Arlie Russell Hochschild Quotes & Sayings

The focus of our public discourse has been on how American companies are competing with Japanese, German, and other foreign companies. What this allows us to ignore is how each of those American companies is really in competition with the families of the workers. That's the real competition. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Many women cut back what had to be done at home by redefining what the house, the marriage and, sometimes, what the child needs. One woman described a fairly common pattern: I do my half. I do half of his half, and the rest doesn't get done. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Three factors
the belief that child care is female work, the failure of ex-husbands to support their children, and higher male wages at work
have taken the economic rug from under that half of married women who divorce. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

601If love is a precious resource, it is not one simply extracted from the Third World and implanted in the First; rather, it owes its very existence to a particular cultural alchemy that occurs in the land to which it is imported. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Each marriage bears the footprints of economic and cultural trends which originate far outside marriage. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

In 1960, when a survey asked American adults whether it would "disturb" them if their child married a member of the other political party, no more than 5 percent of either party answered "yes." But in 2010, 33 percent of Democrats and 40 percent of Republicans answered "yes." In fact, partyism, as some call it, now beats race as the source of divisive prejudice. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

No work-family balance will ever fully take hold if the social conditions that might make it possible - men who are willing to share parenting and housework, communities that value work in the home as highly as work on the job, and policymakers and elected officials who are prepared to demand family-friendly reforms - remain out of reach. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

And we're in the middle of a 'perfect storm.' These days, government social services are being bad-mouthed and defunded. The non-profit world is looking more and more like the for-profit world. The growing gap between rich and poor makes most of us very anxious about where we stand. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

We think we're saving time with microwaves, cell phones, beepers, computers and voice mail, but often these things help us create the illusion of getting somewhere - and they foster a chain of constant activity. We're really just squeezing extra activity into every minute that we gain. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

It's been a long struggle. But we've made huge progress. I mean, when I started at Berkeley, women weren't allowed to be part of the band. No women were allowed into the male faculty club. I mean, I was there. I remember that! The worlds were so divided. So the change has been huge. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

People who volunteer at the recycling center or soup kitchen through a church or neighborhood group can come to feel part of something 'larger.' Such a sense of belonging calls on a different part of a self than the market calls on. The market calls on our sense of self-interest. It focuses us on what we 'get.' — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Oil's been pretty darned good to us," she said. "I don't want a smaller house. I don't want to drive a smaller car. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

And the Republican Party especially associates the market with the idea of progress, goodness, family, and points us toward the mall as an answer to all our personal dreams. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

As long as the "woman's work" that some men do is socially devalued, as long as it is defined as woman's work, as long as it's tacked onto a "regular" work day, men who share it are likely to develop the same jagged mouth and frazzled hair as the coffee-mug mom. The image of the new man is like the image of the supermom: it obscures the strain. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

To televisionize any serious problem, the program directors face the task of making the message 'go down smooth' until the audience is delivered to the commercial. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

The Greek word "nostalgia" derives from the root nostros, meaning "return home," and algia, meaning "longing." Doctors in seventeenth-century Europe considered nostalgia an illness, like the flu, mainly suffered by displaced migrant servants, soldiers, and job seekers, and curable through opium, leeches, or, for the affluent, a journey to the Swiss Alps. Throughout time, such feeling has been widely acknowledged. The Portuguese have the term saudade. The Russians have toska. The Czechs have litost. Others too name the feeling: for Romanians, it's dor, for Germans, it's heimweh. The Welsh have hiraeth, the Spanish mal de corazon. Many — Arlie Russell Hochschild

We don't live with the community of yesteryear. And we don't enjoy the public services Europeans do. So we turn to the market. Once we do, we find that service providers raise the standards of personal life, so that we come to feel we need them to live our 'best' personal lives. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Children born of married parents in America face a higher risk of seeing them break up than children born of unmarried parents in Sweden. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Many working families are both prisoners and architects of the time bind in which they find themselves. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Each person's drive to overwork is unique, and doing too much numbs every workaholic's emotions differently. Sometimes overwork numbs depression, sometimes anger, sometimes envy, sometimes sexuality. Or the overworker runs herself ragged in a race for attention. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Here is a new car, a new iPhone. We buy. We discard. We buy again. In recent years, we've been doing it faster. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

What is for sale, what is not? If we really think that making your apologies to your wife or reading a bedside story to your child are activities that we can pay a stranger to do, then, without moralising, what has happened to us? — Arlie Russell Hochschild

The explosion in the number of available personal services says a great deal about changing ideas of what we can reasonably expect from whom. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

As motherhood as a "private enterprise" declines and more mothers rely on the work of lower-paid specialists, the value accorded the work of mothering (not the value of children) has declined for women, making it all the harder for men to take it up. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

I'm a hard worker and love my work. I have felt pulled toward work. And it's a pull I have ferociously had to counter to make room for my family. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

As I was trying to climb this slippery empathy wall, a subversive thought occurred to me: do we need all the new plastic the American Chemical Association is promising us? Weren't we entering into a strange cycle? Many people I was talking to carried around plastic water bottles, partly for convenience, partly out of distrust of local waters. And with cheap natural gas at hand, the American Chemical Association said it could triple the amount of feedstock needed to make plastic. But if we triple our plastics, more petrochemical companies will pollute more public waters, which will lead more people to pay for more plastic bottles filled with ever more scarce clean water. We'll throw away more plastic bottles, buy more, and further expand the market for plastic, the production of which pollutes water. But I was straying from my goal, getting into the spirit of things. Two — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Tea Party adherents seemed to arrive at their dislike of the federal government via three routes--through their religious faith (the government curtailed the church, they felt), through hatred of taxes (which they saw as too high and too progressive), and through its impact on their loss of honor. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Has Bill Clinton inspired idealism in the young, as he himself was inspired by John F. Kennedy? Or has he actually reduced their idealism? Surely part of the answer lies in Clinton's personal moral lapse with Monica Lewinsky. But more important was his sin of omission - his failure to embrace a moral cause beyond popularity. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Just 158 rich families contributed nearly half of the $176 million given to candidates in the first phase of the presidential election of 2016 - $138 million to Republicans and $20 million to Democrats. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Formerly, many men dominated women within marriage. Now, despite a much wider acceptance of women as workers, men dominate women anonymously outside the marriage. Patriarchy has not disappeared; it has changed form. In the old form, women were forced to obey an overbearing husband in the privacy of an unjust marriage. In the new form, the working single mother is economically abandoned by her former husband and ignored by a patriarchal society at large. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

I was 13 when my parents moved to Israel, and I was put in a Scottish mission school. Ninety-nine percent of the children were Israeli ... Suddenly, I found myself speaking the wrong language, dressed in the wrong clothes, picked up by the wrong mode of transportation - an embassy car instead of a bus. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

What emotions would we experience if we weren't working ourselves to death? What wishes drive us? What fantasies hitch themselves to our continual busyness? Only when we step away from our frenzy can we know. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

The right seeks release from liberal notions of what they should feel--happy for the gay newlywed, sad at the plight of the Syrian refugee, resentful to pay taxes. The left sees prejudice. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

The more we rely on the market, the more hooked we become on its promises: Do you need a tidier closet? A nicer family picture album? Elderly parents who are truly well cared for? Children who have an edge in school, on tests, in college and beyond? If we can afford the services involved, many if not most of us are prone to say, 'Sure, why not? — Arlie Russell Hochschild

A political campaign has a central place in the cultural life of a people. It tells citizens what issues powerful people think are worth hearing about. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

If, in 2010, you lived in a county with a higher exposure to toxic pollution, we discovered, you are more likely to believe that Americans "worry too much" about the environment and to believe that the United States is doing "more than enough" about it. You are also more likely to describe yourself as a strong Republican. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

The more anxious, isolated and time-deprived we are, the more likely we are to turn to paid personal services. To finance these extra services, we work longer hours. This leaves less time to spend with family, friends and neighbors; we become less likely to call on them for help, and they on us. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Could it be, I wonder, that there is such a thing as a wantologist, someone we can hire to figure out what we want? Have I arrived at some final telling moment in my research on outsourcing intimate parts of our lives, or at the absurdist edge of the market frontier? — Arlie Russell Hochschild

For many of us, work is the one place where we feel appreciated. The things that we long to experience at home - pride in our accomplishments, laughter and fun, relationships that aren't complex - we sometimes experience most often in the office. Bosses applaud us when we do a good job. Co-workers become a kind of family we feel we fit into. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

I'm giving you my Bible answers. I'm not well educated. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Men who shared the load at home seemed just as pressed for time as their wives, and torn between the demands of career and small children ... But the majority of men did not share the load at home. Some refused outright. Others refused more passively, often offering a loving shoulder to lean on, an understanding ear as their working wife faced the conflict they both saw as hers. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

If in the earlier part of the century, middle-class children suffered from overattentive mothers, from being "mother's only accomplishment," today's children may suffer from an underestimation of their needs. Our idea of what a child needs in each case reflects what parents need. The child's needs are thus a cultural football in an economic and marital game. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

I think we have a rawer version of capitalism and a more fragile community and family base than other nations. We are a more individualistic culture. From the Boston Tea Party on, we've had too little faith in government. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Just as the archetype of the supermom
the woman who can do it all
minimizes the real needs of women, so too the archetype of the"superkid" minimizes the real needs of children. It makes it all right to treat a young child as if he or she were older. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Across the country, red states are poorer and have more teen mothers, more divorce, worse health, more obesity, more trauma-related deaths, more low-birth-weight babies, and lower school enrollment. On average, people in red states die five years earlier than people in blue states. Indeed, the gap in life expectancy between Louisiana (75.7) and Connecticut (80.8) is the same as that between the United States and Nicaragua. Red states suffer more in another highly important but little-known way, one that speaks to the very biological self-interest in health and life: industrial pollution. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

I really have this sense that time is passing, and it's important to do what you have wanted to do. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

In response to our fast-food culture, a 'slow food' movement appeared. Out of hurried parenthood, a move toward slow parenting could be growing. With vital government supports for state-of-the-art public child care and paid parental leave, maybe we would be ready to try slow love and marriage. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Instead of the country agreeing with her community on the natural rightness of heterosexual marriage as the center of family life, she was now obliged to defend herself against the idea that these views were sexist, homophobic, old-fashioned, and backward. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Compared with the employed, the jobless are less likely to vote, volunteer, see friends and talk to family. Even on weekends, the jobless spend more time alone than those with jobs. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Many of the young aspire to happy marriages and dot-com fortunes but end up in guarded love and okay-for-now jobs. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Corporate engineers have looked at how women are with each other, borrowing the best tips from female neighborhood culture and then transporting them back into the bosom of capitalism. They've feminized capitalism. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Ellen Galinsky's surveys at the Families and Work Institute pointed to a desirable norm for many parents for working not full-time, but part-time. And I get that. I mean, Norway has a 35-hour work week. That counts as part-time for us in the United States, you know. And Norway's doing well, by the way. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Just as there is a wage gap between men and women in the workplace, there is a 'leisure gap' between them at home. Most women work one shift in the office or factory and a 'second shift' at home. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

The emotional magnets beneath home and workplace are in the process of being reversed. Work has become a form of 'home' and home has become 'work.' — Arlie Russell Hochschild

The influx of women into paid work and her increased power raise a woman's aspirations and hopes for equal treatment at home. Her lower wage and status at work and the threat of divorce reduce what she presses for and actually expects. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

The "female culture" has shifted more rapidly than the "male culture"; the image of the go-get 'em woman has yet to be fully matched by the image of the let's take-care-of-the-kids- together man. More important, over the last thirty years, men's underlying feelings about taking responsibility at home have changed much less than women's feelings have changed about forging some kind of identity at work. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

For the left, the flashpoint is up the class ladder (between the very top and the rest); for the right, it is down between the middle class and the poor. For the left, the flashpoint is centered in the private sector; for the right, in the public sector. Ironically, both call for an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

The strategy we need to pursue is one of recovering our time - to push back on our hours of work. We need to form a new alliance between feminist groups, labor unions, child advocates, progressive corporations, and the federal government insofar as it's willing to pursue a family-friendly agenda. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

If in previous decades large historic events drew people together and oriented them toward collective action, the recent double trend toward greater choice but less security leads the young to see their lives in more individual terms. Big events collectivize. Little events atomize. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

As one man explains, "A lot of us have done okay, but we don't want to lose what we've got, see it given away." When I ask him what he saw as being "given away," it was not public waters given to dumpers, or clean air give to smoke stacks. It was not health or years of life. It was not lost public sector jobs. What he felt was being given away was tax money to support non-working people and non-deserving people--and not just tax money, but honor too. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Many workers in the petrochemical plants were conservative Republicans and avid hunters and fishers and felt caught in a terrible bind. They loved their magnificent wilderness. They remembered it as children. They knew it and respect it as sportsmen. But their jobs were in industries that polluted--often legally--this same wilderness. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Most of us have jobs that require some handling of other peoples' feelings and our own, and in that sense, we are all partly flight attendants. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Paradoxically, those who call for family values also tout the wonders of an unregulated market without observing the subtle cultural links between the family they seek to regulate and the market they hold free. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Conservatives of yesterday seem moderate or liberal to us today. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

The surface of American life looks smooth, prosperous, peaceful. But underneath, fault-line shifts in family and work life have led us into what some have called 'advanced insecurity.' — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Even when couples share more equitably in the work at home, women do two-thirds of the daily jobs at home, like cooking and cleaning up
jobs that fix them into a rigid routine. Most women cook dinner and most men change the oil in the family car. But dinner needs to be prepared every evening around six o'clock, whereas the car oil needs to be changed every six months, any day around that time, any time that day ... Men thus have more control over when they make their contributions than women do. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

The workplace would allow parents to work part time, to share jobs, to take personal leaves to give birth, tend to a sick child, or care for a well one. As Delores Hayden has envisioned in Redesigning the American Dream, it would include affordable housing closer to places of work and perhaps community-based meal and laundry services. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

The choice is not, Reich argues, between a governed and an ungoverned market, but between a market governed by laws favoring monopolistic companies and one governed by those favoring small business. — Arlie Russell Hochschild