POWER AND GENDER DYNAMICS IN CONTEMPORARY FAMILIES
1ARGYROS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS, CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY, ORANGE, CA, USA
2COLLEGE OF BUSINESS AT IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY, AMES, IA, USA
… in order to exist and persist, and to function as a body, the family always tends to function as a field, with its physical, economic and above all, symbolic power relations (linked, for example, to the volume and structure of the capital possessed by each member), its struggles for conservation and transformation of these power relations … The forces of fusion must endlessly counteract the forces of fission.
On The Family as a Realized Category, Bourdieu (1996, p. 22)
In his essay, Bourdieu (1996) defines the family as a set of individuals, living under the same roof, linked together by some affiliation such as marriage, or kinship. Bourdieu sees the family as an arena, where the “forces of fusion” (that unite the interests of the individual with that of the collective), compete against the “forces of fission” (the differing, sometimes competing “selfish” interests of the various family members) (Bourdieu 1996, p. 23). Hence, Bourdieu (1996) argues that it is futile to discuss the family (and we argue, family decision-making) without examining “the structure of power relations” and “the effects of male domination.” We agree, and in this chapter, we take a moment to reflect and discuss two underlying forces that have shaped, and continue to permeate, the rich body of family decision-making literature to date – power and gender dynamics. Our review starts over 50 years ago, as we critically explore the manifestation, effects and implications of power and gender dynamics, from the earliest work in family decision-making (FDM) to more recent research on contemporary, non-traditional families.
Early Research on Power and Gender Dynamics and Myths in Family Decision-Making
Power and Gender Dynamics in Family Decision-Making
Research in FDM or household decision-making (HDM) has typically focused on the family member or partner that has the most influence in making the decision of what, when and where to purchase or consume a particular good or service. The emphasis has been on the underlying factors contributing to disparate influence levels and the changes in those factors over the years. In other words, the literature has typically focused on power structures and the shift in those structures of power within the home as gender roles have morphed and evolved since the 1950s.
Wolfe (1959) conducted a series of structured interviews with 731 wives, examining the characteristics of different family authority structures. He studied the link between the type of family authority structure – husband dominant, wife dominant, and joint (both autonomic and syncratic) – and the wife’s level of marital satisfaction. In essence, Wolfe (1959) was investigating the effects of differing power sources in the spousal relationship. He concluded that when power was more equally balanced between genders in the home, that is, in households with joint syncratic decision-making, wives were generally well satisfied, as opposed to wives in households with other family authority structures.
As a result of this focus on power structure and gender roles, several theories evolved to explain the bases of influence and power in the home. Social psychologists, French and Raven (1959) defined five theoretical bases of social power – referent, expert, reward, coercive, and legitimate. During the same time frame, Blood and Wolfe (1960) proposed resource theory, which argues that an individual’s relative personal resources form the basis for conjugal power in the home, for example, income, education, social status, and available time. Thus, as women became more educated and contributed more income post World War I, decision-making processes also became more egalitarian. Rodman (1972) later extended resource theory and contended that cultural norms and influences moderated the relationship between resources and power.
Davis and Rigaux (1974) and Putnam and Davidson (1987) later built on Wolfe’s study, using survey data collected in Belgium and the U.S. respectively, to show how the shift in decision-making between the spouses has influenced the decision-making stages over the years. These researchers reveal a greater number of shared or joint decisions in more recent years, with wives playing a greater role in the decision-making process for items that had been traditionally husband dominant. Thus, applying French and Raven’s (1959) earlier social power theory perspective to the family decision-making literature, Raven, Centers, and Rodrigues (1975) identified six bases of conjugal power: coercive, reward, legitimate, referent, informational, and expert power.
Whether the stated focus was on power structure or gender roles, the findings are similar. Looking at changing sex roles in product contexts where few joint decisions were traditionally made, Qualls (1982) concluded that husbands and wives in the U.S. were exerting greater influence in areas that had traditionally been the other’s domain. Spiro (1983) examined conflict situations and identified six influence strategies (expert, legitimate, bargaining, reward/referent, emotional, impression management) and six influence strategy mixes used by husbands and wives to resolve purchase disagreements of furniture or heavy durables. She identified wife employment and wife income as significant determinants of greater women influence in household decisions. Hence, in Corfman and Lehmann’s (1987) study of the group decision-making processes of 77 couples in conflict situations, the researchers found that while other factors were still important determinants of relative influence, such as relative preference intensity and decision history, the conflict resolution process was predominantly cooperative. Yet, this balancing of power and gender roles was still a U.S phenomenon at the time, as Ford, LaTour, and Henthorne (1995), in a cross-cultural comparative study between China and the U.S., found a prevalence of husband-dominant decision-making and little wife role specialization or joint decision-making in patriarchal societies. At the turn of the century, Belch and Willis (2002) conducted a survey of 242 households in the southwestern U.S. and also noted a growing wife influence or greater balance of power between genders, due to the greater expertise, as well as the greater resources of women in the home.
More recently, Commuri and Gentry (2005) demonstrated that one of the basic assumptions of resource theory – the pooling of resources for household use – was not applicable when women were the chief wage earners. Commuri and Gentry’s (2005) study showed that, in that context, there were often multiple resource pools and multiple areas of decision-making control.
Two other interesting power theories were introduced, however, neither of these were empirically substantiated in later studies. Ideology theory argues that the particular cultural characteristics of the society determines the behavior of the individual and the type of decision-making prevalent in households. Thus, the more patriarchal the society, the more husband-dominant decision-making prevails in the home (Webster 2000). Least-interested partner theory argues that since the least-interested partner has less to lose from the dissolution of the relationship, that partner ultimately wields more power in the relationship (Waller 1938; Waller and Hill 1951).
Instead, the literature seemed to support a series of more role-based theories. For example, one of the more popular ones developed conceptual models focusing on category-based role behavior. These models suggest that within particular purchase categories, marital roles differ depending on (1) the product characteristic selected – store, brand, color, price, and so on (Davis 1970), (2) the different phases in the decision-making process, and (3) by consumption category (Davis and Rigaux 1974). Researchers also focused on changes in marital roles between different phases of the decision process, rather than just static decision roles (Davis and Rigaux 1974, Putnam and Davidson 1987). Davis and Rigaux (1974) and Putnam and Davidson (1987) identified three phases: problem recognition, information search, and the final decision, and concluded that most role specialization occurred in the information search phase.
In addition to category-based role behavior, as previously noted, gender-based role behavior was also a popular underlying theme, implying a clear separation of the roles of husbands and wives, with little or no joint decision-making activity (Webster 2000). However, this supposition was contradicted by several researchers. Qualls (1987) examined the impact of sex role orientation on household decision-making and concluded that, rather than being viewed as a series of static independent actions, family decision-making should be perceived as a network of household relationships. Engel, Blackwell, and Miniard (1990) later introduced the concept of prescribed role behavior, which implied uniformity across families, through an identification of prescribed roles. They argued that family members perform five roles within the decision-making process: gatekeeper, influencer, decision-maker, buyer, and user, but this concept was not empirically supported in later studies.
Thus, in the last three decades, researchers documented significant shifts in gender roles due to the influence of urbanization (Pleck and Pleck 1980), the increase of women in the paid workforce (Crosby and Jaskar 1993), the women’s movement, and gay liberation movement (Kimmel 1987) and the increasing percentage of women who earn more than their spouses (Commuri and Gentry 2000). However, although gender roles have been shifting, research suggests that myths such as breadwinner father or the homemaker mother, and gender discourses of care still underlie how men and women navigate the marketplace while they engage in everyday practices to construct their family.
Gender Myths and Narratives in Family Decision-Making
The separation of spheres of activities has served to naturalize the home and the tasks (caring and tending for the children, taking care of household chores) as feminine, whereas the role of breadwinning became the inherent responsibility of men (Coltrane 1996, Ehrenreich and English 1989, Firat 1994). With greater specialization and mass distribution, production increasingly became delegated to the public domain. In the new market economy, increasing numbers of fathers left their farms to become breadwinners, leaving their wives to run the household and look after the children (Griswold 1993). As men increasingly left the home to work for wages, the cult of domesticity glorified motherhood and reassured women that their natural place was in the home.
Maternal responsibility for home and children was further promoted by the rise of scientific mothering and the home economics movement. The ideal of separate spheres strongly encouraged women to bear children, especially if they were white and middle class. Motherhood for these women was elevated to a revered status, and wives’ homemaking came to be seen as a calling and a worthy profession. The field of home economics blossomed during this time and the domestic science movement taught women efficient housewifery based on time management techniques (Griswold 1993). With the separation of spheres, fathers’ responsibilities became primarily defined by their abilities to compete in the marketplace for income and social status, whereas the role of mothers became increasingly defined as being the primary custodians and caretakers of children (Gillis 1996, Griswold 1993, LaRossa 1988, Rotundo 1993).
Because mothers had come to symbolize the home, male domesticity became problematic: “Too intimate a relationship with one’s children had become unmanly, likely to call into question not only a fellow’s masculinity but also his maturity” (Gillis 1996, p. 193). Carving out specifically male modes of domesticity, such as after-work “fun dads”, allowed early 20th century fathers to be involved in their families while maintaining their ground as real men. Throughout the 20th century, there have been waves of attention to fatherhood in U.S. family politics. In magazines, films and advice literature, fathers’ family involvement has been carved out in terms of breadwinning, discipline, play, “role modeling,” and “protection,” in complementary relationships to notions of motherhood and femininity (Weiss 2000).
Researchers also note that even in Western societies, the occupation of the private domain by women and the public domain by men was largely mythical, especially in the experiences of working class families (Firat 1994). This myth was reinforced in the examples of women being forced into the home following the Industrial Revolution in England and following the two World Wars in the United States, and still has implications on how the spheres of consumption and production are viewed. For example, although women are encouraged to go to college and pursue their careers as never before, they are still held accountable for what was once called “women’s work.” If their houses are a mess, or if their children are unkempt, women are still the objects of blame (Hochschild 1989).
Thus, through the separation of spheres, devotion and care became associated with notions of femininity and have been viewed as inherent characteristics of motherhood. In Feeding the Family, DeVault (1991) finds that her informants would not view the activity of shopping and feeding as work, but constantly referred back to an ideology that instituted devotion as the sole legitimate grounds and criteria by which work is done. Along similar lines, Miller’s (1998) ethnography of North London housewives discusses how shopping acts as an expression of devotional love. He asserts that having become sanctified through her agency in the self-sacrifice of thrift, the housewife returns with the blessing of love to her family.
Studying the consumption practices of professional mothers, Thompson (1996) also shows how the lifestyles of these jugglers are linked to the broad array of sociological meanings that have structured cultural conceptions of femininity and ideals of motherhood. He suggests that cultural meanings and ideals related to motherhood are realized within the field of consumption and the way women use market resources in their everyday lives. The self-conceptions and consumption experiences of working women are embedded in the gendered notion of a caring orientation (Chodorow 1999). As such, women employ products and services that aid them in their projects of holding the family together and creating ideal family settings. Thompson (1996) concludes that for these women everyday consumer tasks evoke emotionally charged meanings grounded in a historical legacy of cultural ideals pertaining to motherhood, and that these women perform their gender.
The common theme repeated in these studies is the voluntary embrace of this ideal by women and the reluctance to relinquish control to the male members in the family. In his ethnography, Miller (1998) confirms the basic asymmetry of housework and the exploitation of female labor; however, this labor is woven into an ideology of love and care and women take part in reproducing this discourse. Miller provides an anecdote that is an interesting example of this phenomenon. In one shopping expedition to the supermarket with his informant and her husband, he observes that the wife constantly criticizes her husband, thereby affirming that as a man, although he may shop, he is not a natural shopper. Miller discusses how the husband takes such criticism actually as praise for his natural manliness (Miller 1998, p. 25).
The distinction of spheres and discourses of care have important implications for family decision-making and who does what in the household, and how. As household studies have shown, women remain the main caregivers and laborers in the household. Even among families where men participate more fully in housework, women are still responsible for organizing and managing the tasks and they undertake more repetitive and mundane tasks such as cleaning, ironing, and laundry. In contrast, men do more stereotypically masculine tasks such as mowing the lawn or playing with children. The ideology of separate spheres also exerts an influence on the work lives of men and women. Employers are ambivalent about men’s desires to be at home instead of at work. When they take advantage of parental leave or part-time work, they are often considered unreliable or not serious (Coltrane 1996, Pleck 1993). By definition, a man’s job is supposed to be more important than a woman’s job, and most people are uncomfortable if a wife makes more money than her husband (Commuri and Gentry 2005, Coltrane 1996, La Rossa 1988). For example, Commuri and Gentry (2005) showed that women earning more than their spouses creates tensions in the household, and that these couples jointly construct a number of compensatory strategies to minimize the identity threat that husbands experience when they are not the primary wage earner.
In their review of the literature in family decision-making, while highlighting the important research developments in the literature, Commuri and Gentry (2000) also point out that the focus in FDM has been relatively limited, emphasizing the “who” and the resultant decision outcomes (Belch and Willis 2002, Corfman and Lehmann 1987, Ford, LaTour, and Henthorne 1995, Putnam and Davidson 1987, Qualls 1982, Spiro 1983, Wolfe 1959), rather than the “how” and the corresponding decision processes (Davis and Rigaux 1974, Putnam and Davidson 1987, Qualls 1987), echoing the earlier assertions of Olson and Cromwell (1975) and Olson et al. (1975). In addition, Commuri and Gentry (2000) argue that in studying the domains of relative influence, power and gender in the home, not only should researchers examine the characteristics of individual members and their impact but also the characteristics of the family and household as an entity in itself. They assert that it is important to understand how the family itself functions and exerts power as a unit or group (Commuri and Gentry 2000). More contemporary research in family decision-making addresses these issues.
Contemporary Research on Power and Gender Dynamics in Family Decision-Making
Bourdieu’s (1996) earlier definition of the family remains valid, that is, a set of individuals living under the same roof linked together by some affiliation. However, as families have mutated and changed over the past 20 years, defying the traditional assumptions of what constitutes “a family”, researchers need to delve deeper to better understand (1) who comprises the individuals living under the same roof?; (2) does that roof have to be in the same physical space or can that roof encompass different locales and even countries? and (3) what exactly is the nature of those actual and perceived links and affiliations that bind family members together? Thus, for research on contemporary families, it is important, as Commuri and Gentry (2000) argue, to think more broadly and to encompass factors such as family composition, family identity, non-traditional family structures including same gender partners, cross-cultural (between and within country) comparisons, family myths, and a wider range of research methodologies. In their study on family identity and consumption practices, Epp and Price (2008) also consider non-traditional contemporary family forms, including divorced couples. Power and gender dynamics in contemporary families have become even more complex, as gender roles have morphed and the power bases have become more fluid. In the following sections, we focus on power and gender roles and dynamics in two non-traditional types of contemporary families that have become prevalent as our society has become increasingly global, with larger numbers of women in the workforce – (1) culturally diverse families, focusing on bi-national and bi-cultural families, and (2) structurally diverse families, focusing on families with stay-at-home fathers and single fathers.
Culturally Diverse Families – Gender Dynamics and Power in the Household
Data show that the foreign-born population in the U.S. has been growing rapidly: from 9.6 million in 1970, to 31.1 million in 2000 (triple the 1970 figure), to 37.4 million in 2006 (a 20% increase over 2000). As a result of this increased contact between immigrants and natives, the rate of intermarriage has also increased in the U.S. According to the Pew Research Center, one in seven new marriages in 2010 was between partners of different ethnicities or races, that is, 15% of new marriages, compared to 6.7% of new marriages in 1980. Yet, despite this growth in immigration and in bi-cultural partnerships, there have been relatively limited studies examining cross-cultural interactions in the early consumer behavior literature on family decision-making (Ford, Latour, Henthorne 1995, Green, Leonardi et al. 1983, Peñaloza and Gilly 1986, 1999, Wallendorf and Reilly 1983, Webster 2000). This section focuses on the dynamics of power and gender in the home in post-2000 studies on culturally diverse families, with a specific focus on bi-national families.
Cross and Gilly (2013, 107) defined the bi-national family as a family where the partners are “born and raised in different countries of origin.” They point out that, in bi-national families, not only is at least one of the partners bi-cultural, that is, able to navigate life, and familiar with the language and customs, in two different cultural contexts (Lau-Gesk 2003, Luna, Ringberg, and Peracchio 2008), but these families may also be bi-ethnic and bi-racial as well (Cross and Gilly 2013). The authors argue that these characteristics of bi-national families denote their unique role in society, as partners in bi-national families and the bi-national family itself “provide a conjugal and communal link between different cultural norms and perspectives” (Cross and Gilly 2013, p. 108). Lauth Bacas (2002) refers to this as the gatekeeper role; a role performed by partners in cross-border marriages. In playing the role of bridge, broker, boundary spanner (Cross and Gilly 2013) or gatekeeper (Lauth Bacas 2002) between the immigrant partner and the wider culture of residence, the native partner provides cultural access and knowledge, and becomes a source of expertise and ultimately power to the immigrant partner (Cross and Gilly 2014a). Meng and Gregory (2005) refer to this as an “intermarriage premium” where the immigrant spouse gains an economic advantage and greater economic societal power through intermarriage to the native spouse. Yet, even as the immigrant spouse gains, so too does the native spouse, as he/she is able to exert a unique source of power within the home.
Wamwara-Mbugua (2007) concluded that even when it conflicted with traditional gender roles, Kenyan immigrant couples delegated initial decision-making to the spouse who had been in the U.S. longer and thus had more knowledge of U.S. norms and customs. In the context of bi-national families, Cross and Gilly (2014a) explored this natural advantageous influence of the spouse with greater familiarity of the culture of residence; that is, the native spouse. They argue that relative cultural competence in the home (i.e. knowledge and familiarity with the social norms, expectations, traditions, language, and markets in the culture of residence) is a source of cultural capital and ultimately a source of expert power, irrespective of traditional gender roles in each spouse’s country of origin. Cross and Gilly (2014a) expand the construct of expert power, demonstrating that, while expertise is still a valid base of conjugal power (Raven, Centers, and Rodrigues 1975), expert power has several dimensions: “expertise due to vocation, expertise arising from experience, expertise based on related roles and responsibilities, and expertise resulting from cultural competence” (Cross and Gilly 2014a, 134). Cross and Gilly (2014a) also argue that it is important to view family decision-making as an interconnected process, whereby decisions made in the formative stages of the home, have a residual impact on later spheres of decision-making spousal influence. Thus, in the context of bi-national families, cultural compensatory mechanisms come into play. The native spouse, who possesses a relative source of locational power and advantage – cultural competence in the culture of residence – compensates by relinquishing power over decisions related to vacations, children’s education and food to his/her immigrant spouse. Thus, the less culturally competent spouse also has a source of power based not on location, but on his/her decision to relocate during the early stages of the union (Cross and Gilly 2014a).
By studying decision-making processes within culturally diverse families, using a non-traditional mixed-method approach, Cross and Gilly’s (2014a) findings reveal a source of conjugal power – cultural competence, that is perhaps only manifested clearly when an individual in the family is outside her or his customary cultural context (Cross and Gilly 2014a). This has implications for expatriate and other displaced families. Yet, the very formation of a union where one partner is outside of his or her cultural comfort zone, invites trade-offs and compromises, a phenomenon explored further by the authors in another study. Cross and Gilly (2014b) discuss the consumption compromises in bi-national families, and the negotiation and accommodation given by one spouse to the other, in an effort to acknowledge and embrace the differences in the spousal consumption preferences. Cross and Gilly (2014b) show an ongoing effort by the partners to balance the relative spheres of power in the home across decisions and over time, rather than subjugate or dominate one partner’s preferences by the other partner’s influence. For example, preferred food products and brands for the immigrant spouse (often difficult to acquire in the U.S.) are avidly stockpiled by both spouses when purchased, such as the South African brands Bovril and Five Roses Tea (Cross and Gilly 2014b). Vacations can also be less of an escape or retreat in the conventional sense, but a “going-home,” back to Mexico, South Africa, or China, for the immigrant spouse (Cross and Gilly 2014a).
This accommodation of, and compromise between, spousal preferences in culturally diverse unions is also supported by Nelson and Deshpande (2004), who examine the wedding planning decision-making of bi-national couples. Thus, they study decision-making at the formative stage of the bi-national family. Their findings show that bi-national couples try to accommodate different ritual audiences (parents and friends from both cultures) and therefore modify wedding rituals in an effort to integrate multiple cultural elements into one ceremony. Nelson and Otnes’ (2005) also demonstrate the use of compromise to cope with conflicts in the postings of bi-national couples on wedding message boards. They highlight the complexity of the conflicts, given the two cultures involved, to explain the wide range of coping mechanisms of cross-cultural brides. Again, this need to bridge cultural differences in Greek-German bi-national unions (Lauth Bacas 2002), forces the bi-national partners to develop coping strategies and mechanisms to deal with disparate family networks, cultural consumption preferences and conjugal power struggles.
It is undisputed that early research in family decision-making laid an invaluable base for more contemporary research, even as the prior focus seemed limited to gender roles and who dominates in a particular purchase decision. This snapshot of more recent studies (Cross and Gilly 2013, Cross and Gilly 2014a, 2014b, Lauth Bacas 2002, Nelson and Deshpande 2004, Nelson and Otnes 2005) examines the impact of power and gender dynamics on consumption in culturally diverse families, families that deviate from the cultural norm. Studying these deviations in contemporary families enriches the family decision-making literature, adding another level of complexity to earlier conceptualizations of conjugal power and gender roles in prior family decision-making research.
Structurally Diverse Families – Gender Dynamics and Consumption in the Household
Although the notion of care has been traditionally associated with women, more contemporary gender narratives concerning egalitarian marriages and the ideology of the new male suggest that men embrace more nurturing father roles (Coltrane 1996, Pleck and Pleck 1997). As women’s participation in the labor market has increased throughout the industrialized world, and as welfare states seek to reconcile work and care, fathers’ involvement in care has become a hot societal topic. Recent U.S. discourses on fatherhood may be situated as part of similar tendencies and mobilizations across western welfare states focusing on men’s financial, social, and moral obligations in families (Hobson and Morgan 2002). Fathers’ rights groups are primarily concerned with legislation within a legal system that they believe discriminates against men in divorce and child custody issues (Messner 1997).
The new discourse that encourages men to get in touch with their emotions highlights the therapeutic benefits of fatherhood. This perspective maintains that men, like women, are victims of patriarchy: women for obvious reasons, and men because patriarchal assumptions prevent them from “getting in touch with their feelings” (Griswold 1993). In books, newspaper articles, newsletters, radio, and television programs, and classes for expectant or new fathers, the message is more or less the same: the new, liberated father is a nurturing man. This nurture is not only good for the child but also beneficial to the psychological well-being of fathers. Freidan (1981) describes the new freedom of one man who quit his advertising job to write a novel: “I go over to the dock with the kids and their bikes after they get home from the camp. I look forward to putting them to bed every night. I go to bed tingling all over” (p. 153).
The Father Responsibility Movement shares a concern with fathers’ rights in wanting to remove barriers to father involvement within the child support system. There are numerous fatherhood organizations that seek recognition for the indispensability of fathers to families. According to the leading representatives of the father responsibility movement, parenting has been feminized by becoming synonymous with motherhood (Blankenhorn 1995). Promoting responsible fatherhood through constituting masculine versions of parenthood leads to a dilemma. On one hand, fatherhood must domesticate masculinity, which is perceived as innately aggressive, but on the other hand, fatherhood needs to be masculinized through, for instance, sport, religion, or other “manly” activities and discourses to not appear domesticated: that is, feminized or “sissified” (Blankenhorn 1995, p. 225). When the father responsibility movement urges men to get more involved with their kids, it also insists on making fatherhood into a man thing, asserting that dads shouldn’t be like moms but rather keep wearing the pants in the family and be real men (Gavanas 2004).
Within consumer research, a handful of research stands out as investigating family compositions that deviate from traditional perceptions of the family structure. In an ethnographic study of the emergence of at-home fathers, Coskuner-Balli and Thompson (2013) explored how these men perform and attempt to legitimate an alternative fatherhood model. While dual career families have become a more general phenomenon, stay-at home fathers still remain a statistically small and stigmatized portion of the population. According to the 2004 U.S. census report, there are 98,000 men who are stay-at-home dads as opposed to 5.4 million stay-at-home moms (Daly 2006). However, stay-at-home fathers are fighting against their stigmatized masculine position by forming support groups; a social activity that has historically been associated with various factions of the women’s movement. These stay-at-home fathers organize local meetings, play groups and post blogs on the internet. In addition, they meet at yearly conventions where they can get together with other at-home fathers and discuss issues such as reactions from their family and friends, the isolation they face, exchange ideas on child care and housekeeping. Stay-at-home fathers do housework, are familiar with domestic technologies, take care of the children all of which are traditionally thought as “women’s work.” Yet, they refuse the cultural epithet “Mr. Mom” and the emasculating connotations it carries.
Coskuner-Balli and Thompson (2013) argue that as socio-historic conditions have rendered domesticity as both a cultural province of femininity and a devalued form of cultural capital, stay-at-home fathers’ decision-making is oriented towards increasing the conversion rate of their acquisitions of domestic cultural capital and attaining greater cultural legitimacy for their alternative performances of fatherhood and masculinity. While having made willing identity investments in a subordinate form of cultural capital, their participants’ habituated predispositions as members of a dominant gender and class group make it difficult for them to accept being placed in a marginalized social position. Accordingly, stay-at-home fathers undertake a series of capitalizing practices that seek to enhance the status value of their domesticated cultural capital by converting it into more valued forms of economic, social, and symbolic capital.
For example, to acquire economic capital, stay-at-home fathers use a combination of thrift and entrepreneurial practices. As they lack the conventional income stream, stay-at-home fathers embrace the idea that they are providing economic value to the household by being thrifty shoppers who scour the marketplace for good deals whether for toys or daily groceries. As reflected in the name of the webpage “rebeldad” that hosts numerous stay-at-home father blogs, at-home fathers adopt a rebel-trickster (Holt and Thompson 2004) subtext that treats the marketplace as a network of free or very low cost recreational facilities and ludic playscapes (Sherry et al. 2004). In this sense, visiting Home Depot or PetSmart become daily excursions with one’s children which playfully appropriates these retail spaces into their new fatherhood performance.
The authors also report that the dominant gender roles lead to routine confrontations in maternally oriented marketplaces where stay-at-home fathers are confronted by questions about their competence and trustworthiness as primary care givers (Petroski and Edley 2006 and Rochlen, McKelley, and Whittaker 2010). To cope with these ostracizing encounters and stigma in the marketplace, these participants sought social capital by forming at-home father playgroups (Coskuner-Balli 2008). The strategy of participating in all-dad playgroups allowed stay-at-home fathers to claim public parenting spaces as legitimate stages for performing their unconventional gender identity and reciprocally, their manifest displays of social capital help to buffer stigmatizing reactions. In addition to local playgroups, stay-at-home fathers mobilized the internet to build social capital and further allay their feelings of social isolation by engaging in social media interactions with other stay-at-home fathers. These web-based forums such as rebeldad.com, fatherneed.com, and stayathomedad.org provide informational resources, social networking opportunities, and a means to exchange stories, ideas, and solutions to common problems. The stay-at-home father convention is also a forum where these men can express frustrations over their lack of recognition by the commercial marketplace and discuss strategies for combating the prevailing marketing assumption that mothers are the primary caregivers (and shoppers for the household). From difficulties in finding an appropriately masculine diaper bag, to reading parental magazines that address the audience as mothers only, to changing diapers in public parks where men’s restrooms lack baby care stations, stay-at-home fathers share a myriad of examples where they felt marginalized by media, advertising, and major manufacturers who offered few childcare products designed for male caregivers.
To fight the stigma emanating from the feminizing (and hence emasculating) associations conventionally invoked by their full-time commitment to the domestic realm, stay-at-home fathers furthermore adopted more direct capitalizing practices, all serving the goal of masculinizing domesticity. As Coskuner-Balli and Thompson (2013) explain, these masculinizing practices involved (1) re-situating their domestic responsibilities in the public sphere; (2) altering the cultural connotations of domesticity through an emphasis on technological acumen and D.I.Y. projects; and (3) outsourcing their responsibilities for meal preparation to the commercial marketplace, thereby, disassociating their identities from connotations of domestic drudgery and maternal duty. For example, stay-at-home fathers’ third strategy for masculinizing their domesticated cultural capital ideologically frames meal provision (and by implication provisional shopping) as a mere necessity that is secondary to their primary caregiving responsibilities and, hence, a tertiary aspect of their collective identity. In the manner of a self-perpetuating family myth (Hochschild 1989), participants often use their activity dense, on-the-go style of parenting as a ready-made justification for outsourcing their cooking responsibilities to the market.
In another study of a contemporary family structure, Harrison, Gentry and Commuri (2012) looked at single fathers and how they construct a caring fatherhood model within the cultural background of traditional gender roles. Like stay-at-home fathers, Harrison, Gentry and Commuri (2012) reported that single fathers developed distanced relationships to domesticity and household tasks. For example, while cooking has been central to the social construction of motherhood (Matthews 1987, Strasser 1982), it is not central to the social construction of fatherhood. The fathers often looked to food projects to make meal preparation quick and easy. In their daily experiences, conforming to the ideals of traditional masculinity while they took on feminine roles created tensions which they resolved through a set of reprioritization strategies. Most notably with their new-found role, single fathers re-casted their commitment to work and de-emphasized the traditional masculine values such as achievement and competition while placing more value on involved parenting.
Conclusion and Future Research
Building on Epp and Price’s (2008, 62) call for “investigation of how families construct and manage tensions, synergies, and commitments among individual, relational, and family identities that get constituted in consumers’ selection and experience of activities,” we encourage consumer researchers to explore how shifting cultural conditions, power dynamics and changing perspectives on gender structure the lives of families from different social classes and mediate these familial tensions.
As social conditions are in constant flux, so are family structures and identities. Whether to stay at home or outsource child care, how to mobilize the marketplace resources to feed and care for one’s family, which extracurricular activities to send one’s children, where to go on a vacation, are the kinds of consumption decisions families entertain and take to “do” their family. As families construct their identity, they face competing interests and demands oftentimes due to the countervailing set of ideals (Commuri and Gentry 2005, Cross and Gilly 2013, 2014b, Epp and Price 2008). In this chapter, we highlighted specific sets of tensions families navigate, and discussed the set of strategies they adopt.
We contend that adopting a power and gender lens to explore rituals, narratives, everyday practices, in which families constitute and manage identity has further potential to understand family decision-making. While we have focused on how cultural capital and masculine gender capital influence family decision-making, there is much more to be learned in further exploring how gender fits into Bourdieu’s theory. The types of embodied dispositions of masculinity and femininity can be used as a resource for both the individual and the family. For example, the gendered dispositions of women can be mobilized to mount up economic, cultural, and social capital for their families. The Kabyle women in Algeria, for example, engage in husbanding (cultural housekeeping) by displaying cultural taste and investing in social ties with kin as capital accumulation strategies for their family (Bourdieu 1998). Furthermore, the way in which gendered dispositions impact family life can vary by class. One exemplary study explores the roles of working class women who experience greater difficulty than middle class women in transferring their care and attention to educational achievement for their children, as they are more typically hampered by poverty and lack of knowledge (Reay 2004). Another ongoing study examines the manner in which families transfer and utilize family cultural and symbolic capital, as the authors examine the dynamics and tensions that support intergenerational family continuity (Schill, Godefroit-Winkel, and Bonsu 2016). The authors argue that the tensions and conflicts occurring within families are “necessary in managing a family capital within and over generations.” We suggest that looking at these intergenerational dynamics through a power and gender lens would also provide additional insights for the family decision-making literature.
Exploring how gender is constructed within the family can also help gain important insights on family decision-making. Judith Butler (2004) states, femininity and masculinity are socially constructed through practices that are constrained in culturally accepted conceptions and that are embedded in interpersonal relations. One important domain in which gender roles are constructed is the family. Becker (1965) labels family a “small factory” that produces commodities (children, health, leisure, etc.) of value to the family. Risman (1998) suggests that a household is a gender factory. West and Zimmerman (1987), along similar lines, suggest that “doing gender” consists of interacting with others in such a way that people will perceive one’s actions as expressions of an underlying masculine or feminine nature. Thus, one is not automatically classified as a man or woman on the basis of biological sex, but on the basis of appearance and behavior in everyday social interaction. Family work offers people a prime opportunity to “do gender” because of our cultural prescriptions about the appropriateness of men and women performing certain chores. Doing household chores or caring for children allows people to reaffirm their gendered relation to work and to the world. Thus, women can create and sustain their identities as women through cooking and cleaning the house and men can sustain their identities as men by not cooking and not cleaning house. As Butler argues, gender then gets reinstituted/constructed/challenged through these repetitive performances. These performances by which gendering occur are set within constraints of the past and the future that mark at once the limits of agency and its most enabling conditions. So, the performances in the household – cooking, cleaning, taking care of the children – are shaped within the embodying norms of society, one’s personal history, and social class positioning. Future research can continue to explore how hegemonic masculinities/femininities are created, how traditional norms of gender and family are challenged and how these performances underlie family decision-making.
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