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Reviews / Comptes Rendus
| Maureen Baker, Families, Labour and Love: Family Diversity in a Changing World (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press 2001)
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| LIKE THE FOUR EDITIONS of her edited collection, Families: Changing Trends in Canada, this work authored solely by Baker is intended as a text to be used in undergraduate family sociology courses. As such, it is of special interest to those who need to convey the distinctiveness of a sociological approach within the multi-disciplinary family studies literature. Towards that end, the author directly targets the broader societal forces that shape family life, such as colonization, immigration, industrialization, global labour markets, demographic trends, and, not least of all, state legislation and policies that regulate a variety of family processes. Unlike the majority of family studies textbooks that draw almost exclusively from the experiences of families in a singular (usually American) society, this book offers a comparative analysis of families in three "settler societies" — Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Therefore a distinguishing feature of the text is its capacity to examine cross-cultural variations in family processes at the same time that it introduces a range of substantive topics, including mate selection, cohabitation, family violence, reproduction and child care, gender inequalities in paid and unpaid labour, divorce and remarriage, as well as state regulation. Students are provided with the opportunity to appreciate the enormous extent to which intimate relationships are strongly impacted by macro-social forces: by economic forces, including labour market transformations, as well as by related political processes, cultural milieus, and ideological climates. |
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The book is rigorously well-organized to guide students along a systematic route. Following introductory chapters addressed to general family trends, cultural variations between and within the three societies, brief historical overviews, and theoretical perspectives, the discussion proceeds to substantive issues such as intimate relationships, reproduction and child care, paid and unpaid labour, divorce and remarriage, and state regulation. Unfortunately, much of the "current" data hark back to the early and mid-1990s, and each chapter concludes with discussion questions that are often formulated in such a way as to encourage students to moralize about family issues. Somewhat neglected topics include family violence, while little more than a page is accorded to gay families under the rubric of those who "remain unmarried." This is most curious in a text that is ostensibly concerned, at least to some extent, with labour-based inequalities. The more egalitarian division of household labour found among (unmarried and, in some jurisdictions, legally married) same-sex couples provides at least a noteworthy contrast to the persistent inequalities found within heterosexual families. Many would see it as a useful point of comparison to enhance discussions of the acute power of gender as a factor in the distribution of household tasks. Indeed, some of the current research regarding unpaid household labour was apparently overlooked. For example, so-called "labour-saving" household technologies are treated unproblematically and perceived to be beneficial to families, whereas their tendency to increase the time spent at household labour has been well-documented. |
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While paid and unpaid labour are discussed within the same chapter, the two are treated quite separately and neither the relationship between them nor the impact of their interrelationship upon family dynamics is pursued in any depth. Such a degree of fragmentation is perhaps unavoidable in a text that needs to at least touch upon the plethora of contemporary issues that surround family relations, although it can lead to a neglect of critical linkages that enable better understandings of family-related phenomena. Where discussions of history, labour, and parenthood are each confined within distinct segregated chapters, it becomes difficult to devote appropriate attention to the linkages between historical transformations in women's work, the contemporary feminization of the paid labour force, and their resultant effects upon parenthood ideologies. The connections between the material circumstances of women's lives and emergent changes in their ideals of motherhood go largely unheeded, together with the richly developing body of research regarding new conceptualizations and modes of fatherhood. |
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In a work that seeks to provide such structural explanations of family life in three societies, little is offered by way of explanations of how labour markets leave some families "time poor" and others "work poor" — such explanations are deemed to be "outside the scope of this volume." (147) At the same time, it is acknowledged that researchers in all three countries have analyzed the relationship between paid labour and family relations over the course of nearly a century. (147) The discussion of labour market trends might have at least pointed out more of the inequalities that result and more of their implications for family relationships. While there is, for example, reference to the feminization of the paid labour force, the author does not adequately explore its ramifications for families, not even to a degree sufficient for the purposes of an introductory overview. The assumptions of labour legislation that paid labour is separable from family life are duly noted, yet their repercussions for families in general and women in particular are not specified. This is particularly remarkable in a work that adopts a feminist political economy perspective. Nevertheless, the author does provide a comparatively rare focus upon the effects of labour market structures, one that extends beyond the usual attention to the lack of affordable child care. One also finds welcome attention to the economic risks entailed in the acceptance of low-wage labour by families in receipt of social benefits. |
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Greater elaboration appears in the specific discussion of state regulation, which is to be expected in light of the author's extensive previous work in this area. Here one finds in fact a considerably detailed chronology of the development of state policies that is both historically and theoretically informed. In addition to that strong presentation of material, the key advantages of the text are its focus upon sociological research about families, its consistent concern to properly contextualize family relationships, and the cross-cultural comparisons that it offers. Of yet greater interest to students, of course, would be comparisons that extend beyond three fundamentally similar capitalist societies. The book cannot be regarded as a comprehensive introduction to family studies; it is intended to provide "the basic elements of a family text" (xi) and it provides precisely that. The need to supplement it with a variety of additional readings is readily apparent from the brevity of space allocated to major substantive topics within the field. In this respect and in others, the title is somewhat misleading: topics such as the delusional and exploitative Western ideal of romantic love as well as the full spectrum of diversity in family formations are not addressed extensively or, in the case of the former, not addressed at all. Finally, where class issues are concerned, the concluding chapter regarding the future of family life continues a recurrent neglect of working-class families in favour of a much greater preoccupation with middle-class, dual-earner families. Overall, however, the text enables a fruitful launch into the breadth of issues that need to be explored by students of family sociology. |
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Debra Clarke
Trent University |
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