The Roberts article gave a history of Black women’s relationship to the welfare system. Since welfare is now more in the hands of the states, restrictive laws (such as family caps) were able to be put into place. Roberts believes that welfare laws impact Black women the most because of their position at the bottom of the economic ladder, and she thinks that many Americans don’t support welfare because it primarily helps Black families. Contrary to popular belief, she thinks that welfare doesn’t encourage reckless reproduction, state aid doesn’t cause dependence, and marriage does not end children’s poverty.
I was shocked that certain states actually have family caps. It seems very invasive and authoritarian. I don’t think welfare encourages women to have more children, so they shouldn’t be punished if they accidentally (or even plan) to get pregnant. Since the American government considers welfare a gift, not a right, once you become dependent on the state, you forfeit privacy and certain personal liberties. You essentially become a ward of the state, which is probably supposed to discourage use of social services.
Sharon Hays discussed both the positives and negatives of welfare reform. Despite the fact that the principle idea behind welfare (taking care of your fellow citizens), the American social service system is “distorted” by cultural prejudices and trends. As a result, it both punishes and misguidedly rehabilitates recipients. Hays also gave a history of welfare is the U.S., with its constant theme of “deserving” versus “undeserving” poor.
Hays said that laws reflect a nation’s values. However, I don’t know if that is 100% true. In a democracy like ours, it represent the majority of voters. However, the majority might not actually be that big, and we know that many people do not vote. Also, we vote in representatives that make the decisions, and usually don’t vote directly on issues like welfare reform. Therefore, I disagree with her statement. I bet a lot of people would support welfare reform, and a lot probably don’t care either way.
The Glass article described a study done to see how use of family-related policies by working women impacted their wage growth over a period of a few years. She determined that use of the policies does not enhance wage-growth, and in some cases may make women’s wages stagnate. Managerial workers experience the most stagnation, though low-wage workers are also affected by it. The conclusion is that family-friendly policies do not in fact help women make it past the “glass ceiling”.
Naomi Gerstel examined how unions deal with members’ work-family needs by interviewing workers and union leaders about their positions. While some unions push for flex-time, there are drawbacks to that arrangement. Also, while some push for on-site childcare, many workers don’t see the point because they can’t afford it. FMLA is almost universally supported. The reason unions don’t get more done in this sphere is because they are not that strong right now and they don’t have many women in leadership.
“Unequal work for unequal pay” profiled some family-friendly companies, like the Neuville hosiery factory. However, the author made the point that childless workers at these companies may feel bitter about all the benefits that parent employees get. They may resent having to pick up the slack for coworkers with children, or not being able to take off as much time since the FMLA or company policy might not cover them.
These last two articles demonstrate that no law or policy will ever make everyone happy. There will always be detractors. However, a family-friendly policy is not hurting anyone (which I doubt many of them do), people should be okay with it. Just because it doesn’t apply to them doesn’t mean it’s not important. After all, family friendly policies will impact the well-being of the nation’s children, who are the future of the nation. In a way, even childless people will likely be taken care of by today’s children when they are older, so should be concerned with their well-being. I guess a way to keep everyone happy is for individual employers to provide comparable benefits for parents and childless employees.

blog 10

This week’s readings about sex and emotion work were quite juicy. Not only were they fascinating on a human-interest level, but they also had important sociological implications.
Jean Duncombe’s “Whose Orgasm is this anyway?” discussed the sex work she thinks that many women perform in marriage. Since the modern sexual ideal is mutual orgasm, women feel like they have to work to enjoy their sex life, like it’s a duty to have fun. They may not really be fulfilled, since sex in marriage remains a male-dominated area. As the years go by and couples’ sex lives wane due to work/family obligations and resentment, husbands tend to want to bring in more and more exciting techniques to spice up their level of physical intimacy. But wives get sick of doing sex work to maintain what is supposed to be a mutually “satisfying” sex life, so resist their husbands’ advances.
This was a rather bleak, depressing take on sex in marriage. Granted, I am not married, but I hope that this is not what it’s like. While I understand her point that often women feel like they have to perform sex work, as dictated by gender roles, many men (nice guys at least) also perform sex work. While it is true that sex is often a venue for gender inequalities to show themselves, modern American men may have a different idea about sex than these older British men. I do understand her point, though, that the sexual ideals of the time (today’s is mutual orgasm) often put a lot of pressure on men and women, and may lead to a type of “inauthenticity” in intimate situations.
Duncombe’s “Emotion Work” article discusses women’s roles as nurturers to men. It takes a great deal of effort to constantly try to put men in touch with their feelings, make them feel good, and foster an emotional connection, she argues. Men also do emotion work, though it is generally work-related or done to prevent themselves from feeling emotions. The division of emotion work is dictated by gender-roles, and can lead to men and women being inauthentic. While men may just never acknowledge their full breadth of emotions, women often over-act their nurturance and end up burnt out.
The fact of the matter is, people grate on each other after years of being married to eachother. And, since women are often responsible for nurturing emotional ties in the family, the burden falls on them to keep things going. However, women get annoyed too, and emotion work can become increasingly laborious over time. Duncombe’s discussion of inauthenticity made me wonder if authenticity was ever truly feasible, especially in a marriage context. If we were all authentic (that is, being true to our impulses and feelings), we would all be pretty mean to each other on a regular basis. Also, people would probably not be monogamous. Therefore, marriage (and most other relationships) are build on some degree of inauthenticity. However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s just a fact of life.
Elizabeth Bernstein went undercover to get a deeper sense of the accuracy of feminist theories on prostitution. Radical feminist critiques say prostitution objectifies and victimizes women, forcing them to sell not just their bodies, but their selves. This is certainly true of the crack-addicted prostitutes in San Francisco’s ghetto. Pro-sex feminists see the sex worker as a powerful, independent professional, as corresponds with the college-educated escorts she profiled. The street-walking prostitutes are somewhere in between, subjugated to pimps and police but able to exercise some control over their clientele. She emphasizes that prostitution must be dealt with differently depending on its context.
In “Sex Work for the Middle Class,” Bernstein looks deeper into the phenomenon of college-educated, middle-class prostitutes. She uses Pierre Bordieu’s analysis of taste to describe these women’s business tactics. These women are attracted by the promise of easy money and often subscribe to an “ethic of fun,” which sees pleasure as a duty. They try to professionalize the work and often bring in techniques from their previous, legitimate jobs. They try to simulate authenticity with their clients, while not ignoring the fact that it’s an economic transaction.
These themes of authenticity and pleasure as duty arose once again in Bernstein’s articles. These ideas must be deeply linked to how we view sex in this society. Also, the fact that these prostitutes tried to professionalize their job showed how, even though they were trying to be rebellious, they still had the value systems of their middle-class upbringings engrained in their heads. The street-walking prostitutes also brought the values of their class situations to their work: they did what they had to do, answered to who they had to answer to, but still tried to retain some degree of choice and dignity. The crack-addicted prostitutes had the desperation of the truly impoverished.

blog 9

The Tronto article analyzed the “nanny question” from three perspectives: the workers, the employing parents, and the children. She stressed that the nanny-employer relationship is a market one, despite it being in the home/love sphere. What makes the system so unjust is exactly what makes it so effective: the parents have all the power. With enough money, you can have both intensive mothering and dual-career family, though it often means exploiting a domestic servant. She calls feminists out for failing to predict that this would be a problem. She suggests that minimum wage and working condition standards should be put into place, as well as a more collective attitude towards child care. The notion of a child “belonging” only to his/her parents is partly to blame for this issue.
Her idea that child care should be more collectivized and children should not “belong” so much to one set of parents is similar to Rothman’s point in that article we read a few weeks ago. Though I understand what they are talking about and can see how that would solve many of the problems associated with childcare, it makes me uncomfortable. It just doesn’t seem right, to not have your own child belong solely to you, even if other people are taking more care of it than you. But that is exactly her point: our worldviews are so constructed around capitalist notions of ownership and private property that we even see ourselves as owning our kids. Though, I must say, we are collectivizing childcare in a way. Think about how many people raise a child today (mom, nanny, soccer coach, teacher). That’s collectivized childcare; the only difference is that the parents (the owners) pay the people to do it, as opposed to the unofficial mutual assistance way it was before.
Bonnar’s article explores how and why caregiving work is undervalued in our society. We can’t rationalize it completely, since it involves so much emotion, so it is not considered valuable “market” work. Feminism, she thinks, reiterated the idea that anything done in the home sphere was trivial. Her main point is that people need more than just money to survive, a notion that doesn’t necessarily fit well with our industrialized society. Her suggestions include: modifying the work day time requirements for parents, paying homemakers (questionable?), discontinuing the policy of pushing welfare recipients into paid labor.
Though I don’t think wages for homemakers is going to catch on anytime soon (we don’t live in a socialist state, the government does not have enough money from tax collection to pay for that, and people don’t seem in a hurry to switch over to a welfare state), I think that modifying the work day time requirements is a better idea. People might be more productive with a shorter day, since 8 hours is a tough time to get through. Having worked at standard 40 hour jobs, I know that people’s minds start wandering at 3 anyway. Also, parents should be able to have more flexible hours, like working late if they take the morning off to go to a child’s doctor appointment.
Chapter 1 of Domestica discusses the state of domestic work in the economically stratified Los Angeles area. Race, class, immigration, globalization, and ideas about carework all combine to create a very distinctive culture of domestic labor. The number of domestic workers, mainly Latino immigrants, is growing, and their wages and working conditions are often very subpar. California’s economic climate and immigration history, combined with the U.S.’s laissez-faire domestic worker market, has led to a large domestic labor market.
Chapter 2 talks about the working lives of Latina nanny/housekeepers. The live-ins have the worst conditions and receive very little privacy, respect, or pay. The live-outs are paid better and have a better separation of work and family time, and tend to emphasize care work over the assigned housework. Housecleaning is the best job for Latinas with families, since they can work independently, choose their hours, and supplement income. Latinas are preferred for these jobs because they are “other.” The Latinas themselves transpose a racial hierarchy on their employers, favoring some ethnic groups over others.
That is the trouble with a pluralistic society: everyone has prejudices against everyone. It is not just the dominant groups that have negative stereotypes about minorities, it can be the other way around. But in the cases of these Latina domestic workers, their experience has dictated that certain ethnic groups tend to be harsher employers. This is often due to cultural differences in attitudes about servants, as the author pointed out. Just as some cultures have attitudes towards domestic workers that strip them of their dignity, perhaps we can work harder to create a distinctive attitude here in America towards domestic workers that acknowledges their dignity. That is why I support the unionization of domestic workers, standardized wages, and minimum working conditions. However, I realize this would lead to a decrease in the demand for domestic workers, since it would be too expensive for most people to afford if they had to pay minimum wage. But I think a good number of people would still be willing to pay for the valuable services they provide.

blog 8

Uttal’s article described a study into why black and Mexican-American mothers utilize kin for childcare more than whites. Three theories exist already: that it’s due to cultural preference, it’s an adaptive response to structural constraint, or it’s a combination of structural and cultural reasons. Anglos tended to say kincare was inappropriate (since it imposed on their relatives and they didn’t want to owe them), but Mexican-Americans and black mothers said it was appropriate, though it wasn’t necessarily their first preference of child care. Mex-Americans saw it as providing their relatives with decent jobs. The study showed that people take the needs of their relatives into account, not just their own preferences.
I am glad that this article dug deeper into the question of why exactly non-whites tend use kincare and whites don’t. The difference is usually chalked up to vague “cultural differences” or generic “poverty.” But this study added a new dimension by suggesting that Mexican-Americans see kincare as a way of providing their relatives with jobs. This article also looked at the issue from a new perspective, acknowledging that people don’t just use relatives for their own purposes, but also take their relatives’ needs into account. However, the author is right in admitting that more research needs to be done on black family systems, since she was not able to provide much information.
“The Color of Family Ties” discussed how the media and policy makers focus mainly on the nuclear family, though black and Latinos have a more extended kin system. Whites tend to help relatives out financially and emotionally, but black/Latinos tend to help out with practical tasks. The authors suggest that it is class, rather than race, that determines how involved people are with their extended kin. Reliance on kin is related to a lack of marital ties, since marriage weakens extended ties. They suggest that social policies, like the FMLA, should acknowledge extended family ties.
I agree with the authors’ point that the use of extended kin systems correlates more to class than to race, though I’m sure cultural values have some impact. In my own experience, I have seen that working- or lower-class whites have similar extended kincare situations as lower- or working-class people of other ethnicities. It makes sense, since people with less resources and human capital have to rely on their extended family networks more to get help with necessary tasks like childcare and housing. Also, lower-class people are less likely to spend time giving their relatives emotional support if what they really need is immediate practical help, regardless of race.
In “Explaining the gender gap in help to parents,” Gerstel and Sarkisian seek to answer this question: to what extent are differences in job and employment responsible for women helping out elderly parents more than men? They suggest that higher wages correspond to less hours of helping, so men’s economic privilege means they help less. But men and women with the same job help about the same. Also, married people help parents less than single, because marriage eats up people’s time. Policy implications: stop decreasing public aid for elderly, since their children have less time/ability to help out.
The finding that men and women with similar jobs help out about the same amount calls the stereotype that women are naturally more caring into question. While men and women may care in different ways, such as doing different tasks or using different affection styles, they are equally likely to help out. I wonder if the reason that men and women care differently is in fact “natural” (as in evolutionary) or if it culturally constructed. It is probably a mixture of both. But at least literature like this acknowledges that men and women are both caring, provided they are economically/occupationally equal. As we get closer to gender equality in the job market, a transformation of ideas about caring will follow.
Di Leonardo’s article discussed the ‘work of kinship,’ the efforts that people, usually women, go to for the sake of maintaining extended family ties. It competes for women’s time, along with paid work, housework, and carework. As the home sphere separated from the work sphere, the women became responsible for the emotional/home labor. The author addressed the debate about whether women do it out of natural nurturance or did it unwillingly out of indirect coercion. But she maintains that kinwork is both labor and a form of emotional gratification, and that it’s nature will likely change along with residential patterns, the economy, technology, and gender roles.
This was perhaps my favorite article that we read all year. I had never heard that type of work labeled before, and I think the “work of kinship” is a fitting title. At least in my family, it is such a huge part of our daily life, and maintaining kinship ties really does take a lot of effort and time. But the author was also correct in saying it is unlike most other forms of work, because it is emotionally gratifying and practically useful. I also liked her moderate position on whether women do it out of nurturance or begrudging obligation. It can be both. I would love to see another, wider-scale study in a few decades to see how the work of kinship changes from generation to generation. It is likely that more men will get involved, though it would be quite interesting if that DIDN’T happen, even as gender roles get more egalitarian.