For the Family?: How Class and Gender Shape Women's Work [Paperback]

Sarah Damaske (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 3, 2011

In the contentious debate about women and work, conventional wisdom holds that middle-class women can decide if they work, while working-class women need to work. Yet, even after the recent economic crisis, middle-class women are more likely to work than working-class women. Sarah Damaske deflates the myth that financial needs dictate if women work, revealing that financial resources make it easier for women to remain at work and not easier to leave it. Departing from mainstream research, Damaske finds three main employment patterns: steady, pulled back, and interrupted. She discovers that middle-class women are more likely to remain steadily at work and working-class women more likely to experience multiple bouts of unemployment. She argues that the public debate is wrongly centered on need because women respond to pressure to be selfless mothers and emphasize family need as the reason for their work choices. Whether the decision is to stay home or go to work, women from all classes say work decisions are made for their families. In For the Family?, Sarah Damaske at last provides a far more nuanced and richer picture of women, work, and class than the one commonly drawn.
Winner of the 2011 National Women's Studies Association Sara Whaley Prize for best book on women and labor.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This simple, yet powerful explanation for women's work pathways illuminates two clear mechanisms for facilitating women's steady employment: creating and providing access to better jobs and encouraging men to become equal partners in paid and unpaid labor... Scholars of work, family, gender, culture, and inequality will find For the Family? How Class and Gender Shape Women's Work a book worth reading, citing, and integrating into our thinking for years to come." --American Journal of Sociology

"Sarah Damaske probes the complex factors that influence how and why women move in and out of the labor force during their 20s and 30s, the years when the demands of constructing both families and careers are most intense. Her challenge to the usual dichotomies between women who 'need' to work and women who 'choose' to cut back or quit their jobs advances our understanding of the interplay between work, family, class, and race."--Stephanie Coontz, Member of the Faculty, History and Family Studies, Evergreen State College, and author of A Strange Stirring

"At a moment when messages about working mothers have never been more mixed, For the Family? provides a bracing fact check. Moving beyond facile understandings, Sarah Damaske gives us a much-needed exploration of women across the class and race spectrum, revealing commonalities and differences in their weaving of work and family. Nuanced and insightful, this meticulously researched book offers a new take on work and motherhood which gives lie to the mommy wars."--Pamela Stone, Professor of Sociology, Hunter College and Graduate Center, CUNY, and author of Opting Out?

"This book is essential reading for work-family and gender and work scholars, especially those interested in how early life experiences affect opportunities and constraints in later life. It could be used in both undergraduate and graduate courses. It makes important contributions to the work-family literature exploring women's experiences in the U.S. by building on cannons in the field..." --Chardie L. Baird, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Kansas State University

"In this pathbreaking book, Sarah Damaske shows us what should have been obvious all along: financial resources actually help women find a good job and establish a stable career, rather than push them out of the workplace. Yet the pressure to be considered a good mother means women of all class backgrounds describe their actions as a matter of family need rather than personal desire. Beautifully written and persuasively argued, For the Family? overturns conventional wisdom and compels us to reconsider what we thought we knew about women and work."--Kathleen Gerson, Professor of Sociology, New York University, and author of The Unfinished Revolution

About the Author

Sarah Damaske is an assistant professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations and Sociology at the Pennsylvania State University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (October 3, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 019979149X
• ISBN-13: 978-0199791491
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 0.7 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #242,513 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sarah Damaske is Assistant Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations and Sociology at The Pennsylvania State University. Her areas of specialization include gender, work-family, class and race. She is the author of For the Family? How Class and Gender Shape Women's Work from Oxford University Press. Winner of the 2011 National Women's Studies Association Sara Whaley Book Prize, For the Family? deflates the myth that financial needs dictate if women work, revealing that financial resources make it easier for women to remain at work and not easier to leave it. She has written on a wide range of work-family topics published in journals including Gender & Society, Sociological Forum, and Social Science Research. She holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Hamilton College, a M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Sociology Department at Rice University.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent read with startling and convincing conclusions September 26, 2011

By Jonathan jonathan Jonathan

Format:Paperback

Sarah Damaske has written an excellent book. The traditional story we've told ourselves is that working class women stay working out of necessity while middle class women have the opportunity to opt out of working in order to start families. Well, thanks to Damaske's research, it turns out that women's work pathways are far more complicated than that. In For the Family? the writing is as entertaining as the findings are convincing and the thinking is elegant. Damaske presents us with stirring portraits of some of the 80 women she interviewed for this book and often I felt as if I were sitting in the kitchens and living rooms, myself participating in the firsthand telling of these women's lives. The evidence and findings are thoroughly and convincingly presented, the thinking is penetrating and broad and as readers and members of society at large we're challenged to address ourselves to the problems Damaske's book is concerned with. Perhaps most exciting, however, is that in For the Family? a powerful and creative thinker of this new generation of sociologists is discovered.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding choice for a graduate or undergraduate seminar October 8, 2011

By sociologist09

Format:Paperback

As a faculty member who regularly teaches Sociology of Family, I am always on the lookout for books that will help students to understand that women's pathways into and out of the workforce vary dramatically from men's steady work pathways. Damaske's book highlights that women not only face different barriers to remaining at work based on class, they also receive different rewards from work and find that their work is valued differently by their families.

Damaske highlights women's struggles to balance the needs of their family with their own workforce opportunities and constraints, and the ways that women ultimately describe these struggles as decisions that are made for the good of their family. This is a clearly written, compelling, and well-researched book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars What Your Mother and Your Friends Won't Admit About Work September 27, 2011

By Liz Dashwood

Format:Paperback

Sociologist Sarah Damaske's new book, FOR THE FAMILY, is a fascinating take on a politically-charged, socially-divisive thirty year-old argument about working mothers.

Your mother may not want to cop to this -- and even your closest friends may hide behind the rhetoric -- but women don't just work for the money they can bring home. The working moms who responded to the research study in this book say they work "for the family" and the stay-at-home moms who participated said they are home "for the family" -- virtually ALL mothers justify their employment decisions and patterns on the basis of their family. But what's in it for them? Very interesting!

This does not read like an academic book, all readers with an interest in women's issues, work-life balance, and family life will find FOR THE FAMILY of great interest!

For the Family? : How Class and Gender Shape Women's Work