Barkeeps and Barmaids on the White Picket Fence: Bartending, Gender, and Performative Adulthood

• In Event: 110 - Regular Session. Performing Parenthood in Social Context

Abstract

Work is a central dimension of adult life for many Americans. Recent economic trends indicate that the middle class is shrinking, bottlenecking more working people into the burgeoning informal economy marked by lower-wages, At Will employment, less stability, fewer benefits, and the loss of collective bargaining rights. This study examines the relationship between bartenders and their perceptions of normative adulthood through access to long-term intimate relationships and parenthood. Forty semi-structured interviews of New Orleans area bartenders inform the theory of a matrix of performative adulthood that ties together three interconnected dimensions of doing or enacting normative or successful adult life: 1) doing legitimate work; 2) doing relationships; and 3) doing parenting. Using the conceptual frameworks of life cycle theory and the ideological codes for hegemonic masculinity and femininity within the Standard North American Family, this study finds that bartenders perceive their lack of legitimate or normative work as a central point of tension in their ability to achieve the other dimensions of normative adult life: having long-term intimate partners and having the capacity to parent. As more people find themselves working non-normative work, the proverbial nine-to-five job and white picket fence elicited within the American hegemonic family ideal will have reverberating effects in peoples’ conceptions of adulthood and their ability to “do” it successfully. This examination of bartenders reveals how these dimensions of successful performative adulthood paired with hegemonic gender roles collude to proscribe bartenders’ sense of themselves as capable working adults and possible participants in family life.

Authors

• Emily H Starr, Tulane University

• Alicia McCraw, Tulane University