Do All Be All: Women Combining Work and Family

• In Event: 2266 - Family Section Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 22. Work-Family Balance: Orientations, Strategies, and Spillover

Abstract

Using intersectionality scholarship on race, gender and labor, I demonstrate how women are able to combine self-care and employment with child rearing in a space that welcomes children. Women employed in an African braiding and weaving salon located in a Southwest urban city in the U.S. both reinforce and challenge gendered labor hierarchies through a combination of their perceived parental responsibilities and their daily routines. The women work for extended hours in the salon, some transforming into the breadwinners of their families. However, they maintain dominant cis-gendered expectations of motherhood and often take on most of the responsibilities of parenting as mothers and wives. The combination of career and child-rearing responsibilities overlap tremendously and women often combine the two in the salon. Customers in the salon take advantage of the child-friendly environment and bring their children to the salon while they receive styles as well.

Author

• Nicole Jenkins, University of Nevada, Las Vegas