1. Marriage, Work, and Economics
Chapter 12
Marriage, Work, and Economics

2. Chapter Outline Workplace/family Linkages
The Familial Division of Labor: Women in the Labor Force
Dual-earner Marriages
Atypical Dual-earners: Shift Couples and Peer Marriages

3. Chapter Outline Employment and the Family Life Cycle
Family Issues in the Workplace
Living Without Work: Unemployment and Families
Poverty
Workplace and Family Policy

4. Families and Work
Families may be examined as economic units bound by emotional ties.
Families are involved in two types of work:
paid work at the workplace
family work- unpaid work in the household

5. Employment and Family Life
Work spillover is the effect employment has on the time, energy, and psychological functioning of workers and their families at home.
Role strain refers to difficulties individuals have in carrying out multiple responsibilities attached to a role.
Role overload occurs when the activities for one or more roles are greater than an individual can handle.

6. Sociologist Ann Oakley: The Homemaker Role
Four primary aspects:
Exclusive allocation to women, rather than to adults of both sexes.
Association with economic dependence.
Status as nonwork, which is distinct from “real,” economically productive paid employment.
Primacy to women—that is, having priority over other women’s roles.

7. Characteristics Of Housework
It isolates the person at home.
It is unstructured, monotonous, and repetitive.
It is often a restricted, full-time role.
It is autonomous.
It is “never done”.
It may involve child rearing.
It often involves role strain.
It is unpaid.

8. Women’s Decision to Enter the Labor Force
Financial factors: To what extent is income significant?
For unmarried women and single mothers, employment may be their only source of income.
Social norms
How accepting is the social environment for married women and mothers?

9. Women’s Decision to Enter the Labor Force
Self-fulfillment
Does a job meet needs for autonomy, personal growth, and recognition?
Attitudes about employment and family
Does the woman believe she can meet the demands of her family responsibilities and her job?

10. Findings From a Study of Two Parent Families
Mothers spend from 3 to 5 hours of active involvement for every hour fathers spend.
Mothers’ involvement is oriented toward practical daily activities, such as feeding, bathing, and dressing.
Fathers’ time is generally spent in play.

11. Findings From a Study of Two Parent Families
Mothers are almost entirely responsible for child care: planning, organizing, scheduling, supervising, and delegating.
Women are the primary caretakers; men are the secondary.

12. Contemporary Arrangements
Shift households - where spouses work opposite shifts and alternate domestic and caregiver responsibilities.
Households in which men stay home with children while women support the family financially.

13. Three Basic Work/family Life Cycle Models
Traditional- simultaneous work/family life cycle
Sequential work/family role staging
Symmetrical work/family role allocation

14. Traditional-simultaneous Work/family Life Cycle Model
Stages
Establishment/novitiate
New parents/early career
School-age family/middle career
Post parental family/ late career
Aging family/post exit

15. Economic Distress
Aspects of a family’s economic life that may cause stress: unemployment, poverty, and economic strain.
Unemployment causes family roles to change.
Unemployment most often affects female-headed single-parent families, African-American and Latino families, and young families.

16. Children Under 18, Below Poverty Level, 1994

17. Coping Resources: Families in Economic Distress
Individual family members’ positive psychological characteristics
Adaptive family system
Flexible family roles

18. Recipients of AFDC and TANF 1975–2002
Total recipients (thousands)
% of U.S. pop.
Families receiving assistance
1975
11,165
5.2
3,498
1980
10,597
4.7
3,642
1985
10,812
4.5
3,692
1990
11,460
4.6
3,974

19. Recipients of AFDC and TANF 1975–2002
Total recipients (thousands)
% of U.S. pop.
Families receiving assistance
1995
13,652
5.2
4,876
2000 (TANF)
5,778
2.5
2,215
2002
5,066 NA
2,047

20. Poverty
Almost 14% of the population of the United States lives in poverty.
Poverty generally occurs due to:
Divorce
Birth of a child to an unmarried mother
Unemployment
Illness, disability, or death of the head of the household