The Eldest Daughter's Third Shift Among Former Farmworker Youth

• In Event: 30665 - Children, Youth & Work

Abstract

Working adult women disproportionately experience the Second Shift, an additional shift of domestic and emotional labor involved in maintaining their household's continued function (Hochschild 1989). In working-class households, women in low-wage occupations have limited time for their second shift after long workdays. I find that eldest daughters often step up to fill the care gaps to maintain the function of the home. In this paper, I identify the third shift among youth from farmworker families. Some Latine farmworking households depend on children who work in the fields to make financial ends meet and help with domestic labor to help the household run in addition to their schooling. I build upon Hochschild’s (1989) Second Shift and Estrada and Hondagneu-Sotelo’s (2013) Third Shift to examine the labor that eldest daughters do via the Eldest Daughter’s Third Shift. Drawing on 31 interviews with Latine former seasonal farmworker youth, I argue that the Eldest Daughter’s Third Shift is made up of (1) Maintaining a Household, (2) Brokering Work as Children of Immigrants, and (3) Multidirectional Emotional Labor. This study contributes to our expanding understanding of childhood, especially in immigrant households, with consideration of age, birth order, class, and gender.

Author

• Natalia Candelaria Gonzalez, University of California-Irvine