Telecommuting and the Working Mom

Hoppi

ng about trying to finish gettin

 Hopping about trying to finish getti

Hopping about trying to finish gettin

 Hopping about trying to finish gettin
Hopping about trying to finish gettin

Hopping about trying to finish gettin

This ad amplifies an issue raised by Arlie Russell Hochschild in The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work (1998). Not just working women, but working fathers as well, are prone to feel guilt about being away from their children, but they also feel guilt about being away from their jobs, or letting down an employer. The AT&T ad ostensibly addresses the structural conflict that Juliet Schor refers to as the "time squeeze." But if we superimpose Hochschild's interpretation over this ad, we might see the guilt relationship in another way as well.

Middle class culture claims to prioritize family above all else in our lives. So why then does it seem to be so difficult to find a balance between work and family life? Hochschild thinks the problem might be that many of us are more ambivalent than we would like to openly admit about spending time with family.

Why do employees experience a "time squeeze"? Until recently, corporations presumed a world where men's careers mattered and women stayed home to keep house and raise kids. But that world has begun to change, and if the corporation Hochschild studied is representative, the time squeeze is no longer due solely to the company's failure to appreciate the squeeze placed on working women. Even though the corporation she studied had flexible hours (including jobsharing options and part-time arrangements) and family-friendly policies, she found that both ambitious employees seeking promotions, as well as lower level, and hence more easily replaceable workers, tend not to take advantage of these options. The ambitious understand that time spent away from work can diminish their chances of advancement in rank and salary. At the other end of the job spectrum, less skilled workers have job security fears that are not entirely assuaged by the firm's policies.

Hochschild found people electing not to cut back their work schedules, spending less time with their families, rather than more. Working parents in dual-career families have been spending more and more time at work - not necessarily because they face ever growing work loads, or even because they're afraid of losing their jobs (though certainly in a downsizing environment that fear cannot be ruled out). Hochschild suggests they're fleeing the pressures and uncertainties of home life and escaping to work, where they can feel in control, or at the very least avoid the emotional dramas played out at home. Hochschild reports that though they later tend to feel guilt about this method of avoidance, working parents sometimes prefer the social side of the office to the boredom of household chores, to quarreling or whining kids, or to confronting unresolved emotional conflicts at home.

Hochschild sees the "time bind" as a chain of relationships. Corporate employees may feel a need to spend more hours at work to support their families. This, in turn, prompts increased stress at home, which many parents react to by finding reasons to spend still more time at work to escape the tension at home. These self-contradictory relations contribute to what Hochschild terms the "third shift" -- the time parents spend repairing the damage generated by their compulsion to work. This dynamic is probably not new to the 1990s, but rather endemic to the social and cultural contradictions generated by middle class socialization practices which demand both a commitment to self-achievement and an ideological commitment to the goals of familial intimacy. These don't necessarily fit together, and Hochschild calls attention to what most middle class ideologues would prefer to repress: employees frequently choose to work because they find it more rewarding than time spent in the emotionally messy arena of family life.

While the oldest girl breaks an egg and a younger girl plays with her food. The soundtrack of the cartoon show playing on the television sets a tone for the ad, establishing an emotional feel for the story that is being told. See metacommunication.

The oldest girl calls out: "Mom, I can't find my skates."

Hopping about trying to finish getting dressed, putting on her makeup, and gathering together her portfolio materials for the day

Mom calls back, "Look under the table," before adding on a reminder about rules, "No TV all day, remember?"

The door bell rings and Mom hops to the door while trying to put on her second shoe.

The oldest daughter replies to her mother's assertion of tv watching rules, that "Our babysitter watches TV all day."

Oldest daughter: "Mom, why do you always have to go to work?"

Mom: "It's called food, video, skates..."

Oldest girl: "Can we go to the beach?"

Mom: "Not today honey, I've got a meeting with a very important client."

Four-year old daughter: "Mom, when can I be a client?" she asks plaintively, and then rests her chin on her hands to signify sadness.

The child's question sends an emotional dagger of guilt through Mom. Her facial expression reflects the tension that she is feeling and she slowly reacts as she puzzles over what to do about this dilemma.

There is a lengthy silent pause as Mom and the camera scan each of the kid's waiting and pleading facial expressions. Finally mom breaks the silence with "hmmm" as we follow her eye...

...to the wireless phone on the table. "You have five minutes to get ready for the beach or I'm going without you."

The girls react with glee. The soundtrack breaks exuberantly into the Cyndee Lauper song "Girls just wanna have fun" as the girls race to their rooms to get dressed for the beach, romping about in their flippers and water floats.

Mom and kids race out the door, leaving the babysitter watching cartoons on TV. Coded as humorous, this scene winks to those who rely on teens to babysit.

The music signifies a mood shift to going to the beach, having fun, and a mother who has emotionally reclaimed her family as they romp along the beach.

At the beach, the cell phone rings. Mom answers it, while her 4-year old screams out, "Hey, everybody, it's time for the meeting!"

A 1997 AT&T ad opens with scenes calculated to evoke the everydayness of home life, bringing forth the feel and texture of real -- unreconstructed and unretouched by the camera -- interactions from that messy area we know as family life. The video of the ad exemplifies Hyperreal Encoding designed to make a case about the realness of the story being told, perhaps even making the case that it bears some resemblance to "your" own life. A woman scrambles to get herself ready to go to the office while her three girls are taking care of their own breakfasts. The oldest is preparing eggs for breakfast, while the baby plays with food containers from the open refrigerator door, and the four-year old disinterestedly spoons her cereal around her bowl, onto the table, and perhaps the floor.

A middle class professional trying to balance homelife and worklife, the woman's relationship with her children is laid out in the dialogue and their video-mediated interactions. The mother-daughter exchange regarding TV watching rules is suggestive of their dynamic. The mother attempts to reinvoke a governing rule about restricting television viewing while she is gone. The daughter's rejoinder challenges the fairness and rationality of this rule. The rule seems arbitrary (and unenforceable) insofar as the babysitter routinely disregards it. She is finishing this thought as Mom opens the door to reveal the babysitter who has just been 'outed' for breaking Mom's no TV rule, and undermining her authority. Mom is too hurried to concern herself with this breech. Viewers are apt to note the blank look on the babysitter's face. This look lends a note of authenticity to the ad, and is an important means of 'hailing' the intended audience who may already recognize just such a look.

 Here is the classic tradeoff. The parent works longer hours away from the family to fulfill her love of her children. This scene, shown to the right, is characteristic of the way the entire first half of the ad was filmed. Notice the social relations depicted in the second framed scene below, with the babysitter leaning against the wall, listening, but uninvolved, while the baby wanders away from the refrigerator, still undressed. By allowing the mundane to remain mundane, that is part of the background noise, this advertising style seeks to more effectively hail what Judith Williamson calls the "alreadyness" of everyday life of the demographically appropriate viewer.

We cannot be sure, because the advertiser has left open plenty of interpretive room, whether this woman parents alone or not. Our initial unrehearsed reaction to the ad was that the woman is tagged as a single mom. But little is lost in the story if we assume her to be part of a dual career family. Certainly, women who are trying to raise children and compete successfully in the managerial ranks of the corporate world face a double whammy. They have to deal with the feelings of guilt that come from the notion that by being committed to their jobs they are neglecting their family obligations, though as we shall see in a moment that guilt may have other sources as well.

While at first the mother declines her daughter's request that they spend the day at the beach, due to her job commitments, the following question from her younger child about "when can I be a client?" prompts a guilt-induced reevaluation, as she realizes that she has given "client" a higher priority than "daughter". Her guilt seems to be further spurred on by the sad, pleading looks from her children which compel her to consider another way of reconciling the conflicting demands she is being asked to meet. We see her eye catch sight of the cellphone upon the counter -- the solution, of course, lies in her AT&T cell phone! This ad speaks directly to working mothers about precisely this, how to reconcile the tensions in her life -- How to be a loving, and available, parent to her children and still fulfill her career duties and aspirations?

AT&T presents the issue in this sympathetic narrative, and then offers her (you?) a way of blocking this guilt. Career women can, if they are agile of mind and spirit (and who wouldn't want to be?), meet everyone's expectations while harmonizing the interaction of work life and family life. They can accomplish this that is, if they choose the appropriate technology. In the reunification of self, family, and business, AT&T portrays its telecommunications technology as an instrument of liberation, literally an instrument that frees her up to be in one place (the beach with her laughing kids), while also inhabiting another space (the phone call/meeting with her client). The conflict between work and home/family obligations is all gone because as the AT&T Tagline states: "AT&T -- It's all within your reach."

AT&T presents the issue in this sympathetic narrative, and then offers her (you?) a way of blocking this guilt. Career women can, if they are agile of mind and spirit (and who wouldn't want to be?), meet everyone's expectations while harmonizing the interaction of work life and family life. They can accomplish this that is, if they choose the appropriate technology. In the reunification of self, family, and business, AT&T portrays its telecommunications technology as an instrument of liberation, literally an instrument that frees her up to be in one place (the beach with her laughing kids), while also inhabiting another space (the phone call/meeting with her client). The conflict between work and home/family obligations is resolved because as the AT&T Tagline states: "AT&T -- It's all within your reach."