THE TIME BIND

In a book titled ‘The Time Bind’ sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild reveals some interesting work.

“Hochschild studied working parents at a Fortune 500 company dealing with an important contradiction. On one hand, nearly everyone she talked to told her “my family comes first.” She argues that working parents in the United States put in long hours at work not because “employers demand long hours nor out of financial need, but because their work lives are more rewarding than their home lives.” For this reason, working parents feel a magnetic draw to work. For about a fifth of these working parents, she found, home felt like work and work felt like home. Where, she asked informants, do you get help when you need it? Often the answer was work. Where are you most rewarded for what you do, work or home? Often the answer was work. One man told her, “When I’m doing the right thing with my teenage son, chances are he’s giving me hell for it. When I’m doing the right thing at work, my boss is clapping me on my back.”

Parents, she found, handled this strain in several ways. One way was to reduce their idea of what they needed. (“Oh, I don’t really need time to unwind.”) Another was to outsource personal tasks. A third was to develop an imaginary self, the self you would be if only you had time. The “time bind” refers to the lack of time parents had to themselves, the feeling that they were always running late and the thought that they were confined to the limited hours of the day. Thus, in the “time bind” Hochschild denotes this paradox of “reversed worlds, in which family becomes like work and work takes on the feel and tone of family.”

“Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while. For there were many coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.” Jesus