I’m still catching up with all the things that I’ve been meaning to blog, but have not been able to.
Back in May, NYT carried an article about a new UCLA study that attempted to capture every waking moment of 32 dual income, multiple child, middle class American families. The 32 families chosen cut across racial, sexual and nationality lines including black families, Japanese and Latino families and families with same sex couples. Totaling over 1540 hours of video, the study prompted a professor not associated with the study to exclaim, “This is the richest, most detailed, most complete database of middle-class family living in the world.”
From the article: “After more than $9 million and untold thousands of hours of video watching, they have found that, well, life in these trenches is exactly what it looks like: a fire shower of stress, multitasking and mutual nitpicking. And the researchers found plenty to nitpick themselves. ”
Some interesting observations and conclusions from the study:
- Mothers still did most of the housework (27% compared to 18% by fathers).
- Husband and wife were alone together in the house only about 10% of the time and the entire family was together only 14% of the time.
- Flexible, on the spur division of work amongst the parents added to the stress. Couples with rigid divisions of labor had the least stress, even when the division was unequal.
- Mothers had half as much leisure as the fathers (11% compared to 23%).
- Mothers spent 35% of their time alone with kids compared to 25% by fathers.
- The backyard is almost never used.
One aspect of the study that I can take heart in is the stress levels caused by flexible division of labor. Shanthala was raised in a house where everyone pitched in and from what she says, did whatever was required. There wasn’t much of a rigid division of labor when it came to doing household chores. I was raised in a house where my mom did practically everything with some ample help from servants. Shanthala and I have had several disagreements over the division of work in our house. I’ve told her several times that I prefer a fixed schedule and job as opposed to picking up whatever happens to be available. That way, I’m not scanning the horizon constantly for what needs to be done. Untrained in all my formative years, my eyes unconsciously glaze over what needs doing.
UCLA’s own publication of the study, put out way back in 2005, when the study concluded, has some other interesting tidbits:
- “When they are together, today’s families tend to stay in motion with lessons, classes and games. Or, they go shopping.”
- Researchers say parents effectively have relinquished the steering wheel to their children. That’s because most family decisions and purchases are geared toward the kids’ activities.
- Elinor Ochs, a principal researcher says: “We’ve scheduled and outsourced a lot of our relationships. … And we’re moving from a child-centered society to a child-dominated society. Parents don’t have a life after the children go to bed.”
- For Ochs, the most worrisome trend is how indifferently people treat each other, especially when they reunite at the day’s end. “People just don’t come together very frequently in our society,” Ochs said. “They might say they want community, but they don’t seek it.”
What kind of society, what kind of life are we bequeathing to our children ?
… O parents, confess
To your little ones the night is a long way off
And your taste for the mundane grows; tell them
Your worship of household chores has barely begun;
Describe the beauty of shovels and rakes, brooms and mops;
Say there will always be cooking and cleaning to do,
That one thing leads to another, which leads to another;
Explain that you live between two great darks, the first
With an ending, the second without one, that the luckiest
Thing is having been born, that you live in a blur
Of hours and days, months and years, and believe
It has meaning, despite the occasional fear
You are slipping away with nothing completed, nothing
To prove you existed. … – The Continuous Life by Mark Strand
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