“On the Links between Home and Work: Family-Household Strategies in a Buoyant Labour Market” from International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (1991)

For nearly a decade, beginning in 1986, the authors, feminist geographers, examined gender and the geography of home and work in Worcester, Massachusetts. This chapter, produced as part of their Worcester study, introduces their findings on gendered responses to the home/work dynamic within dual-headed households and the narrow range of strategies employed by the women and men within them. Employers advertise “mothers’ hours,” offering part-time positions in female-dominated occupations that require employees to work the hours children are typically in school. The chapter highlights particular theoretical concerns that critique both feminist and geographic literature on the home/work dynamic of the family household and thus open what has thus far been the unexplored “black box” of household decision-making. It critiques the functionalist inclinations of certain feminist scholars’ assumptions about the family’s relationship to patriarchy and capitalism while urging a greater tolerance for ambiguity in theorizing the complex responses of the family household.