I'm a hard worker and love my work. I have felt pulled toward work. And it's a pull I have ferociously had to counter to make room for my family.
Arlie Russell HochschildRead
In response to our fast-food culture, a 'slow food' movement appeared. Out of hurried parenthood, a move toward slow parenting could be growing. With vital government supports for state-of-the-art public child care and paid parental leave, maybe we would be ready to try slow love and marriage.
Interpretation
The quote advocates for a more thoughtful and deliberate approach to parenting, love, and marriage.
Arlie Russell Hochschild highlights a cultural shift from the fast-paced, instant gratification mindset prevalent in modern society to a more intentional and nurturing approach in parenting and relationships. By introducing concepts like 'slow food', she suggests that similar movements could enhance our familial and romantic connections, emphasizing the need for government support in fostering these changes.
In practice
In a conversation about improving family dynamics, one could quote this to highlight the need for slowing down.
I'm a hard worker and love my work. I have felt pulled toward work. And it's a pull I have ferociously had to counter to make room for my family.
The focus of our public discourse has been on how American companies are competing with Japanese, German, and other foreign companies. What this allows us to ignore is how each of those American companies is really in competition with the families of the workers. That's the real competition.
What emotions would we experience if we weren't working ourselves to death? What wishes drive us? What fantasies hitch themselves to our continual busyness? Only when we step away from our frenzy can we know.
No work-family balance will ever fully take hold if the social conditions that might make it possible - men who are willing to share parenting and housework, communities that value work in the home as highly as work on the job, and policymakers and elected officials who are prepared to demand family-friendly reforms - remain out of reach.
Could it be, I wonder, that there is such a thing as a wantologist, someone we can hire to figure out what we want? Have I arrived at some final telling moment in my research on outsourcing intimate parts of our lives, or at the absurdist edge of the market frontier?
Many women cut back what had to be done at home by redefining what the house, the marriage and, sometimes, what the child needs. One woman described a fairly common pattern: I do my half. I do half of his half, and the rest doesn't get done.
Young men need to show women the respect they deserve and recognize sexual assault and to do their part to stop it.
If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.
In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.
So you shun me? - you shut yourself up and grieve alone! I would rather you had come and upbraided me with vehemence. You are passionate: I expected a scene of some kind. I was prepared for the hot rain of tears; only I wanted them to be shed on my breast: now a senseless floor has received them, or your drenched handkerchief. But I err: you have not wept at all! I see a white cheek and faded eye, but no trace of tears. I suppose, then, that your heart has been weeping blood?
If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.
That’s always the hardest thing when someone completely has you fooled so much, that you think they’re just never going to hurt you, then they do. That’s when you get the worst heartbreak.
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