The Second Shift 经典片段摘抄

Hochschild, Arlie, and Anne Machung. The second shift: Working families and the revolution at home. Penguin, 2012.

Chapter 1 The Family Speed-up

#husbands get to do more what they want to do#

Beyond doing more at home, women also devote proportionately more of their time at home to housework and proportionately less of it to child care. Of all the time men spend working at home, more of it goes to child care. That is, working wives spend relatively more time "mothering the house"; husbands spend more time "mothering" the children. Since most parents prefer to be with their children to cleaning house, men do more of what they'd rather do. More men than women take their children on "fun" outings to the park, the zoo, the movies. Women spend more time on maintenance, such as feeding and bathing children, enjoyable activities to be sure, but often less leisurely or special than going to the zoo. Men also do fewer of the "undesirable" household chores: fewer wash toilets and scrub the bathroom. (pp. 9)

Chapter 2 Marriage in a Stalled Revolution

#what you do and how you feel#

When I compared a couple who was sharing and happy with another couple who was sharing but miserable, it was clear that purely economic or psychological answers were not enough. Gradually, I felt the need to explore how deep within each man and women gender ideology goes. For some, men and women seemed to be egalitarian "on top" but traditional "underneath", or the other way around. I tried to sensitize myself to the difference between shallow ideologies (ideologies which were contradicted by deeper feelings) and deep ideologies (which were reinforced by such feelings). I explored how each person reconciled ideology with the rest of life. I felt the need to explore what I call gender strategies. (pp. 14)

What do each husband's ideas about manhood lead him to think he "should feel" about what he's doing at home and at work? What does he really feel? Do his real feelings conflict with what he thinks he should feel? How does he resolve this conflict? The same questions apply to wives. What influence does each person's strategy for handling the second shift have on his or her children, job, and marriage? Through this line of questioning, I was led to the complex web of ties between a family's needs, the sometime quest for equality, and happiness in modern marriage. (pp.13 - 14)

#the economy of gratitude#

The interplay between a man’s gender ideology and a woman’s implies a deeper interplay between his gratitude toward her, and hers toward him. For how a person wants to identify himself or herself influences what, in the back and forth of a marriage, will seem like a gift and what will not. If a man doesn’t think it fits his male ideal to have his wife earn more than he, it may become his gift to her to “bear it” anyway. But a man may also feel like the husband I interviewed, who said, “When my wife began earning more than me I thought I’d struck gold!” In this case his wife’s salary is the gift, not his capacity to accept it “anyway”. When couples struggle, it is seldom simply over who does what. Far more often, it is over the giving and receiving of gratitude. (pp. 18)

Chapter 4 Joey’s Problem: Nancy and Evan Holt

#symbolic sharing#

One day, when I asked Nancy to tell me who did which tasks from a long list of household chores, she interrupted me with a broad wave of her hand and said, “I do the upstairs, Evan does the downstairs.” What does that mean? I asked. Matter-of-factly, she explained that the upstairs included the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, two bedrooms. and two baths. The downstairs meant the garage, a place for storage and hobbies - Evan’s hobbies. She explained that this as a “sharing” arrangement, without humor or irony - just as Evan did later. Both said they had agreed it was the best solution to their dispute. Evan would take care of the car, the garage, and Max, the family dog. As Nancy explained, “The dog is all Evan’s problem. I don’t have to deal with the dog.” Nancy took care of the rest. (pp. 44-45)

But many wish it instead of want it. Other goals - like keeping peace at home - come first. Nancy Holt did some extraordinary behind-the-scenes emotion work to prevent her ideals from clashing with her marriage. In the end, shed had confined and miniaturized her ideas of equality successfully enough to do two things she badly wanted to do: feel like a feminist, and live at peaces with a man who was not. Her program had worked. Evan won on the reality of the situation, because Nancy did the second shift. Nancy won on the cover story; they would talk about it as if they shared.

Chapter 7 Having It All and Giving It Up: Ann and Robert Myerson

#do you want this for your girls#

At the end of our last visit, I asked Ann if she had any advice for young women about to enter two-job marriages. She mused for a while, then concluded that since she had given up having it all, she really had done. She moved in a perfunctory way over the agenda of liberal reforms - part-time work, flex time, job sharing - that would make it possible to have more time at home. Then she shared this parting thought.

It’s really sad that I have two girls. They’re going to be pulled into the same world I’ve coped with. They’re going to have to care about what I’ve had to care about. They’ll never have a chance to really make a contribution to anything unless they fight against the odds all the time. No matter how smart they are, how driven they are, they will ultimately fell the same conflict. I don’t think things are going to change so much that my girls won’t be torn. They might be able to succeed if they shut out the idea of having children and family. But then they would miss something. Society would react negatively to them. But if they do have children, they can’t manage to do it all and not be torn. I wind up thinking that my husband is an incredibly gifted person and it’s almost a shame he didn’t have a son. It would be nice to have a boy who didn’t have to face this conflict, who could just benefit from being a man, who could use all those brains. I suppose it’s sad to feel this way. (pp. 109-110)

Chapter 8 A Scarcity of Gratitude: Seth and Jessica Stein

#deep feelings and wishes#

However, this was not the same Jessica whom Seth imagined would become his wife. He had a secret idea: Jessica had not really meant it. And educated woman’s commitment to her career, he felt, was like an attractive woman’s commitment to her virginity - if a man makes the right moves, she will give it up. The virgin says, “No, no, no … yes.” The career girl says over and over, “I’m serious about my career,” but ends up saying, “Really, a family comes first.” (pp. 127)

Chapter 10 The “His” and “Hers” of Sharing: Greg and Carol Alston

#he’s rare and precious#

Although the cultural shifts and opportunities of the 1980s had led Carol and Greg to a life ideologically and financially removed from patriarchy, that older, entrenched system influence them anyway. Because conditions were worse for women in general than for men in general, Carol felt more grateful toGreg than he did to her. The love ran both ways, but the gratitude ran more from Carol to Greg. although Carol had for year earned more money than Greg and taken most of the heat off the second shift, Greg did not spontaneously talk about being grateful for this.

Carol had catalogued a series of “miserable boyfriends” she’d met in college whose laundry she’d washed and whose weekend dinner she’d cooked. Compared to these other possible men, Greg was wonderful. Greg hadn’t washed any girlfriend’s laundry; for him the pickings weren’t so slim. Again, Carol explained: “My God, these single mothers whose husbands don’t see the kids or pay child support. I don’t know how they do it. I couldn’t. Being a single mother is the worst thing that can happen to you, next to cancer.” Greg would never leave; Carol was grateful for that. But Greg didn’t feel haunted by a dread of abandonment, by the sense “that could happen to me.” He didn’t picture himself as a single dad. The general supply of male commitment to shared responsibility was far lower than the female demand for it. Through this fact in the wider society, patriarchy tipped the scales inside the Alston marriage. It evoked Carol’s extra thanks.

And her extra thanks inhibited her from making further demands on Greg, who was already doing comparatively so much. Carol had a “wish list” on which sharing primary parenting was probably fourth or fifth after the desire that Greg be healthy, faithful, mentally sound, and able to help provide. Greg had a wish list too, with many of the same wishes. But given the generally worse lot for women, Carol’s extra sense of gratitude and of debt inhibited her from going as far down her wish list as Greg went in his. In this different rate of climb up each wish list, Carol and Greg were like nearly every couple I met. Greg really was unusual, and given the scarcity of such men, Carol was “right” to be grateful. She had fewer options. Equal as they felt they were, the burden of the second shift fell mainly on Carol’s shoulders. and it was the larger, societal support of inequity between the sexes, a system outside of their stable, happy marriage, that indirectly maintained the “his” and “hers” of sharing. (pp. 158 - 159)

Chapter 12 Sharing Showdown and Natural Drift: Pathways to the New Man

In the history of American fatherhood, there have been roughly three stages, each a response to economic change. In the first, agrarian stage, a father trained and disciplined his son for employment, and often offered him work on the farm, while his wife brought up the girls. (For blacks, this stage began after slavery ended.) As economic life and vocational training moved out of the family in the early nineteenth century, fathers left more of the child-rearing to their wives. According to the historian John Nash, in both these stages, fathers were often distant and stern. Not until the early twentieth century, when increasing numbers of women developed identities, beyond brief jobs before marriage, in the schoolhouse, factory, and office, did the culture discover the idea that “father was friendly.” In the early 1950s, popular magazines began to offer articles with such titles as “Fathers Are Parents Too” and “It’s Time Father Got Back into the Family.” Today, we are in the third stage of economic development but the second stage of fatherhood. (pp. 186 - 187)

Chapter 13 Beneath the Cover-up: Strategies and Strains

#少一些套路，多一些真诚#

For some men, avoiding work at home was a way of “balancing” the scales with their wives. A man may decline to pitch in at home to compensate for his wife’s more rapid advance at work, or in other ways gaining “too much” power. (Women do this “balancing” too.) Underlying all these extra reasons to resist sharing was, finally, the basic fact that it was a privilege to have a wife tend the home. If a man share the second shift, he lost that privilege.

At least at first, most men gave other reasons for not wanting to share, their career was too demanding. Their job was more stressful. When these rationales didn’t go over, resistant men resorted to the explanation that they weren’t “brought up” to do housework.

Some 20 percent of men expressed the genuine desire to share the load at home, and did. Other men resisted, and in a variety of ways.

#我干不好#

Some did tasks in a distracted way. Evan Holt forgot the grocery list, burned the rice, didn’t know where the broiler pan was. Such men withdrew their mental attention from the task at hand so as to get credit for trying and being a good sport, but so as not to be chosen next time. It was a male version of Carmen Delacortes’ strategy of playing dumb.

#你没叫我啊#

Many men also waited to be asked, forcing their wives to take on the additional chore of asking itself. Since many wives disliked asking - it felt like “begging” - this often worked well. Especially when a man waited to be asked and then became irritated or glum when he was, his wife was often discouraged from asking again.

#我不觉得脏#

Consciously or not, other men used the strategy of “needs reduction.” One salesman and father of two explained that he never shopped because “he didn’t need anything.” He didn’t need to take clothes to the laundry to be ironed because he didn’t mind wearing a wrinkled shirt. When I asked who bought the furniture in their apartment, he said his wife did, because “I could really do without it.” He didn’t need much to eat. Cereal was fine. Seeing a book on parenting on his desk, I asked if he was reading it. He replied that his wife had given it to him, but he didn’t think one needed to read books like that. Through his reduction of needs, this man created a great void into which his wife stepped with her “greater need” to see him wear clean, ironed shirts, to eat square meals, live in a furnished home, and be up on the latest work on child-rearing.

#老婆你真棒#

Many men praised their wives for how well organized they were. The praise seemed genuine but it was also convenient. In the context of other strategies, like disaffiliating from domestic tasks or reducing needs, appreciating the way a wife bears the second-shift can be another little way of keeping her doing it.

…

Many couple now believe in sharing, but at this point in history few actually do. Anew marriage humor targets this tension between promise and delivery. In Gary Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” comic strip, a “liberated” father is sitting at his word processor writing a book about raising his child. He types: “Today I wake up with a heavy day of work ahead of me. As Joannie gets Jeffrey ready for day care, I ask her if I can be relieved of my usual household responsibilities for the day. Joannie says, ‘Sure, I’ll make up the five minutes somewhere.’ ” (pp.198 - 200)

Chapter 14 Tensions in Marriage in an Age of Divorce

The two-job marriage I came to know seemed vulnerable to three kinds of tension. One tension was between the husband’s idea of what he and his wife should do at home and work, and his wife’s idea about that. Gender strategies clashed - as did those of the Holts and Steins. Another existed as a shared desire to live an old-fashioned life - the wife at home the husband working - and the real need for her salary. The Delacortes, for example, did not clash in their vision of life or ways of trying to realize it, but both suffered a conflict between ideal and reality. The third tension is more invisible, nameless, and serious: that between the importance of a family’s need for care and the devaluation of the work it takes to give that care. (pp. 201)

Happy marriage is famously mysterious. But an added ingredient to it these days is some resolution of the extra month of a year (that the wives work on housework and childcare, added by ZT). As the role of the homemaker is vacated by many women, the homemaker’s work has been devalued and passed on to low-paid housekeepers, baby-sitters, and day-care workers. Like an ethnic culture in danger of being swallowed up by the culture of a dominant group, the contribution of the traditional homemaker has been devalued first by men and now by more women. (pp. 211)

Chapter 16 The Working Wife as Urbanizing Peasant

If women’s work outside the home increases their need for male help inside it, two facts - that women earn less and that marriages have become less stable — inhibit women from pressing men to help more. (pp. 244)

#a cycle#

A cycle is set in motion. Because men put more of their “male” identity in work, their work time is worth more than female work time - to the man and to the family. The greater worth of male work time makes his leisure more valuable, because it is his leisure that enables hime to refuel his energy, strengthen his ambition, and move ahead at work. By dong less at home, he can work longer hours, prove his loyalty to his company, and get promoted faster. His aspirations expand. His pay rises. He earns exemption from the second shift.

The female side of the cycle runs parallel. The woman’s identity is less in her job. Since her work comes second, she carries more of the second shift, thus providing backstage support for husband’s work. Because she supports her husband’s efforts at work more than he supports hers, her personal ambitions contract and her earnings, already lower, rise more slowly. Her extra month a year contributes not only to her husband’s success but to the expanding wage gap between them, and so the cycle spins on. (pp. 247-248)

#how much more do working moms do#

There is a weekly five to seven hours’ leisure gap between working moms and working dads. In Hochschild’s study conducted 25 years ago in the 1980s, she found that compared to their husbands, working moms put in an extra month a year.（pp. 266）

#what should we do#

One was female empowerment - the idea that women should express their talents, be all they can be, and stand equal to men. The second big idea was valuing - and sharing - the duties of caring for others.

Without our noticing, American capitalism over time embraced empowerment and sidetracked care. So in the absence of a countermovement, care has often become a hand-me-down job. Men hand it to women. High-income women hand it to low-income women. Migrant workers who care for American children and elderly, hand the care of their own children and elderly to paid caregivers as well as grandmothers and aunts back in the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Mexico, and other countries of the global South. And those Filipina, Sri Lankan, or Mexican paid caregivers at the end of this care chain pass child-care duties to oldest daughters. The big challenge in the years ahead - and the challenge at the heart of this book - is to value and share the duties of caring for loved ones. Facing it, we would - and why not in our lifetimes? - finally celebrate a world beyond this unstalled revolution. (pp. 269)

附赠：可以转给老公/老爹/老哥/老弟的话

科学研究表明，老公做家务——积极主动做或者做差不多一半的那种——好处数不胜数：老婆会开心，你们会彼此更感激对方，老婆不会精疲力尽（从而对你和孩子不耐烦/没好气/暴走等等），有更多的精力在呵护彼此、而不是怨恨彼此上，老婆会更少地闪现离婚的念头，你们双方都会笑得更多，婚姻会更幸福，孩子也长得更好。