How this article relates to Work and Family Topic
The article on Joeys’ problems tries to relate the life of the modern professional women who is raising a family and balancing work and family. The concepts link heavily with the issues discussed in chapter 11 concerning work and family. Traditionally, it has been the role of the woman or the wife to take care of the family, but based on the article, women are demanding equality in marriage. According to Hochschild (1989), married couples see it necessary to combine their financials to be able to raise their family without problems. Nancy’s salary was a significant help to the family despite them being able to survive without it (Hochschild, 1989).
In the article Nancy seems to struggle a lot in balancing her work life and family life. According to the article, Nancy does not want her marriage to resemble the one her parents had. Her mother used to do everything for her father. Unlike her mother, Nancy, just like many modern career women today have degrees and hold jobs. In many cases, career women are normally single women that have opted out of marriage. Nevertheless, Nancy wants to do it differently. According to Lamanna and Riedmann (2012), the concept of having a stay at home mum or a housewife is vanishing. Women do not want to be dependent on the earnings of their husbands.
The issue of having a career woman tends to bring challenges and problems of equality. This is the case because if both of the spouses are working eight to five jobs, both are likely to be tired at the end of the day. Nancy being a feminist is trying to have equality in marriage in terms of the chores being done in the house (Hochschild, 1989). However, the husband reluctantly agrees to do these chores. Many husbands do not want to participate fully in the family tasks seeing that this may cause them to lose their identities in the marriages. Most men have been brought up knowing that it is the wife’s role to take care of the family chores.
According to Lamanna and Riedmann (2012), the concept of second shift work is becoming a norm in many houses where both couples have jobs. However, this arrangement may not run smoothly in all marriages. Mostly most of the chores in the second shift work are borne by the wife. In Nancy’s case, the husband thinks that if he decides to share in the second shift work, the wife may dominate him, and he may eventually lose his identity as the man of the household. The struggle of gender identity and the head of the household are expressed in Nancy’s case.
According to Sawaya (2004), career women tend to suppress their emotions, and this has the effect of them being more self-centered and intensely personal. Trying to make her husband participate in the doing of family tasks takes a toll on Nancy. This is to the extent where the husband when asked to do things views her as being authoritative. Her job is what she values most. She clings too much on her job. After trying many approaches to have her husband involved wholly in family task, Nancy decides to do half the shift at work and the rest she spends at home doing the second shift work.
How the article has enhanced my understanding of Work and Family
This article offers new insights on marriage. Marriage in the modern world has taken a different perspective. Certainly, the feminist movements have encouraged more women to take up career jobs and compete among men in the corporate world. Many factors and issues arise when couples decide to raise a family. The division of labor at home is quite a major issue that has contributed to broken homes. It is apparent that most husbands will neglect to share duties at home because they fear losing their male identity. Further, husbands may view this as an opportunity where the wives may take advantage of the help and dominate them.
Furthermore, children may become attached to one parent more than they are to the other. This becomes problem when it interferes with the sexual life of the couple. The less the couple relates sexually the more they tend to grow apart. Couples who tend not to share their family tasks and enjoy each other often view sex as being a burden ((Hochschild, 1989). Women who contemplate divorce because the husband is not participating in sharing of the family tasks need to look at how the divorced couples are handling the situation. According to Hochschild (1989), Nancy sees that most of the divorced single women are more miserable as they try to support a child financially.
References
Hochschild, A. (1989). Joey’s Problem": Nancy and Evan Holt. Retrieved from
http://www.niu.edu/~rfeurer/labor/joey%27s%20problem.pdf
Lamanna, M. A., & Riedmann, A. C. (2012). Marriages, families, and relationships: making
Choices in a diverse society (11th Ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Sawaya, F. (2004). Modern Women, Modern Work: Domesticity, Professionalism, and American
Writing, 1890-1950. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
