The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work [Paperback]

Arlie Russell Hochschild (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 080504471X | ISBN-13: 978-0805044713 | Publication Date: April 15, 1998

The Time Bind is one of this decade's most influential studies of our work/family time-dilemma. For three years at a Fortune 500 company, Arlie Russell Hochschild, the best-selling author of The Second Shift, interviewed everyone from top executives to factory hands. What she found was startling news: none of these working parents was taking the company up on chances for flex-time, paternity leave, or other "family-friendly policies." Instead, they were fleeing homes invaded by the pressures of work, while the workplace seemed transformed into a strange kind of surrogate home. Hochschild paints a picture of spouses as efficiency experts, children as emotional bill-collectors, and parents who feel like helpful mentors mainly to their workmates. "An important, provocative, ground-breaking analysis" (Newsweek), The Time Bind exposes the rifts in our crunch-time world and reveals how the way we live and work isn't working anymore.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the early 1990s Arlie Hochschild exposed The Second Shift, revealing the housework and childcare inequities of working couples. In this book Hochschild exposes the disturbing time bind of American families: parents are putting more hours in at work to support their families, which creates more stress at home, which pushes parents into seeking more work time to escape the tension at home. The result of this time crunch is the unsettling development of the "third shift"--the time parents spend repairing the damage left in the wake of their compulsion to work. Hochschild's solution? Parents of America unite! The final chapters discuss how parents can start a "Time Movement," liberating themselves from work-driven tyranny. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Hochschild, coauthor of the acclaimed The Second Shift (LJ 4/15/89), here reports on a study she conducted of a large company (name changed) to see why employees were not taking advantage of the "family friendly" options it offered. She found that employees were the "working scared"; despite options, management had conveyed the sense that employee devotion to the company was based on the number of hours at work. The hourly production workers who did not have access to the family benefits still opted for overtime and double shifts. They wanted to keep their jobs secure, although in the end, the employer laid off half the employees through downsizing. The author also contends that for many employees work was more rewarding than home life and a pleasant escape for parents, and they did not want to give it up. Hochschild gives some attention to the plight of the workers' children, but she could have gone into greater depth. Still, this is valuable study. Recommended for business collections.?Peggy Odom, Texas Lib. Assn., Waco
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks (April 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080504471X
• ISBN-13: 978-0805044713
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,256,570 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing Look at Psuedo-Families, December 22, 1999

By 

"rrr338" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work (Hardcover)

Hocschild's book can be criticized for being limited to only one case study -- a real Fortune 500 Company. That aside, she presents disturbing findings that do ring true with other observations on contemporary corporate culture. Most significant is the way in which an organization manipulates total quality managerial approaches to create work groups that begin to provide greater levels of social satisfaction than our families do. This is not to say that Hochschild blames the corporate top brass entirely -- she also points out the ways in which parents and spouses have willingly shifted thier time allotment and devotional energies from familiy settings to work groups.

Hochschild's book not only asks what becomes of the family if such a trend is prevalent, but also what becomes of an entire generation that may be placing more and more value on work-related achievements than on the nurturing experiences of family life. While again it should be pointed out that Hochschild's findings are based on a singular case study, her observations have a disturbing resonance with other looks at the fast and furious pace of attaining the American Dream. I would recommend this book to anyone who has questioned the supposed virture of climbing career ladders, as well as to those who have suspected that families are being gradually shoved out of the mainstream of American social life. Another work that is very related, and amplifies many of Hochschild's findings (while taking a more general perspective) is Stephen Bertman's excellent "Hyperculture," also available at Amazon. Perhaps we see here the beginning of the most significant issue of the next millenium: how do we define what is of REAL value as the assault on our time continues?

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a book everyone should read, December 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work (Paperback)

I picked this book up just by chance. I found it truthful, enlightening and very thought provoking. It is clear that the battle for our time is present. How should we be judged? Are we to be judged based on the hours of servitude or our accomplishments? What is the ultimate effect of long hours on our lives and families? In the modern job shuffle, are the hours justified?

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Despite what some people think, it's about home., November 6, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work (Paperback)

The Time Bind is not about work. The reason that Hochschild uses so much work based data is because she wants to show that there is nothing at work in particular that makes us HAVE to be there. She talks about the horrible lack of support for young families that ends up making work more pleasant than home because at least at work parents are supported and know when they are doing the right thing or the wrong thing. (At home you never know if taking or not taking the lollipop from your 2-year-old will render them into raving loonies in 20 years.) The only time she really gets into how work itself contributes is when she says that many family friendly policies are an illusion or are believed to be an illusion by the workers. However, this book is not quite as clear as the Second Shift, which I thought was brilliant. It is also clarified by a knowledge of the Second Shift; it's easier to see the family orientation if you're familiar with her other work.