The "third shift" of parenting

I've been thinking a lot about my experiences of public school as a parent. In that process, I remembered a piece of writing I did for my "Sociology of Families" class last fall and decided I wanted to post it here. It is academic writing, and so it refers to a few textbooks we used during the course, and to several academic sociological theories, however, I think it's still quite understandable to the average reader:

October-28-08 The "third shift" of parenting

My first grader is having problems at school. He disrupts the class. He doesn't complete his assignments. He lies down regularly on the floor. He has a great difficulty when required to attend to lessons. His teacher communicates with me through penciled notes in his planner. She asked me to speak with him before today's field trip. After the field trip, she wrote he "wandered from the group many times." As well, he's "still having difficulty with writing" and she will "be keeping him in at recess to see if this helps to motivate him." She then wrote that he was under his desk, which, when we discussed her note, he adamantly denied and then began to cry.

The teacher is quite experienced and, during a conference we had three weeks ago, stressed positive interactions and multiple modes of learning. However, my son is young for his grade; his birthday is in mid-November. I am concerned that this teacher has expectations for his behaviour that are developmentally beyond his mastery. I also think that recess, and running around, will improve his executive functioning, and therefore his control over his own behaviour. I want to be able to teach him some self-managing techniques, such as twiddling his thumbs while sitting in a group on the rug (which he reports she vetoed), but I have been unable to observe the situation, and thus to suggest appropriate interventions.

As a result, I've been spending time researching children's behavioural issues at the expense of my university studies. As well, I've added a half-hour on to our morning routine to wake up earlier to chat in bed and to be less rushed when getting out the door. This is after altering his bedtime last month, at the teacher's request. Now, I will be spending an hour and a half at my son's school tomorrow, in the middle of the morning. As well, I suspect I will be instituting a half-hour of study time in the evenings. Finally, I am looking into piano lessons for my son, as my research suggests this may contribute to the development of attention span.

These are excellent examples of Hothschild's "third shift" of emotional work to compensate for the time crunch of the first and second shifts of work and household and family labour (1989, 1997, cited in Ranson, 2007:77). Hothschild argues parents must manage their home lives as efficiently as their work lives, but by doing so, something is lost, and must be compensated for. This is the “third shift” of nurturing modern parents take on to compensate children for the time crunch.

My experience as a working mother reflects this, but it also reflects Lareu's middle class pattern of "concerted cultivation," which involves promotion of children's talents and abilities, but usually through “financially expensive” and “labour-intensive” means (2002, cited in Ranson, 2007:76). This middle class pattern, however, is not, for me, matched by a middle class income, as I am a student and a single mother. Thus, my financial resources are strained, and I take on the burden of providing such cultivation less through participation in paid activities like lessons and sports teams, more through my own, individual efforts. This requires efficient time management, as in the “second shift” of family labour, which then leads to the compensatory “third shift” in order to maintain the experience of myself as a “good mother” in an ideological sense.

It is a year later, and I am no longer the single parent of an only child, but rather the married mother of two. However, not much has changed in my experience of the public school system, and the need to experience myself as a "good mother." Despite this, I have discovered the concepts of radical unschooling and non-coercive parenting, so I waffle back and forth between "concerted cultivation" and "deschooling," where I let my kids spend their weekends doing whatever they like, without trying to direct their activities or limit their choices. If they want to play DS all day, I let them. After all, my husband spends his days off from work parked in front of the tv, why should there be a double standard? My husband, not quite understanding the philosophical underpinnings of my new parenting attitude, attempts to set limits on their video game playing time, to which I suggest he's being somewhat hypocritical. He's getting there. As am I. This is not an easy transition! We are working against generations of conditioning, where children are to "be seen and not heard." Bizarre. Developmentally inappropriate.