What Is Household Work? A Critique of Assumptions Underlying Empirical Studies of Housework and an Alternative Approach

Eichler, Margrit; Albanese, Patrizia

doi:10.2307/20460633

Cited by 43 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 101 publications

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“…Emotion work involves efforts to promote the emotional well-being of others, often through the suppression and regulation of one’s own emotions (Hochschild, 1979). Alongside other forms of unpaid work, including childcare and housework, emotion work is more often done by women compared to men and is often unacknowledged and invisible (Eichler & Albanese, 2007; Erickson, 2005). Emotion work can be a source of stress, particularly when it is unreciprocated and unappreciated and when it involves suppressing one’s own emotions (Umberson et al, 2015).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Emotion work—activities done with the intention of promoting another’s positive emotional state—is conceptualized as part of the division of unpaid household work commonly done within marriage (Eichler & Albanese, 2007; Erickson, 2005; Hochschild, 1979, 2003; Pfeffer, 2010). Much like other forms of unpaid work, the division of emotion work is highly gendered wherein women do a disproportionate share of emotion work relative to men (Erickson, 2005; Hochschild, 2003; Umberson, Thomeer, & Lodge, 2015).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gendered emotion work around physical health problems in mid- and later-life marriages

Thomeer

Reczek

Umberson

2015

Journal of Aging Studies

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The provision and receipt of emotion work—defined as intentional activities done to promote another’s emotional well-being—are central dimensions of marriage. However, emotion work in response to physical health problems is a largely unexplored, yet likely important, aspect of the marital experience. We analyze dyadic in-depth interviews with husbands and wives in 21 mid-to later-life couples to examine the ways that health-impaired people and their spouses provide, interpret, and explain emotion work. Because physical health problems, emotion work, and marital dynamics are gendered, we consider how these processes differ for women and men. We find that wives provide emotion work regardless of their own health status. Husbands provide emotion work less consistently, typically only when the husbands see themselves as their wife’s primary source of stability or when the husbands view their marriage as balanced. Notions of traditional masculinity preclude some husbands from providing emotion work even when their wife is health-impaired. This study articulates emotion work around physical health problems as one factor that sustains and exacerbates gender inequalities in marriage with implications for emotional and physical well-being.

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Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gendered emotion work around physical health problems in mid- and later-life marriages

Thomeer

Reczek

Umberson

2015

Journal of Aging Studies

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“…The mothers in Quebec were bilingual, so all 22 interviews were conducted in English. 5 Eichler and Albanese (2007) use the term "household work" to include both housework and care work. 6 One exception that runs counter to past studies is Hendy and Boyer's (1993) work, which found that female triathletes downplayed the importance of luck.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“I’m Lucky” . . . To Have Found Child Care: Evoking Luck While Managing Child Care Needs in a Changing Economy

Albanese

Farr

2012

IJCYFS

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This research 1 looks at the impact of the rise of women's non-standard, service sector employment on gender roles, identities and relations, and compares the complex task of finding and managing formal and informal non-parental child care in rural and semi-rural communities in two policy jurisdictions (Ontario and Quebec) in the Ottawa Valley. It seeks to understand the ways in which the neo-liberal reconfiguration of local economies impact on the experiences of employed, non-urban women with young children -mitigated by provincial policy decisions -through documenting the strategies they adopt to cope with challenges when managing this family-market-state nexus. This paper specifically focuses on mothers' use of the notion of "luck" in describing how they found and managed their unique child care needs. Luck, in the psychological literature, is often treated as either an external, unstable, and uncontrollable cause, or an internal personal attribute. This paper shows that its use and invocation in response to questions about finding and managing child care has to do with gendered perceptions of control and power(lessness) over social circumstances related to geography, government policies, and changing, and at time precarious, economic/labour market circumstances.

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“…Referring himself to Arendt's categories, he promoted an enlarged understanding of work integrating informal work, namely, domestic work and moonlighting (Dahrendorf, 1983). The feminist movement (Kittay, 1999) defended the same cause, initiating a debate on how to define and measure household work (Eichler and Albanese, 2007). Other authors seek for criteria of definition of non-market activities, like the "third person criterion" according to which "an economic activity is one which can be done by a third person without reducing its final utility value" (Hawrylyshyn, 1977).…”

Section: Transformations In Work and The Reconfiguration Of The Sociamentioning

confidence: 99%

Work, Labor: History of the Concept

Zimmermann

2015

International Encyclopedia of the Social &Amp; Behavioral Sciences

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What Is Household Work? A Critique of Assumptions Underlying Empirical Studies of Housework and an Alternative Approach

Cited by 43 publications

References 101 publications

Gendered emotion work around physical health problems in mid- and later-life marriages

Gendered emotion work around physical health problems in mid- and later-life marriages

“I’m Lucky” . . . To Have Found Child Care: Evoking Luck While Managing Child Care Needs in a Changing Economy

Work, Labor: History of the Concept

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