Clair Huxtable In The Cosby Show

According to Hochschild and Machung (2012), “Women can have fame and fortune, office affairs, silicone injections, and dazzling designer clothes, in Brown’s world. But the one thing they can’t have, apparently, is a man who shares the work at home (26).” This statement explains that even the most attractive and wealthy women are still doing the second shift. why the second shift is put on the shoulders of women in heterosexual marriages. In The Cosby Show, the role of Clair and Cliff Huxtable in their home demonstrates their statement. There are three issues about The Cosby Show that will be explained in this paper. First, the reasons why Clair Huxtable seems to be a willing partaker in doing the second shift. Second, the flexibility of Clair

Cliff’s portion of the second shift primarily consists of bonding with the children on an emotional level. Whenever Clair does not have time to deal with the children, she asks Cliff to take care of it. Even though he realizes that she is stressed out, he does not do anything to lift her load. Rather, he comforts her and attempts to do her load as well, but usually, ends up messing it up. This reiterates the belief that men are innately not cut out to do “women work.” There is the similarity between The Huxtables and the Tanagawas in the Hochschild and Machung study (2012). While Peter believes that both men and women should partake evenly in the second shift, he believes Nina should tend the home because “she is more competent in it and has freely chosen to put her time and energy into it” (Hochschild & Machung 2012). Whether this is how Cliff views Clair, it can be assumed that their relationship works because Cliff mothers Clair, while Clair mothers the child (Hochschild & Machung,

It introduces the reality that Black Americans can also be middle class, just like their white counterparts. It was not long ago when Blacks were “denied the opportunity to join the white middle class in supplying the brain power and intellectual skills of the nation as scientists, researchers, academicians, writers, and even as clerical workers” (Landry, 1987). Needless to say, The Huxtables became the ideal family that Black Americans strived to be. But why?
From the nine families Hochschild and Machung (2012) mention in their book, there is only one Black family. Anita and Ray Judson were unique in the fact that they were in the solid blue-collar world (Hochschild & Machung 2012). In the 1980’s, Cliff salary would have been approximate $125,000 (Pope & Sneider 1992). Ray, on the other hand, was making $30,000. Even Ray and Anita’s salaries combined does not total the amount of one income in the Huxtable household. Why does the Huxtables deviate greatly from the story of Is Anita and Ray’s story more realistic than Clair and