"I raised my kids on the bus": transit shift workers' coping strategies for parenting

Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, Sept, 2002 by Blanche Grosswald

These parents did not have the option of working less and earning less. They were working out of economic necessity, not primarily a consumerist orientation. However, materialistic values played a role in shaping their lives.

Job Pride Several mothers said that their children were proud of them for being bus drivers. Although this may be an example of an unintended form of caring, it served to cement relationships between mothers and children as well as increase self-esteem in both. Interestingly, no father mentioned the equivalent. Gender stereotypes probably played a part in this difference. Driving a bus may still conjure up the image of a strong man. A woman driver may enjoy the respect of her children more than a man just because she is breaking conventional norms.

Separation of Work from Family Several participants discussed their ability and wish to separate work from family. Keeping the two apart represented yet another form of caring. In particular, drivers mentioned not bringing stress home to their children. For example, one driver said:

   I tried to control myself, not to show to my children that I'm stressed
   out.

Others paraphrased some version of "I don't bring stress home." During other parts of the interview, however, their words would betray their lack of success at separating the two worlds.

Although most shared the goal of protecting children from any negative consequences of their job stress, many admitted that this was a difficult, if not impossible, task. They spoke of exhaustion leaving them unavailable to their children. One driver realized that if he'd had trouble with a child passenger, he would take it out on his daughter upon returning home. One interviewee was aware of a technique that he used to facilitate the separation between work and family. Instead of wearing his uniform to and from work as is customary, he always changed into and out of it at the job site rather than at home. This seemed to provide him with the psychological distance from his job frame of mind that he needed.

Nippert-Eng discusses this phenomenon in her book on "boundary work," defined as:

   The process through which we organize potentially realm-specific matters,
   people, objects, and aspects of self into "home" and "work," maintaining
   and changing these conceptualizations as needed or desired (Nippert-Eng,
   1996, p. 7).

She writes that everyone draws boundaries between home and work along a continuum from one extreme of total segmentation to that of complete integration. People negotiate these relationships between home and work via a number of tools, including the personal practices that reinforce a degree of segmentation or integration (Nippert-Eng, 1996). This form of boundary work was apparent in many of the drivers' efforts to separate their jobs from their children.

Conclusions, Policy Recommendations, and Future Research

Bus drivers experienced a constant struggle around child care issues. They fell into the category of "parents at a distance," a phrase coined by Kathy Boudin in her discussion of parents in prison and expanded by Ruddick (1998, p. 15) to include parents who "work long hours." They left their children with spouses, siblings, and relatives when possible and used formal child care when it was needed and available, clearly delegating child care responsibility to others. When facing no alternatives, they sometimes left their children at home alone or took them on the bus with them. They expressed love for their children by worrying about them when they could not be with them. They compensated, in part, for lack of family time via material goods. They attempted to shield them from the adverse consequences of their jobs by a largely futile endeavor to separate their worlds of work and family. There may have been some overlap, thus, in the parental coping strategies for care of the bus drivers and those of other populations.