Non-parental childcare,time pressure and the gendered division of paid work,domestic work and parental childcare

What impact does out-sourcing childcare have on the time parents spend on paid work, domestic work and childcare, and how they share these tasks between themselves? Using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey (TUS) 2006 we investigate the effects of formal and informal non-parental childcare on the time use of couples with children aged 0–4 years (N=348). We examine associations between non-parental care and (1) couples' combined time in paid work, domestic work and childcare, (2) parents' time separately by gender in paid work, domestic work and childcare (subdivided by activity type) and (3) parents' self-reported time pressure. Total workloads (the sum of paid work, domestic work and childcare) are neither higher nor lower when non-parental care is used, either for households combined or for each gender separately. The way time is spent, and how activities are divided by gender does differ, however. For mothers the use of any non-parental care and more hours in formal care is associated with more paid work hours, less childcare time and higher self-reported time pressure. Fathers' time is more constant, but they report higher subjective time pressure with increasing hours of formal non-parental care.     

Beyond the Time Crunch: New Directions in the Sociology of Time and Work

The sociology of work is particularly poised to study the meaning of time within institutions and organizations at its most sociological manifestation – the point where groups of people come together to accomplish joint goals. Previous work has offered useful concepts to help us understand temporality and tempography, home and work balance, temporal practices and mindsets towards time. Most of this work, however, which directly or peripherally treats time in the workplace, has focussed on the work–life balance. The actual temporal experiences of workers, however, are relatively absent in this literature. In this review article, I outline previous contributions from sociologists of work and offer ways in which work from the broader literature on the sociology of time can enhance this field. I address how future research should focus on how “time work” is accomplished in workplaces and on issues of class and gender.     

Theorizing Inequality: Comparative Policy Regimes,Gender, and Everyday Lives

Sociological explanations of inequality are incomplete unless they fully recognize the importance of social policy regimes, the policy logics embedded within them, and how policy arrangements work to stratify and shape daily lives. In this address, I develop my arguments by examining two overlapping struggles of everyday life in the contemporary United States: balancing work and family on the one hand, and securing health‐care services, both formal medical care and informal family care, on the other. Both struggles involve care deficits that are significantly more serious in the United States than in other high‐income countries, in part because our policy regime contributes to rather than counters the gendered roots of work–family conflict. Comparative studies hold a key to better understanding the link between policy regimes and everyday lives, as illustrated by the author's own comparative research in Finland and in the United States In terms of policies and policy logics that promote gender equity, paid parental leave for fathers has received much recent attention from social science scholars. Sociologists are challenged to become aware of comparative social policy scholarship and to approach inequalities and the related daily conflicts and struggles—such as over care deficits—by including this work in their analyses.     

COVID‐19 and raising the value of care

In this opinion piece, we argue the current pandemic is shining a light on caregiving as critical work that is under‐valued and under‐paid. We call upon national lawmakers to raise the value of care work. Doing so would also make progress in solving another national crisis: closing the gender wage gap. We explore how the gender wage gap is driven primarily by the fact that men and women sort into different work, with women being over‐represented in work where they care for others and in work that allows them to care for their families.     

Caregiving, ethical and informal: emerging challenges in the sociology of health and illness

The concept of care, integral to medical sociology and to the sociology of health and illness, suggests new challenges in two key areas of this field: 1) within professional socialization, an examination of socialization to ethical thinking, behavior, and identity among professional caregivers, building on the substantial literature already accumulated; 2) in the arena of hidden or informal care providers, an analysis of male and female informal providers and the productive work, other than care, done by these individuals. In both analyses, as well as in all medical sociology and sociology of health and illness, gender, race, and class require more attention. Both analytic endeavors influence the substance and the contours of the field.     

Unfeeling knowledge: Emotion and objectivity in the history of sociology

The theoretical concern of this paper is with the relationship of gender, personal life, and emotion to the social construction of sicentific knowledge. I examine this question through biographical research into the life and work of William Fielding Ogburn (1886–1959), a major figure in the history of American sociology. Ogburn believed that emotion was inimical to science and that statistics could help control what he considered to be its distorting effects. My analysis suggests that there was a personal component, reflecting Ogburn's search for masculinity, to the development of his ideas about how scientific sociology should be defined and practiced. I also suggest that Ogburn's ideas were favorably received by his mostly male audience because they spoke to broad cultural and historical currents. My analysis shows the need for a view of scientific knowledge that takes into account the effects of gender relations and emotion on intellectual activity.     

Work,parenting and gender: the care–work negotiations of three couple relationships in the UK

Changes globally mean that there are now record numbers of mothers in paid employment and a reported prevalence of involved fathering. This poses challenges to mothers and fathers as they negotiate care–work practices within their relationships. Focusing on interviews with three heterosexual couples (taken from a wider UK qualitative project on working parents), the paper considers care–work negotiations of three couples, against a backdrop of debates about intensive mothering and involved fathering. It aims to consider different configurations of work and care within three different couple relationships. We found that power within the relationships was negotiated along differential axis of gender and working status (full- or part-time paid work). We present qualitatively rich insights into these negotiations. Framed by a critical discursive psychological approach, we call on other researchers to think critically about dominant discourses and practices of working, caring and parenting, pointedly how couples situated around the world operationalise these discourses in talking about themselves as worker and carers.     

Tax and inequality in the United States

Taxation impacts individuals' lives in significant, and sometimes unequal, ways. While much sociological research examines factors that contribute to economic inequality and policy development, the relationship between inequality and tax policies remains understudied in sociology. In this article, I review extant research highlighting the ways in which taxation is an important site of inequality in the United States. I focus on how some of the most valuable tax policies related to work, marriage, investments, and homeownership contribute to economic inequality with class, gender, and race/ethnicity variation.     

‘Show us your frilly,pink underbelly’: Men administrative assistants doing masculinities and femininity

Research on men tokens (or numerical minorities) at work has focused on the processes by which men try to claim hegemonic masculine identities for themselves and how workplace interactants support or reject these attempts. In contrast to masculinity studies, token theory has paid less attention to non‐hegemonic masculinities. Using interviews with men administrative assistants, I develop a more comprehensive understanding of men tokens' gender performances and their significance for gender inequality. I present a four‐part typology: hegemonic masculinity, alternative masculinity, critical masculinity and male femininity. The categories are differentiated along two axes: support for hegemonic masculinity and support for hierarchical, binary gender.     

Dual‐earner parent couples’ work and care during COVID‐19

COVID‐19 and the associated lockdowns meant many working parents were faced with doing paid work and family care at home simultaneously. To investigate how they managed, this article draws a subsample of parents in dual‐earner couples (n = 1536) from a national survey of 2722 Australian men and women conducted during lockdown in May 2020. It asked how much time respondents spent in paid and unpaid labour, including both active and supervisory care, and about their satisfaction with work–family balance and how their partner shared the load. Overall, paid work time was slightly lower and unpaid work time was very much higher during lockdown than before it. These time changes were most for mothers, but gender gaps somewhat narrowed because the relative increase in childcare was higher for fathers. More mothers than fathers were dissatisfied with their work–family balance and partner’s share before COVID‐19. For some the pandemic improved satisfaction levels, but for most they became worse. Again, some gender differences narrowed, mainly because more fathers also felt negatively during lockdown than they had before.     

Issue Conclusion: Sociology,Political Inequality,and Democracy Beyond 2020

The articles in this special issue all contribute to a broader and richer understanding of racial and gender politics. They help reveal how racialized and gendered barriers to political participation reflect and reproduce intersecting racialized and gendered systems of domination. In doing so, they provide insights that can be applied to uncover political processes, cultivate political praxis, and draw our awareness to empowering modes of social and political transformation. Given all this, I propose a renewed sociology of political inequality that focuses on advancing democracy. This agenda includes (1) emphasizing the state of democracy over the state of political party competition, (2) highlighting how democratizing social change happens at various levels, (3) developing and practicing empirically grounded public advocacy, (4) seeing social and political structures are interconnected, and (5) employing sociology in the service of democracy.     

Sociological social work: a cartoon

I trace an account of social work—and sociology—that I believe holds a promise for re-forming the relationship between the two. I develop the argument in two ways. First, taking 1920s Chicago as a case study, I will attempt ‘a history of the present’ to suggest how the relationship between sociology and social work came to be as it is. I will suggest that the practice of some (both familiar and forgotten) people in 1920s and 1930s sociology and social work is best explained as a form of ‘sociological social work’. Second, after tracking this genealogy, I suggest an agenda for sociological social work that consists of straining to enact certain kinds of inter-disciplinary relationships, developing methodological social work practice, hearing occasional sociological frontier conversations and shared theorising. I illustrate how these arguments challenge both sociology and social work and both theory and practice.     

Feminism and Imperialism, 1890–1920: Our Anti‐Imperialist Sisters—Missing in Action from American Feminist Sociology*

This article retrieves part of our historical past to address two omissions in American feminist sociology on the subject of global imperialism. The first section addresses the inadequate attention feminist sociologists have paid to how major leaders of the women's movement responded to U.S. overseas expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It documents how these early feminists had both progressive and reactionary responses to the anti‐imperialist struggles of their era. Particular emphasis is given to how issues of race, class, and gender were interwoven in their discourses on imperialism. The second section focuses on how the writings of the most famous woman theorist and critic of imperialism during this era—Rosa Luxemburg—are virtually ignored in U.S. portrayals of feminist sociology and women founders of sociology. To address this omission, Luxemburg's theory of imperialism is examined, as well as how it has influenced contemporary global feminist works. A critical analysis of these Luxemburg‐inspired works considers their implications for understanding global imperialism today. In this way, the past is used to clarify the present.     

Beyond Being on Call: Time,Contingency, and Unpredictability Among Family Caregivers for the Elderly

This article explores contingency as a central yet underappreciated feature of care work. It does so by focusing on family elder care and the complex temporal interactions between caregiver, care receiver, and healthcare institutions in the U.S. context. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with 19 family caregivers for an elderly relative, I show that their experience of time is, paradoxically, systematically unpredictable. It is shaped by three dimensions: uncertain futures (not knowing how long, or how much, they will have to care), conflicting rhythms (mediating between the temporalities of institutions and that of the elderly relative), and flooded time (ongoing expectations of interruption). Focusing on caregivers’ experiences of unpredictability highlights their exclusion from broader social temporalities and the obstruction of their possibilities to craft their own futures. I therefore suggest that the experience and management of contingency may constitute its own form of inequality and is a fruitful site for exploring the temporal relations between paid and unpaid labor. Also, sociological theories of time and labor may benefit from foregrounding care work to advance understandings of the complex and hierarchical interactions between multiple temporal orders in post‐Fordist economies.     

“Old age” as a social location: Theorizing institutional processes,cultural expectations,and interactional practices

The graying of societies and growing inequality call for increased attention to age relations and their implications for power, status, and constraint in late life. In this paper, I argue old age is a distinct—and devalued—social location that exists amid intersecting relations of inequality. Using an integrative approach, I synthesize selected sociological research on the institutional processes, cultural expectations, and interactional practices underlying the social construction of old age. I then review research in the areas of family care work and employment to illustrate some empirical contexts where age relations intersect with gender, class, race, and ethnicity to structure divergent opportunities and constraints among older people. This paper maps out significant theoretical and substantive signposts in the sociology of old age to build connections across levels of analysis, and to provide a nuanced, comprehensive approach to patterned inequalities in late life.     

Doing Gender,Paying Low: Gender,Class and Work–Life Balance in Aged Care

This article examines how interactions between the doing of gender and class at institutional and organizational levels perpetuate inequality for aged care workers. In particular, it investigates how managers ‘do gender’ and class in relation to their care workers' work–life balance and the unintended consequences of this for aged care workers. The research data comprised interviews with female managers and aged care workers from four case studies in residential aged care in New Zealand. We argue that despite best intentions, the consequences of managers' doing gender and class results in continuing low wages, poor work–life balance and disempowerment at work for aged care workers.     

Researching the gender division of unpaid domestic work: practices,relationships, negotiations,and meanings

The paper focuses on the potential of quantitative research methods for sociologists who research the gender division of unpaid domestic work. To begin, it reflects on the emergence of the sociological interest in unpaid domestic work and identifies an early core concern with making invisible work visible. It is argued that quantitative research methods provide us with the most valuable opportunities for ‘recognising’ unpaid domestic work since they facilitate larger scale representative projects. However the data in most of the large scale surveys are scant, and fail to reflect developments in the conceptualisation of unpaid domestic work. Four areas of concern to contemporary sociology are identified: domestic work practices, relationships, negotiations and meanings. Given the complex questions that these four sub‐topics raise, the paper proposes a range of sub‐areas as a focus for ongoing sociological research into unpaid domestic work. It is concluded that, despite the methodological challenges presented, detailed indicators of the multiple dimensions of unpaid domestic work need to be agreed so that valid information can be collected in large scale surveys as routinely as it is on paid work.     

An argument for momentary sociological isolationism; or,you don’t always get what you expect

This article critiques Janet Chafetz’s suggestion that sociologists borrow ideas from other disciplines. I argue that sociologists who study gender on the microsociological level have borrowed too much from other disciplines, particularly psychology, and have yet to develop on adequate, sociology of gender. The microstructural perspective is proposed as a useful particularly sociological framework for the study of gender. Her current work focuses on the development and testing of a microstructural perspective on gender and intimate relationships. This article is based on a paper presented at the Southern Sociological Association meetings held in Nashville, Tennessee, March 1988.     

Driving to Work: The Front Seat Work of Paramedics to and from the Scene

The work paramedics do in the front of the ambulance on their way to and from the scene is central to the safety and well‐being of both paramedics and patients. However, most research on paramedics and emergency medical services assumes rather than empirically explores the actual happenings of what paramedics do in the front of their ambulance. In this article, I move beyond this taken‐for‐granted understanding of front‐seat work by taking readers in the front of the ambulance and exploring the hidden work paramedics do on their way to and from the scene. I draw on data from an institutional ethnography into the socially organized work and work settings of paramedics, which included over 200 hours of observations and over 100 interviews with paramedics. This article adds to research on the sociology of work and health and illness by focusing explicitly on how paramedics give meaning to their work setting, the social conditions and relations central to their work practices, and how their work knowledge is actually put into practice. In doing so, I shed light on an ever‐important occupational group in health care that has garnered little sociological attention to date.     

Logistics labor: Insights from the sociologies of globalization,the economy,and work

This article identifies the origins of the rise of the logistics industry to highlight the powerful structural position that this endows on the industry and its workers. I begin by analyzing an often‐neglected aspect of globalization by describing the logistics, or goods movement industry, and identifying the role that the “logistics revolution” plays within the contemporary capitalist system. Then, synthesizing insights from global, economic, and labor sociology, I argue that the structural “brokerage” position of logistics workers in the global economy offers them key advantages on which labor and political movements might capitalize in struggles for economic justice and worker rights. I examine empirical research regarding labor organizing within logistics to determine if workers leverage this powerful position into concrete gains. Finally, I argue that more attention needs to be paid to how logistics workers recognize, articulate, and utilize their potentially powerful position in globalization flows. Future research should endeavor to understand how this can be achieved among wide groups of logistics workers to achieve the most success in labor and political movements.