13.5 Care Work
Elizabeth B. Pearce and Laci Lourenzo
What do you consider work? Do you consider work as loading and running the dishwasher before catching a train on the subway? What about washing a load of laundry after an eight-hour restaurant server shift? Calling the doctor to make an appointment for your sick child? It is the mundane everyday activities such as shopping for groceries, making meals, scheduling appointments and play dates, cleaning the bathrooms, and various other tasks that make households that are less often viewed as official work. This kind of work is called care work, the daily work that keeps a household running and the adults and children well cared for.
When care work is performed by someone who also is working outside of the home, it is called the second shift, coined by researcher Arlie Hochschild. She found that women are more likely than men to perform work inside the home in addition to working outside the home (Hochschild, 1990). The balance of household responsibility has changed as companies recognize the need for employee-life balance, cultural acceptance of stay-at-home dads, and the growing egalitarian ideologies between partners, but women still have a longer second shift (Blair-Loy, 2015).
Shifting family dynamics due to re-partnering, marriage, divorce, or death create unique challenges for all families experiencing these significant transitions. Expectations of chore responsibilities inside the home may vary for members who live across multiple residences. Differing household rules or strained relationships with new family members can cause household conflict. The concept of boundary ambiguity helps us understand that not all families, and thus their expectations for household work, are the same. Boundary ambiguity “is defined as the family not knowing who is in and who is out of the system” (Boss and Greenberg 1984:535). This idea encompasses physical and psychological presence or absence, as graphically presented in figure 13.19.
Transgender and gay relationships create unique challenges for households. When gay male families where one partner was the children’s biological father were studied, boundary ambiguity was highlighted due to institutional factors such as “heterosexism, legal decisions, and beliefs and practices encouraged in religious institutions” (Jenkins, 2013) as well as interpersonal factors such as “the relationship of the gay parent with his ex-spouse and children” (Jenkins, 2013).
Lack of Childcare and Eldercare
Appearance and behavioral standards are not the only workplace barriers for employees. Workers may be responsible for taking care of children or other adults. Lack of childcare or caring for an elderly person creates physical and emotional strain for many workers. Women have long been considered to have natural, internal instincts for raising children. Such expectations can create barriers for women in the workplace when they are expected to be the primary caregivers, although