"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

Shift Work and Families

A review of the literature on the effects of shift work on social and family life (Colligan and Rosa, 1990) reveals results that are not surprising. The authors compared studies of workers on day shifts (8 a.m.-5 p.m.), afternoon/evening shifts (4 p.m.-midnight), night shifts (midnight-8 a.m.), and rotating shifts. As expected, day shift workers and their spouses showed higher levels of mental health, had the highest level of satisfaction with their job schedules, marriages, and family integration, and participated more in community activities than workers on other shifts. However, day shift workers had less time for housework than their afternoon and night shift counterparts. Afternoon shift workers had the lowest satisfaction levels regarding time to spend with spouses, children, other family members, and friends. Night shift workers were worse off than their day and afternoon coworkers in terms of physical health and amount of sleep. However, they reported higher satisfaction levels with spouses than afternoon workers (with the notable exception of sexual relationships, where they were worse off), children, and social life (Colligan and Rosa, 1990). The main benefit of rotating shifts is that they distribute the negative physical health outcomes of shift work across all workers, limiting the health risks to each one. The disadvantages include problems sleeping, eating meals, and planning social events.

Until recently, most research on shift work and families concentrated on shift-working men, although Presser has examined shift workers of both genders. Because women have been entering the labor force in large numbers, there is a demand for services such as medical clinics, supermarkets, and department stores after standard work hours. This has resulted in a sizable increase in the service sector. Presser (1998) explains that these changes constitute the driving force behind the increase in shift work and predicts continued growth in the shift work sector.

Other work by Presser has illuminated the connection between parental child care and shift work. She found that fathers are much more likely to do child care if mothers are working shifts rather than standard work schedules (Presser, 1988). Anita Garey (1995), looking at the social construction of motherhood, found that nurses did night shift work in order to simulate "stay-at-home moms" by being available to their children during the day. Research on shift work and family has indicated that families of shift workers suffer from higher divorce rates (White and Keith, 1990), lower marital satisfaction (Costa, 1996), lower satisfaction levels in relationships with children (Rahman and Pal, 1994), and worse sex lives (Colligan and Rosa, 1990; Simon, 1990; White and Keith, 1990) than their nonshift-working counterparts.

Cultures of Care

The term "cultures of care" refers to people, institutions, practices, projects and ideas that provide or promote care (Hochschild, 1999). Fisher and Tronto define care as an activity