The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work

Good books on work-family issues give us a window into the mind of the author, describe relevant issues in ways that make sense, and tell us what we can do to improve the world.  Great books do all of this, but also give us a glimpse into the author's soul, and leave us rethinking just about everything.  Arlie Hochschild's new book, "The Commercialization of Intimate Life," falls into the latter category.  That is does so is surprising: the book is a series of essays Arlie wrote over the span of three decades.  The key arguments from her most well-known books, The Managed Heart (1983), The Second Shift (1987), and The Time Bind (1997), all show up here, along with a piece on women, work and family in India, and her recent work on immigrant nannies and the children they leave behind in less-developed countries and those they raise in developed countries.  The toughest sledding are a couple of pieces that are critical of traditional sociology but help us see the grounding for Arlie's approach, and her relationship to traditional feminist thought as well.  That the word "approach" can be used in the singular for all of this work is amazing but accurate: the body of work is all marked by an understanding of work-family conflicts and their heavily gendered resolutions, along with a deep sense of caring about the adults and children involved.  The final essay, "The Clockwork of Male Careers," is one of the earliest, and a piece Joan Williams and I rediscovered with joy when working on our recent 'Half-Time Tenure Track' paper for "Change."  In the Clockwork piece, Arlie traces the dearth of women in academia to a male model of careers that leaves no room for family, but should.  As Arlie notes in an update at the end of the piece, the arguments unfortunately ring just as true now as they did when she originally wrote the piece in 1973.   I think that is accurate, but it is also true that far more of us are working today to make things better.  A must read!