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Family
and Work Page
Balancing
Work and Family - the study
Balancing
Work and Family - the literature
Is
there a Family Crisis?
Bibliography
Balancing
Work and Family - the survey
Family
Crisis - the survey
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me
This page has three sections; home; family and; work. It is an early draft on the subject. More will follow as I get it written.With the introduction of new technologies such as the Internet, e-mail and fax machines it has once again become practical, as it was before the industrial revolution, to work at home. Many families, a growing segment of the American society, are currently exploring this rediscovered possibility of integrating work with family in the home (Gerstel & Gross 1987: 1, 8, 13; Goldschneider & Waite 1991: 3). Thus, with more and more people making the home a place to work, it becomes important to study how people make family and work space coexist in the home. It is essential to study this change in family and home life because, as stated by numerous social scientists, changes in the home lead to changes in society; the values and morals of a society are taught and embedded in the home (Bateson 1996; Clark 1987: xv; Gullestad 1992: 66-67, 81, 87; Goldschneider & Waite 1991: 6; Stacey 1990: 6-7).
Home: According to Gullestad (1992: 64), Americans not only live in houses, they have homes and the two words are not synonymous. While the house is just a building, the home has symbolic and practical meaning. The home is the frame for the inhabitant's lives (ibid.: 62). Clark analyzes the change of meanings attributed to the home over time through research of diaries, letters, manuals, and plan-books (Clark 1987: xiv, 238). He begins at the Industrial Revolution and attributes the birth of the idea "family home as more then a house" to the newly emerging middle-class of the 1800's (ibid.: xi). The family home came to be seen as a "heaven in a heartless world" (Lasch 1977); family became equated with home (Clark 1987: xi). In the 1840's the ideal family home ideally provided the stability that a changing and fast growing society could not. The home was to be the place where a man found the support and strength which he brought with him to the public world. Family and home were also the ideals which society could be measured against (ibid.: xi, 238).
At the end of the nineteenth century the emphasis had shifted from home as a man's haven to a place where women could be creative. After the turn of the century the emphasis was on improved health and after World War II the well being that one was to find in the home was expanded to include psychological well-being (Clark 1987: 240; Gullestad 1992: 81). The home became the "locus of individuality," as well as a statement of one's taste and standing in society (Clark 1987: xii, xiv-xv, 238; Gullestad 1992: 79, 91).
There is a strong connection between home and society. As Clark (1987) and Coontz (1992) has shown, it is not only the family and home that influences society's morals and values, the morals and values (and technological development) in society also reflect back on the family and the home.
Family: In the United States the family ideal up until the late 1980's was a home with one mother, one father and one or more children (Busch 1990: 2-3). As easily noted through media this ideal family is currently changing. Stacey (1990) focuses on how women manage these new postmodern families (Stacey 1990: 17-18) . Television programs do so also. Sitcoms such as Something So Right, Step By Step, and Hjem til fem explore themes related to "brought together families," and articles in women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Woman's World and, Better Homes & Gardens focus on how women can juggle a career and a family.
However, work is still placed outside the home and the family so where there is a tendency to equate home and family there still is a strong division between family and work (Busch 1990: 3; Coontz 1992: 28; Gullestad 1992: 64). This division is historical. It became apparent in the nineteenth century when industrialization channeled men and not women into the labor market (Stacey 1990: 8). That ensured that women were economically dependent on husbands and made husbands dependent on a wife "for moral support, maintenance of their home, and the upbringing of their children" (Gerstel & Gross 1987: 13). That division allocated certain meanings to the home and certain to the outside (Gullestad 1992: 66-67, 81).
Work: In studies of the spatiality between home and work there are two major branches; (1) Studies of work in the home and; (2) Studies of home and work. Though there is a big difference in focus, there is a general agreement on the importance of the historical changes in both the nineteenth century when home and work were separated and in the twentieth century when women started to enter the work force in large numbers (Gerstel & Gross 1987: 8, 13; Goldschneider & Waite 1991: 3; Stacey 1990: 7-8). Studies of the first branch, work in the home, focuses on industrial home workers and native crafts people (Goody 1982; Lamphere 1993; Nash 1993). Studies of the second branch, home and work, examine the home and workplace as two separate spaces with little interaction (Nippert-Eng 1996; Zussman 1985, 1987). However, it is these studies of home and work which are interesting because they look at the distinction between home and work as well as what it means to the family and worker. Nippert-Eng writes of clashes between spouses due to perceptions of distinctions between home and work. Her research suggests that the distinction between home and work is not culturally homogeneous, but instead learned in the family(Nippert-Eng 1996: 246-266). Gerstel and Gross (1987) argue that instead of focusing on defining home and work as distinctive categories, the researcher should study the interlocking of home and work and how the two are related in everyday life (ibid.: 7). While this may be so the possibility of working in the home is a relatively new idea for most American families and I find it difficult not to focus on the distinction between the two as it is something negotiated. It is a conscious change for the families making the change.
