Arlie Hochschild The Second Theft Analysis

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The Second Shift by Arlie Hochschild is about labor performed at home along with paid work. Hochschild gathers a team to research and interview fifty couples. She observes many different households throughout the 70s and 80s “to explore the leisure gap between men and women” (Hochschild). Studying their day-to-day routine, Hochschild has three categories of marital roles, them being, transitional, traditional, and egalitarian. Tradition women “wants to identify with her activities at home (as a wife, a mother, a neighborhood mom)” (Hochschild). The egalitarian female wife “wants to identify with the same spheres her husband does, and to have an equal amount of power in the marriage” (Hochschild). The transitional woman is a mixture of traditional …show more content…

Many changes have happened to the image of the “perfect family.” However men are not “adapting to their wives’ new behaviors and values” (Sullivan, Gurion, Coltrane). “Men and women may not be fully equal yet, but the rules of the game have been profoundly and irreversibly changes” (Sullivan, Gurion, Coltrane). Equality among breadwinning and family care will take time to fully develop, but in the last fifty years, there has been a huge change in roles. Many couples are making progress and are accepting the new way of being married and raising a family. I really enjoy this topic because for me, I had the privilege to be raised by a stay-home mom. However, I witnessed the changes in our country first-hand due to the recession, and changes in our economy. My mother had to start working along with my father; I was not the only family. Therefore, I think that this helped speed up the change in marital …show more content…

Many groups are fighting for the same equality, for example, L.G.B.T. and African-Americans, which have all gained “traction in the American consciousness.” Unfortunately, it has not been the same for people with disabilities, which could be due to people not recognizing people with a disability “as having a shared social identity and a political status.” Many live their daily lives not being aware “of who we are sharing our public spaces