The Second Shift

What it is about

The Second Shift is Arlie Hochschild’s study of who does the paid work and who does the housework and childcare after both partners are employed. Through couples’ stories she shows the unpaid evening and weekend labour—the second shift—and the gender ideologies that make that labour invisible or “natural.” The book remains a reference for the marriage-and-labour question: how resentment builds when one partner carries the home shift while both hold jobs. It is sociology of shared life, not a chore-chart product and not a claim that every household must split every task fifty-fifty by stopwatch.

Questions it can answer

• What is the “second shift,” and how does it show up when both partners work for pay?
• How do gender ideologies make household labour invisible inside a marriage?
• Why does unequal home labour become a marriage problem and not only a logistics problem?

What you will not find

• A ready-made chore app or a universal fifty-fifty stopwatch rule
• A parenting curriculum for infants and schools
• Legal advice on divorce settlements or custody