cover image The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work

The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work

Arlie Russell Hochschild, Hochschild. Henry Holt & Company, $22.5 (316pp) ISBN 978-0-8050-4470-6

In this important study, Hochschild (The Second Shift) unearths the damages families harvest when both parents till the soils of business and home. She takes as her subject the pseudonymous Fortune 500 company Amerco, cited by the Family and Work Institute and Working Mother magazine as ""one of the ten most `family-friendly' companies in America,"" ostensibly with the funds and policies to help employees balance their lives. She interviewed workers and managers alike for three years, finding that Amerco's ""Work-Life Balance Program"" failed its employees and their children for a jumble of reasons. First, Hochschild noticed, the ""powerful men"" at the top did not vigorously enforce implementation, while department supervisors were often ""overtly hostile"" to a work-home balance. The author also learned that many parents did not avail themselves of the family-friendly policies. One main reason, she notes, is that employees were ""responding to a powerful process that is devaluing... the essence of family life""; for many, there was just more satisfaction at work than at home. Hochschild's thorough and enlightening study will again trigger the consternation of the hard-working, guilt-ridden parents of this nation and perhaps incite them further on their quest for a work-family balance. 50,000 first printing; author tour. (May)