Time, Gender, and the Negotiation of Family Schedules

Abstract

I examine the interactive processes by which women and men negotiate family time schedules. Based on fifty interviews with seventeen dual‐earner couples, I focus on the ways men and women define time in gendered ways, exert different controls over the way time is used, and align their time strategies in the course of managing everyday family life. The results indicate that there are both continuities and discontinuities with the past: women continue to exert more control over the organization of time in families, but time negotiation itself has become a more complex and demanding activity. The way that couples carry out these negotiations reflects a variety of adaptive strategies, with some couples being very reactive in contending with present demands and others being highly structured and seeking to anticipate and control the future. Although some couples worked to negotiate balance in their time responsibilities, it was wives who maintained control over time and, ultimately, the orchestration of family activity.

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