UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

      BerkeleyLos AngelesLondon

      University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

      University of California Press

      Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

      University of California Press, Ltd.

      London, England

      © 2013 by The Regents of the University of California

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Hochschild, Arlie Russell, 1940-

      So how’s the family? : and other essays / Arlie Russell Hochschild.

      pagescm.

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-0-520-27227-9 (cloth : alk. paper)

      ISBN 978-0-520-27228-6 (pbk.: alk. paper)

      eISBN 978-0-520-95678-0

      1. Families—United States.2. Women—Social conditions.3. United States—Social conditions—1980-I. Title.

      HQ536.H6324 2013

      306.850973—dc232013003818

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Rolland Enviro100, a 100% post-consumer fiber paper that is FSC certified, deinked, processed chlorine-free, and manufactured with renewable biogas energy. It is acid-free and EcoLogo certified.

      For Rosa and Sonia

      To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.

      George Orwell

      Contents

      Acknowledgments

      Many thanks to Naomi Schneider of the University of California Press, who shepherded these essays into print with such heartening enthusiasm and care, and to the artist who drew the picture on the cover of the book, her eight-year-old daughter. And thanks for an extremely careful job to Christopher Lura, production editor Brian Ostrander at Westchester Publishing Services, and copy editor Vickie West.

      Thanks to the anonymous readers for the Press and to Neil Smelser and Rob Willer for their extremely helpful comments on the manuscript, especially on “Empathy Maps.” A very special thanks to Allison Pugh for a bracing but fantastic tough-love read that rescued me from the idea that I was done. Warm thanks to Sarah Garrett, my gifted co-author on “The Personalized Market and the Marketized Self” and comrade-in-arms through the long process of updating statistics and integrating fresh readings into the text. To Bonnie Kwan, deep thanks for her help through every stage of production, her loyal friendship, and her delicious sense of the absurd. To Anita Garey and Karen Hansen, I give my deep thanks for our safely probing conversations during summer visits over the years, a precious gift to this book and to me. To Adam, my deepest gratitude for taking time from his own emerging book on the Spanish Civil War to patiently revisit long-discussed ideas, and for all that he does and is.

      And to Rosa, 7, whose leprechaun trap sits waiting on our kitchen floor, and to Sonia, 5, who offered me her most precious box of colored sequins, I dedicate this book.

      Introduction

      Most of the essays in this book originated as scribbles and exclamation points on yellow, lined paper, and they were often a puzzle to decipher months later. From there, they grew into public lectures, which found their way into print mostly in the last decade, and here they are newly revised. Two essays, “So How’s the Family?” and “Empathy Maps,” I wrote expressly for this book, while one essay, “The Diplomat’s Wife,” is the very first one I wrote.

      Re-reading that essay decades later, I recall a powerful split between two parts of myself—one geared to “doing” and the other to “figuring things out.” The year was 1965. Movements of social justice were sweeping the nation as well as the University of California at Berkeley campus where I was a graduate student in sociology. The civil rights movement was on, and I was fresh from a stint teaching black history at Palmer Institute in Sedalia, North Carolina, and work as a freedom school teacher in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Almost weekly, hundreds of Free Speech activists protesting a ban on students’ rights to sit behind political activity tables in the central plaza were being bused to jail. Fourteen thousand students and others opposed to the Vietnam War marched from the campus to an Oakland army base, holding signs such as “Peace in Vietnam,” “Return to the Geneva Convention,” or in one case, simply “Why?” Barred from the base, students were tear-gassed, beaten, and jailed. The feminist movement was soon to emerge through hundreds of consciousness-raising groups and departmental caucuses. Berkeley was at the epi-center of the national ferment of the 1960s.

      With these movements swirling about me, I set about the quiet, steady work of gathering intellectual tools with which to clearly understand what was going on. One day, while researching my first essay, I was poring through an arcane 1963 U.S. Department of State bulletin sent to protocol officers and others at diplomatic missions around the world. It was an etiquette book for diplomats. In what order should various officers and their wives enter and exit a diplomatic reception, it asked. Ambassador first, counselor second, economic officer third, on down in order of importance. How long should the wife of a junior officer stay for an initial courtesy visit to the ambassador’s wife? (“Approximately 20 minutes unless strongly urged by the hostess to stay