The Emotional Geography Of Work And Family Life Summary

Through the summary of “The Emotional Geography of Work and Family Life” (1996), the author, Arlie Russell Horchschild, demonstrates that American’s that are employed full time, are working more and more hours, regardless of the price in family time. Over the past several years, the workforce has changed dramatically throughout our society. Today a typical American’s mindset is to produce more hours in a workday, to provide and support for their families. However, taking care of ones family, in addition to working, causes stress on an individual. The consequences are resulting in a work/family conflict.

There are three factors that are determined to be a current speed up at work and at home with family life in the United States. One speed up factor is that more women are working outside the home. Next speed up factor is that they are working in a job, that does not have much flexibility. Last, but not least is that both men and women have increased their amount of hours at work. Over the last two decades, families and work life have decreased quite a bit. A few examples would be family vacation time has shortened by fourteen percent; the number of family dinner times has decreased by ten percent, and the time spent commuting back and forth to work and home has increased over time,because you have to come in earlier and stay later at the office.

Family-friendly reforms are working together to be able to spread work, increase work control over hours, and create a “warm modern” world for women to be equal within. Some examples of the family-friendly reform are flextime, a work day with flexible starting and ending times, but usually a forty hour week. Flex place is a home based work such as telecommuting. A job-sharing is a compressed work week with four 10-hour days with three days off or three 12-hour shifts with four days