. 5). For Nancy, this agreement mainly involves “dissociating the inequity in the second shift from the inequity in their marriage, dividing all of her own work in the new schedule into shifts, and suppressing any comparison between her hours of her leisure and Evan’s” (Hochschild, 1989, pp. 6-7). To make this agreement work “effectively”, Nancy even cut her hours at her career. Nancy mentioned many times during her story that she wanted Evan to appreciate all she does and just be grateful towards her. For Nancy, Evan expressing his love meant helping with the “Second Shift”, even something as simple as cooking dinner or washing the dishes. Evan, however, felt that Nancy showed her love when they were making love. Clearly, Nancy and Evan have two very different portrayals regarding the expression of love. In accordance with Hochschild (1989), Nancy “had to bring herself to believe the myth that the upstairs-downstairs division of housework was fair, and that it had resolved her struggle with Evan” (Hochschild, 1989, p. 6).

4. According to Hochschild, what is the purpose of family myths?

In reference to Hochschild (1989), the purpose of the upstairs-downstairs agreement for Nancy and Evan holt was “an attempt to agree that there was no conflict over the second shift, no tension between their versions of manhood and womanhood, and that the powerful crisis that had arisen was temporary and minor” (Hochschild, 1989, p. 5). To further explain, family myths are created in order to allow couples to believe that there are no problems or conflicts in their family, and in Nancy and Evan’s case, specifically their marriage. Although technically, family myths cannot permanently erase difficulties presented within a family, they provide a strategy which makes individuals believe that all of their problems have been resolved and that they are truly “happy”.

5. Was this reading surprising to you and why? How do you imagine you will divide family work (including child care) in your own marriage or cohabitation?

This reading was not surprising to me at all. I know many married couples who still believe in the traditional roles of husband and wife. It was evident in this article that Evan is a husband who is more concerned about being the breadwinner of his family rather than being involved with his family and most importantly, his son. So many of our course readings have illuminated this depiction of marital roles, where the female is expected to do many of the household tasks and the male is responsible for providing financial support and protection to his family.

In regards to my future marriage, I do not think my husband and I are going to be like Evan and Nancy. I believe that for the most part, the division of household labor and family work is going to be fairly equal between my spouse and me. Due to the fact that I am one semester away from obtaining my teacher certification, I plan to start my career path as a teacher. I assume that this will mean that I will be leaving my house before 7:00 or 7:30 in the morning and returning home by 4:00 or 4:30 (depending of the distance of my district from my home). My boyfriend, who I intend on eventually marrying, is most likely going to work later hours than me. Both of us, however, are going to work full-time.

I imagine that we will have anywhere between one and three children. I would think that in the morning, my husband and I will rotate between getting breakfasts and lunches ready and helping our children get ready for their school day. We will also, of course, need to fit getting ourselves ready into our morning schedules. Depending on who has more time in the morning, one of us will drop off our children either at his parents’ house (considering that they will both be retired by the time we are married), or with my parents whenever possible. Most likely, I will be the one who will pick up our children from our parents’ houses or school/day care. While my husband is at work, I will do as much work around the house as I can possibly get done while still spending time with my children. I expect to have dinner ready by the time he gets home from work, unless he is home early enough to make the family dinner instead. As far as bed time is concerned, I think my husband and I will probably take turns putting the children to bed. If we have more than one child, maybe we will even both get our kids down for bed. Considering that I have a lot of experience with children, I know that they can be very picky. I expect there to be nights where they only want Mommy or they just want their Daddy. In the middle of the night when our kids wake up, I think that it will mostly be me who gets up with them due to the fact that I do not require much sleep.

Overall, I think that our schedule will be very flexible. I think that for the “Second Shift” to truly work, it needs to be flexible. There will be some family tasks that I will do and that my husband will do, but for the most part, it is going to be pretty spontaneous. For example, I am probably going to be responsible for doing the laundry, folding the clothes, making the beds, and doing the dishes. Both my husband and I will be in charge of keeping the house clean, including the bathrooms, our bedroom, and the children’s rooms. Tasks such as taking out the garbage will be the responsibility of my husband, for the most part. I also think that if we have a dog, which we plan on having, my husband will be the master and will probably take care of the dog more than I will. I am sure that we will have days where one of us is sick or too busy with our career, and the other spouse will need to do more of the “Second Shift” than the other, but in general, I honestly believe that the division of household work will be divided equally between my future husband and me.