Question
Article 10. Caryn E. Medved and William K.
Rawlins. At-Home Fathers and Breadwinning
Mothers: Variations in Constructing Work and
Family Lives
Medved, Caryn E. & Rawlins, William K.
(2013). At-Home Fathers and Breadwinning Mothers:
Variations in Constructing Work and Family
Lives. Pp. 200-221 in The Gendered Society
Reader, 5th ed. Michael Kimmel and Amy
Aronson, eds.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Introduction
12% of couples report women earn more than
60% of family income, 3% report being
100% dependent on wife’s income (US Bureau of
Labor Statistics)
1994-2005 – 200% increase in at-home fathers
Males disproportionately affected by 2008
recession
Women outpace men in education and earnings
growth (Pew Research Center)
47.8% of married couple are dual earner
couples
Purpose of research: meaning and identity in
lives of husbands and wives in at home
husband households
Review of Literature
Dual Earner Couples Negotiations
o Women’s income not translate into increased
power
o Division of labor
o Marital decision making
o Women still do more housework than husbands
o As wife’s income rises, husbands do more
o Higher income women downplay their financial
contributions to the family
Labor Force Decision-Making and Opting Out
o Women’s decisions to leave labor force for
child care are result of
Factors pushing women out of workforce –
motherhood, lack of
supportive spouse, falling career aspirations
Factors pulling them into paid labor –
career aspirations, ambivalence
toward motherhood, financial necessity
Stay-at-Home Fathering
o Stay at home fathers judged harshly,
sacrifice family security
o Working mother perceived as less nurturing,
caring, dedicated to family
o Radin – four characteristics of fathers who
stay at home more than 2 years
Own fathers were inattentive
In 30s with prior career experience
Support of extended family members
Have small family
o Rochlen – Reasons men exit paid work
Wives have high value for career
Full-time parenting an opportunity
Caregiving aligns with preference, personality
o Douset, Canadian study of 20 father
Do not entirely forego work-related
identity; parttime home base work,
self-provisioning work (landscaping,
carpentry, woodworking, car repair),
home based employment
• Social pressure to earn
• Need to socialize with other men on
masculine level
o CENTRAL RESEARCH QUESTION: How do
stay-at-home fathers and
breadwinning mothers articulate their stances
toward moneymaking and
homemaking?
Doing, Undoing and Reworking Gender
o We do gender in everyday discourse
Ongoing negotiations and coordination of
gendered tasks and identities
How language shapes what couples see as
possible in terms of
homemaking and moneymaking
We can undo and rework gender through our
language and social
interaction
Investigative Practices
Semi-structured interviews with 8 married
couples from large metropolitan area and midsized town in Midwest, two couples
from east coast
Participants
o SAHFC – Stay-at-home fathering couples
o White, upper middle class, heterosexual
couples, stay at home fathers,
breadwinning mothers
o Married 10 years average, in current
arrangements average 3 years
Analysis of Interviews – themes
o Task responsibility – who does what for how
long and why?
o Identity adoption – self understanding, Who
am I?
o How they portrayed gender in relation to
work and family role eligibilities. Role =
socially defined expectations associated with
performing specific activities
Report findings in five narratives. Role
eligibility –ways couples reflected stereotyped or
and unequal eligibility for men and women
o SEE APPENDIX 2, P. 218 FOR CONCISE SUMMARY
OF FIVE PATTERNS
Five Homemaking-Moneymaking Stances
Four common factors
o Both parents wanted children cared for at
home
o Wife earned more than husband except in one
case
o Every father except one had greater
flexibility in work schedule than mother
o Temperament conducive to spending time with
children and not threatened by
homemaking work and identities
STANCE 1: REVERSING
o Sex of person performing homemaking or
moneymaking tasks are reversed but
meaning stays intact
o Wife made more money so husband decided to
stay home but tried to work at
home via email. Had identity crisis about not
staying connected with occupation;
determining household task problematic; Saw
homemaking as women’s
responsibility and money making as man’s
responsibility; transitory adoption.
Tensions – only transitory
STANCE 2. CONFLICTING
o Couple articulates contradictory meanings
for the performance of unconventional
work and family tasks, identities,
eligibilities. Reflects both openness and
discontent with division of task
responsibilities. Meaning making fraught with
tension.
o Nanny quit after 4 years, wife made more
money, path of least resistance for wife
to quit. Husband good with kids. Wife worried
kids would think they were not as
important as her work. Biggest challenge for
dad was managing his parttime paid
employment as financial planning consultant;
wanted more work.
o Household chores were contested. He said she
was more concerned about how
clean house was than he was. She switched to
lower paying job so she could have
more life/work balance. Husband thought work
not very important to her.
o Many facets of traditional male and female roles.
Neither partner reconciled to
their roles and identities.
STANCE 3. COLLABORATING
o Recognizes gender prescription but desires
to transcend them. Shared conscious
decision to have children and husband stay
home because wife made more
money. She liked her work but worried about
being a good parent. Household
labor distributed equitably based on personal
preference.
o Aware of gender prescriptions but able to
negotiate jointly to minimize role based
tensions. Portray themselves as a team
emphasizing equality and respect for
choices of the other.
STANCE 4. IMPROVISING
o In terms of work and family life, attempt to
improvise meaning without taking
gender as the primary frame for tasks,
identities, or eligibilities. Disavows
gendered assumptions and replaces with
language of personal preference
o Wife corporate person, husband good with
kids. One son had serious vision
problem so lived in city with good eye
surgeon.
o Husband saw kids as his work, his job.
o Domestic issues. Some issues but respected
personal priorities. Husband was
renovating the house as well as doing most of
the housework and the major, major
role of childcare. Husband and wife have
different priorities in terms of
housework.
o Couple described relationship as involving friendship,
open communication,
equality, mutual support, room for
differences.
STANCE 5. SHARING
o Co-providing and co-sharing; creating new
meanings and living work and family
life differently. Sharing orientation to
domestic and paid labor.
o Academic couple
o Envisioned both fully working and being
parents
o They took each other’s last name – symbolic
commitment to equality
o Child care – “We are both the primary
caregiver.”
o Worked their course schedules and teaching
schedules to accommodate the other
parent. Very fluid. Continual negotiation.
o Shared power and cooperative adaptation of
parenting and homemaking.
o Potential conflicts from ongoing negotiation
of practices and identities, time
constraints, dealing with others who question
their arrangement.
Discussion and Implications
Research question: How do stay-at-home
fathers and breadwinning mothers articulate
their stances toward moneymaking and
homemaking?
Social construction of masculinities and
femininities and potential for transformative
change
o Reversing couple: may have shifted husband’s
understanding of or performance
of his masculinity; others seeing his behavior
of caring for children may also be
influenced
o Conflicting stance: Relational tensions have
the reality of their choices, but
conflict is a part of social change so
discomfort may be evidence of the social
constructionist perspective at work.
Unconventional gendered arrangements
involving conflictual interactions can
evidence social change. Change is a process
or doing and undoing.
o Collaborating couples: Collaboration is
sophisticated and gentile but conventional
masculinity ad femininity remaining part of
interpretive frame. Locus of conflict
is internal rather than relational in contrast
to first two stances.
o Improvising stance: Let go of gender
accountability in their work and family
lives. friends. Non-hierarchical relations,
personal preference, differing sextypical abilities. Undoing of gender, husband
and wife minimize traditional
masculinities and femininities. Husband born
to do caregiving – use biology to
support atypical work and family roles
o Sharing Couple: Explicitly and consistently
resists traditional masculinities in
word and deed. The post-feminist ideal of
equal and fully participative divisions
of labor as well as external markers of gender
change such as taking each other’s
names. Tensions form lack of role models,
manipulating employment structures to
accommodate their sharing is not easy.
Conclusions and Next steps
Performance and articulation of gender in
lives of couples
No one right way to be successful
Co-construction and contextual nature of the
performances of their roles.
Answer
