Assignment 8

1. According to Hochschild, what is the “Second Shift?”

·         Hochschild defines the second shift as. “the task of striking and restriking the right emotional balance between child, spouse, home, and outside job.”

2. Hochschild argues that families create “myths” about their division of household labor. Name and describe the family MYTH created by Nancy and Evan Holt.

·         The myth created in the Holt family was the “sharing arrangement” of the second shift. While Nancy cleaned the upstairs (including the kitchen, living room and bedrooms), Evan cleaned downstairs which consisted of the garage and storage room for his hobbies.

3. According to Hochschild, what is the purpose of family myths?

·         The purpose of family myths is to make things look fair. “For purposes of accommodating the second shift, then, the Holts' garage was elevated to the full moral and practical equivalent of the rest of the house. For Nancy and Evan, ‘upstairs and downstairs,’ ‘inside and outside,’ was vaguely described like ‘half and half,’ a fair division of labor based on a natural division of their house”

4. How do you expect to divide household labor and child care when you start a family? Please note whether you intend to work full-time, part-time, or stay at home when married and/or when you have young children.

·         I expect to divide household labor and child care directly down the middle. Ideally, I would like to have a dual-income family, where both my husband and I have careers. However, once we have children, I would like to stay home for the first few years of their life. This obviously would entail me taking on the primary role in the second shift.