Jimmy Wayland The Time Bind

Paper #1 Jimmy Wayland, five years a father and feels he has “missed the boat” (Hochschild 1997:126) on being a father. Jimmy had a child and thought his wife wanted to raise the child herself and therefore spent his time at work. In The Time Bind, by Arlie R. Hochschild, Jimmy Wayland is a stand out character who exemplified the neglect to take advantage of Amerco’s work-family balance programs. Jimmy’s reasons for not taking the work family balance programs were because of his beliefs and the societal beliefs that would affect his reputation at work. And these beliefs were negative enough way to make his potential use of work-family benefits undesirable because of the connotations associated with taking family time, and the consequences
Jimmy Wayland could have been averting application for paternity leave because of the situation Sam Hyatt faced with his boss. The boss wanted Sam to take the time he requested for paternity leave, to be personal time off, time off of vacation because he didn’t want to do too much work by enabling his fatherly duties, “it’s too much paperwork” (Hochschild 1994:121). By avoiding to request for the time off, his reputation and pay were unharmed. In the short future, Jimmy found himself as a manager; he too found that there was even less family time. And despite his desire to involve himself in his family-life, he was inactive in the household and his child’s life, and ended up as a long-hour
According to Lorber, in The Social Construction of Gender, she states that there are “socially imposed standards for men and women” (Lorber 1991:114). These aforementioned standards are often times a reason for not taking something such as paternity leave, which ‘defies’ the norms of society. In the past for centuries a woman, which is feminine, holds the characteristics of a caretaker and therefore is dealt the responsibility of the household. Even recently, women that are involved in careers that in the past were only “men’s jobs” take time off of work to tend to their children. So if one is to take paternity leave, the people may pester one alike their ribbing of Sam Hyatt saying are you “catching up on the soaps,” (Hochschild 1997:120) hinting at the women like connotations that taking work off for family has. What Jimmy could argue with the naysayers is that he wouldn’t be babysitting his child like other’s may refer to it as, but he would be responsibly engaging in the raising and fathering of his child. The consideration of people’s opinion makes a direct impact on whether one, like Jimmy, may