Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden
emotion work
Drawing on the work of other sociologists, Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden (1995) identify another invisible element of women's domestic work, emotion work. The term 'emotion work' was first used by Arlie Hochschild (1983) to describe the sort of work that workers such as airline hostesses do in trying to keep passengers happy. Duncombe and Marsden also try to develop the work of N. James (1989), who discussed how 'from a very early age girls and then women become subconsciously trained to be more emotionally skilled in recognising and empathising with the moods of others'.
Hochschild and James were mainly interested in emotion work in paid employment. Duncombe and Marsden examine the implications of their ideas for relationships between heterosexual partners. Their research was based on interviews with 40 white couples who had been married for 15 years. They asked the couples, separately and together, how their marriage had survived for so long in an age of high divorce rates. They found that many women expressed dissatisfaction with their partner's emotional input into the relationship and the family. Many of the women felt emotionally lonely. A number of the men concentrated on their paid employment, were unwilling to express feelings of love for their partner, and were reluctant to discuss their feelings. Most of the men did not believe there was a problem. They did not acknowledge that emotion work needed to be done to make the relationship work.
Duncombe and Marsden found that many of the women in the study were holding the relationship together by doing the crucial emotion work. In the early stages of the relationship, the partners, but particularly the women, deep act away any doubts about their emotional closeness or suitability as partners. At this stage any doubts are suppressed because they feel in love and are convinced of the worth of the relationship. Later, however, 'with growing suspicions, they "shallow act"' to maintain the 'picture for their partner and the outside world'. Shallow acting involves pretending to their partners and others that the relationship is satisfactory and they are happy with it. They 'live the family myth' or 'play the couple game' to maintain the illusion of a happy family. This places a considerable emotional strain on the woman but it is the price to pay for keeping the family together. However, eventually some women begin to 'leak' their unhappiness to outsiders. In the end this may result in the break-up of the relationship and separation or divorce.
In the meantime, women's greater participation in emotion work can be 'a major dimension of gender inequality in couple relationships' With married women increasingly having paid employment, they can end up performing a triple shift. Having completed their paid employment they not only have to come home and do most of the housework, they also have to do most of the emotion work as well. As women have gained paid employment this type of inequality has not reduced. Progress in this area would require even more fundamental changes. Duncombe and Marsden say:
In fact if we consider what would be a desirable future, the most important change would be for boys and men to become meaningfully involved in the emotional aspects of family life and childcare from an curly age. And this would require not only a massive reorganization of work and childcare but also a deep transformation in the nature of heterosexual masculinity. Duncombe and Marsden, 1995, p. 33
Evaluation
Both DeVault and Duncombe and Marsden identify important and neglected aspects of gender roles. Their work is important in opening up discussions of gender relationships to include a consideration of the emotions - an area that has often been neglected by sociologists. However, it cannot assume on the basis of such small samples that women do most of the emotion work in all families. There are likely to be some atypical families in which men are more emotionally involved.
Conjugal roles – invisible and emotion work
Marjorie L. DeVault - Feeding the Family
In an interesting qualitative study of domestic labour, the American sociologist Marjorie L. DeVault carried out an in-depth study of one area of domestic work, Feeding the Family (DeVault, 1991). She conducted in-depth interviews with 30 women and 3 men who lived in 30 households. The household members were from a variety of ethnic and class backgrounds.
DeVault found that feeding the family involves much more than tasks like shopping, cooking and washing up - the sort of tasks traditionally included in questionnaires about the domestic division of labour. It also involves planning and staging the meal as an event. There is therefore a great deal of 'Invisible work' involved, as well as that which is visible and obvious.
Although some women said that they enjoyed planning meals, others found it a considerable burden. For example, a woman called Jean said, 'My biggest peeve about cooking, preparing three meals a day, is trying to figure out what to put on the table' For the interviewees, planning meals involved thinking of food that would satisfy other family members. Very often they had to take account of the tastes and preferences of husbands and children, which were sometimes different. DeVault says:
Responding to these individual preferences is not a personal favor, but a requirement of the work. Family members may not cat if they don't like what is served, so women usually restrict their planning to items that have been successful in the post. DeVault, 1991, p. 40
Women may be particularly concerned that children eat appropriate and healthy foods even if they generally prefer less healthy food. This often, involves being creative so that healthy food is served in a guise that is palatable to the children. In trying to balance the requirements of different family members, the food preferences of the woman preparing the food can get lost. Women responsible for cooking learn what food goes down well and what does not. Their work 'requires constant monitoring and adjustment'. Indeed, it is difficult for them to relax; once a particular meal has been completed it is soon time to start planning the next one.
It is also difficult to relax during meals. Meals are family events and have to be made to work by the participants. The woman who has prepared the meal tends to take a leading role in trying to ensure that the meal goes smoothly to the satisfaction of all family members. An important part of organizing the meal as a social occasion involves organizing talk. In different households this might involve initiating appropriate conversations or remaining quiet, if that is what the husband prefers. In some working-class households, DeVault found that conflict arose between men who did not want conversation around the dinner table and women who did want it. Organizing talk can be a demanding task, which again makes it difficult for the person responsible to relax and enjoy their food. DeVault acknowledges that it is not always women who do all the work of feeding the family, but it is most common for them to be mainly responsible. It is a demanding and time-consuming task, which involves much more than the physical labour involved. She concludes, "Doing a meal," then, requires more than just cooking; it takes thoughtful foresight, simultaneous attention to several different aspects of the project, and a continuing openness to ongoing events and interaction.'