"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

   that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our
   `world' so that we can live in it as well as possible (Fisher and Tronto,
   1990, p. 40).

They break care down into four components: caring about, taking care of, caregiving, and care receiving. They define "caring about" as noticing that someone requires care; "taking care of" means acting in response to caring about; "caregiving" is the direct process of providing the physical care; and "care receiving" is the response of the subject of the care.

Tronto (1993) proposes an "ethic of care," a way of looking at care as a political concept and a framework for making moral, political decisions. The distinction between private and public life, first documented by Aristotle, but perpetuated by contemporary philosophers, continues to separate care issues from policy making. Tronto (1996) argues against this arbitrary separation and for a concept of care as public, significant, and a prerequisite for fair and democratic policy.

Arlie Hochschild (1999) discusses what she finds to be the contemporary "quiet crisis in care." Parents of both genders and all socioeconomic classes are working at paid jobs outside the home. Who, then, is left to care for children, disabled and elder relatives, and neighbors, who in previous generations received care from stay-at-home mothers? Hochschild laments the low value our culture places on care even as its availability shrinks. After reviewing existing work and family literature, she posits that an important piece is missing: explorations of "care." Hochschild invites us to question our understanding of care and its role. What defines care and how does our culture encourage or discourage it? Her Center for Working Families at Berkeley supports research in these areas. This paper is one example of this genre. It reflects an attempt to understand and characterize the care that parents with jobs as bus drivers give their children.

Study Description

Purpose

This study had several purposes. Given the existing and projected increase in the percentage of the labor force doing shift work, I wanted to investigate the effects of employees' shift work on their family relationships. Because most work and family research examines white professionals, a second objective was to look at an urban, blue-collar, primarily ethnic minority workforce, an understudied segment of employees in the work and family context. A third purpose involved the selection of bus drivers as a study population among shift workers. Research on transit workers is vital from the perspectives of advocates for expanded public transportation: environmentalists, disability rights activists, and social workers. However, in recommending more public transit, policymakers must be aware of the work and family issues facing transit workers.

Drawing on the "cultures of care" idea and corresponding literature on care (Fisher and Tronto, 1990; Hochschild, 1999; Ruddick, 1998; Tronto, 1996), my fourth goal was to investigate the coping strategies for parental caring within this population of workers.