amazon research

though the title of this post may not seem surprising coming from an anthropologist, it's probably not what you think. the research of which i write has nothing to do with the yanomamo or any other folks who live in amazonia, but instead, amazon.com.

i've been typing up notes from arlie russell hochschild's the second shift (2003 [1989]) and thinking about how women, men and families strategize (both practically and ideologically, as hochschild discusses) to get paid work and house/family work done. i was reminded of all of the amazon entries i'd paged through online when E was a baby, i was going back to work and needed advice about nursing/pumping. when hochschild was writing in 1989, she noted that there was a multitude of advice books for employed moms, but none for employed dads (27). i wondered if this was still true.

to do a quick survey of the field of books written specifically for employed mothers and working fathers as either 1) how to "do it all" advice manuals or, 2) memoirs of the authors' own mis/adventures in parenthood and paid work, i did separate amazon searches--"working father", "working mother" and "working family."

here's what i found, looking at the first 10 pages (120 entries) of each search's results:

"working family"--2 titles
"working father"--3 titles
"working mother"--51 titles (plus 2 more that came up in the "working family" search)

i expected a discrepancy, but was still a little surprised at the huge gap between "mother" and "father" books. clearly, employed motherhood is still the "marked category" that draws attention from both writers and readers and is understood to require a level of balancing/juggling/managing not attached to employed fatherhood. a few titles demonstrate this:

42 Rules for Working Moms: Practical, Funny Advice for Achieving Work-Life Balance by Laura Lowell (2008)

Mothers on the Fast Track: How a New Generation Can Balance Family and Careers by Mary Ann Mason and Eve Mason Ekman (2007)

The Stuporwoman Files: Observations of an Overworked, Overhwelmed, Overjoyed Working Mother

by Monica L Lewis (2005)

Help Me Before I Go Crazy: Adventures from a Working Mother's Life by Marjorie Nightingale (2004)

Flex Time: A Working Mother's Guide to Balancing Career and Family by Jacqueline Foley and Sally Armstrong (2003)

i think the second shift has a lot to say about this. hochschild made calculations based on major time-use studies from the 60s and 70s and found that women worked 15 hours longer per week than men--a full month of 24-hour days more per year when paid work, housework and child care were combined (2003: 4). i wonder how much has changed since then*? if the books (or lack thereof) give us a clue, probably not much. the most recent of the three "working father" books was published in 2002, whereas three of the 51 "working mother" books were published just this year.

*i'm looking for more recent studies that document hours spent in employed work and house/family work--if you know of any, let me know!