Second Shift

Women's Changing Social Roles in History

Throughout the 20th century, women's labor force participation steadily increased. Whereas only 18.2 percent of women worked full-time outside the home in 1890, that figure grew to 27.9 percent in 1940, 37.8 percent in 1960, 57.5 percent in 1990, and 60 percent in 2006. Married women, especially married women with children, have contributed most to these increases in labor force participation. The liberal-feminist thread of the second-wave women's movement represented a cultural shift, after which women laid legitimate claim to sharing the public sphere with men and aspiring to professional careers outside the home.

Although married women participated in the labor force in greater numbers, they also continued to bear primary responsibility for time-consuming household duties such as cooking, laundry, and child care. In The Second Shift, Hochschild used qualitative in-depth interviews with 50 families with young children and national time diary data to estimate that employed mothers, compared with employed fathers, worked an extra 15 hours each week, representing one full month each year. As a result, mothers enjoy less down time and leisure than do fathers; they also get less sleep. Further, the kinds of tasks women and men do tend to be different, with mothers doing the routine, everyday household chores such as cleaning and laundry, while fathers are most likely to spend time playing with children and are responsible for the less frequent jobs such as lawn care and car maintenance. Finally, having internalized the dominant ideology that the private sphere is women's “natural” domain, women tend to take on primary responsibility for managing the household, a psychological burden beyond the instrumental question of time use.

Balancing Work and Family

Hochschild's book struck a cultural chord at the time of publication, and the concept of the second [Page 752]shift has shaped studies of gender relations in the family, institutional arrangements in the workplace, and the competing demands of these institutions. Although it is commonly accepted that dual-earner households face additional work at home at the end of a workday, a more nuanced understanding of how much of that household labor is getting done, and by whom, continues to unfold. Studies conducted following publication of The Second Shift indicated that women were doing less than previously and men were doing slightly more, though women still took on approximately two-thirds of the second shift. On balance, the total amount of time being put into housework has declined, though care work has expanded for couples. As the baby boom generation ages, working adults are finding themselves caring for aging parents, sometimes at the same time that they are starting new families. Women are more likely to shoulder this responsibility as part of their second shift.

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