Sociologist upset that her
book is misunderstood

BY MIRANDA EWELL
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, CA

Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News

BERKELEY, CA - Arlie Hochschild is horrified. The Berkeley sociologist repeats the word three times for emphasis. She feels that conservatives have embraced the thesis of her controversial new book, ``The Time Bind'' -- that work and home have traded places in the hearts of American workers -- to bolster their calls for a return to ``traditional family values.''

U.S. News & World Report has folded her argument into a blistering 15-page critique of how ambitious, workaholic parents are choosing work over family even as they lie to themselves about what they really care about. None of this is what she intended. ``This is not a blame-shame story,'' Hochschild protests. ``This is a gentle invitation to a conversation.''

Hochschild seems surprised, shocked even, that her thesis might be used to slam women for abandoning their traditional role as homemakers. She is even more distressed by the reaction from some women -- like one female letter writer responding to an excerpt of her book in the New York Times Magazine last month who called her article ``another thinly veiled condemnation of working mothers.'' The soft-spoken scholar even seems to want to disavow the clear thrust of her thesis, wincing when it's described by a reporter as ``work and home trading places.''

"That's an exaggeration,'' she says quickly, in an interview at her immaculate office on the University of California-Berkeley campus. "Nobody really sees work as home. They see it as a neighborhood and they have friends there. They often get help there. I'm not saying it's not a struggle, a hassle. I'm not painting a utopia here.'' But if Hochschild wants to soft-pedal her own conclusions, stated more forthrightly in her book, her research may nevertheless jolt workers here in Silicon Valley who have given themselves over -- willingly -- to the workaholic lifestyle that has been enshrined in many corporate cultures.

``In this new model of family and work life, a tired parent flees a world of unresolved quarrels and unwashed laundry for the reliable orderliness, harmony, and managed cheer of work. The emotional magnets beneath home and workplace are in the process of being reversed....Some people find in work a respite from the emotional tangles at home. Others virtually marry their work, investing it with an emotional significance once reserved for family, while hesitating to trust loved ones at home.''

Hochschild started out several years ago to research and write a book about how a manufacturing company with family-friendly policies that she admired (not a Silicon Valley company) was making life better for its workers. She spent three summers at a Fortune 500 company she doesn't name and calls ``Amerco'' in her book, following around managers and workers at the workplace and in their homes. ``I thought I would be telling a happy story,'' Hochschild says, almost wistfully. ``It was the most family-friendly company I could think of.'' What she found was a workplace that had been transformed by corporate management techniques from the autocratic, hierarchical bureaucracy of older models into a warm, supportive environment, with cheery lunch rooms, golf outings billed as "team-building,'' and celebratory events that emphasized the company's "family'' of caring workers. Work was a smoothly run operation where goals were clearly stated, rewards and appreciation regularly distributed, and colleagues were carefully coached on appropriate behavior toward each other.

At the same time, Hochschild says, she found that workers' home life was a series of demands, conflicts and unrelenting stress as harried parents -- mostly mothers -- coped with resentful children and struggled with their own feelings of guilt. Many workers experienced more stability at work than in their personal lives, as they shuffled through divorces and relationships that didn't work out. ``At first I was not looking at the family,'' Hochschild says. ``But I kept hearing all these complaints about things going on at home. And I thought: `I'd better look at this. There's a lot of strain here. This is part of how they feel about work.'''

Hochschild slowly came to the conclusion that many workers were shunning the flex schedules, job sharing and paternity leave ``Amerco'' offered because work had become a haven from home life. They preferred work to home. As part of her research, Hochschild surveyed 7,000 parents whose children attended company-based day care centers, many at such Fortune 500 companies as IBM, American Express Co., Eastman Kodak Co. and Xerox Corp. The study supported what she saw at ``Amerco.'' One-third of the parents had children in care 40 hours a week or more. And the higher the parents' income, the longer children spent in day care.

One-third of parents identified their partners as workaholic. An overwhelming majority -- 85 percent -- agreed with the statement that home sometimes feels like a workplace, with women far more likely to agree. Fifty-two percent said they felt appreciated ``equally'' at home and at work, with women, Hochschild says, ``surprisingly'' not more likely to feel appreciated at home. A bare 51 percent of the parents said they felt more relaxed at home than at work. ``People generally have the urge to spend more time on what they value most and on what they are most valued for....The valued realm of work is registering its gains in part by incorporating the best aspects of home.

The devalued realm, the home, is meanwhile taking on what were once considered the most alienating attributes of work....The fact is that in a cultural contest between work and home, working parents are voting with their feet, and the workplace is winning.'' Hochschild, author of an earlier book, ``The Second Shift,'' which detailed the never-finished work women faced at home after returning from their day jobs, regards her new book as a continuation of that same project: what she calls ``nurturing the stalled revolution.'' ``I'm not saying that the project was wrong -- that we've gone too far -- but that we haven't gone far enough,'' Hochschild says. ``Women have gone into the labor force, both for economic reasons and to use their talents, but men haven't rewired the notion of manhood at home.

And the workplace has not developed flexible scheduling that would ease the strain on what is already a fragile family system.'' Perhaps what gives ``The Time Bind'' its seemingly anti-feminist punch -- despite the author's feminist credentials -- is the notion that women work to escape their troubled personal lives. Was it also possible to interpret women's newly discovered workaholic habits simply as the joys of engaging in work they cared about?

``I think they are baffled and confused and caught and torn,'' Hochschild says. ``And they don't also perceive they can change their circumstances.'' The reserved, elegant professor allows herself a moment of rare intensity. ``I'm just asking a question,'' Hochschild says. ``Is it going on for you?''