The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home Read Free Page B

shoulders and hands on hips, “The house is a mess. It’s a pit. That’s my solution.” Another proudly responded to her husband’s refusal to help at home by making meals for herself but not for him. Yet another woman described placing second-shift requirements into her prenuptial agreement. If women are that upset and that armed, I wonder if these apparent “solutions” haven’t inadvertentlybecome a problem all their own. What we really need to do is solve the original problem. And where in the design of our jobs, in the hierarchy of our values, in the policies of our government is the nurturing social stage on which to do that? That’s the unanswered question behind this book.

THE
SECOND
SHIFT

CHAPTER
1
    The Family Speed-up

    S HE is not the same woman in each magazine advertisement, but she is the same idea. She has that working-mother look as she strides forward, briefcase in one hand, smiling child in the other. Literally and figuratively, she is moving ahead. Her hair, if long, tosses behind her; if it is short, it sweeps back at the sides, suggesting mobility and progress. There is nothing shy or passive about her. She is confident, active, “liberated.” She wears a dark tailored suit, but with a silk bow or colorful frill that says, “I’m really feminine underneath.” She has made it in a man’s world without sacrificing her femininity. And she has done this on her own. By some personal miracle, this image suggests, she has managed to combine what 150 years of industrialization have split wide apart—child and job, frill and suit, female culture and male.
    When I showed a photograph of a supermom like this to the working mothers I talked to in the course of researching this book, many responded with an outright laugh. One day-care worker and mother of two, ages three and five, threw back her head: “Ha! They’ve got to be
kidding
about her. Look at me, hair a mess, nails jagged, twenty pounds overweight. Mornings, I’m getting my kids dressed, the dog fed, the lunches made, the shopping list done. That lady’s got a maid.” Even working mothers who did have maids couldn’t imagine combining work and family in such a carefree way: “Do you know what a baby
does
to your life, the two o’clock feedings, the four o’clock feedings?” Anothermother of two said: “They don’t show it, but she’s whistling”—she imitated a whistling woman, eyes to the sky—“so she can’t hear the din.” They envied the apparent ease of the woman with the flying hair, but she didn’t remind them of anyone they knew.
    The women I interviewed—lawyers, corporate executives, word processors, garment pattern cutters, day-care workers—and most of their husbands, too—felt differently about some issues: how right it is for a mother of young children to work a full-time job, or how much a husband should be responsible for the home. But they all agreed that it was hard to work two full-time jobs and raise young children.
    How well do couples do it? The more women work outside the home, the more central this question. The number of women in paid work has risen steadily since before the turn of the century, but since 1950 the rise has been staggering. In 1950, 30 percent of American women were in the labor force; by 2011, that had risen to 59 percent. Over two-thirds of mothers, married or single, now work; in fact more mothers than non-mothers work for pay. Women now make up half of the labor force and two-job marriages now make up two-thirds of all marriages with children.
    But the biggest rise by far has been among mothers of small children. In 1975, only 39 percent of women with children six and under were in the civilian labor force—doing or looking for paid work. By 2009, that had risen to 64 percent. In 1975, 34 percent of moms of children three and under were in the labor force; in 2009 that had risen to 61 percent. And it was the same story for moms of children one and younger: 31 percent in