Análisis de los datos

The division of caring labour in the leff's house was fairly clearly delineated as Roz's responsibility outside of the paid care Roz organised for the children. In part the mixture of paid care and care provided by Roz was a response to an earlier experience when Roz was still working three days a week in the organisation, with Joss in care every day of the week, which Ben thought was "quite stressful on Joss"

(24). Roz's restricted hours were thus an

outcome of the way

this

earlier arrangement had not worked, while both arrangements left Ben's hours in the organisation unchanged.

Roz's attitude to child care was to use the money she generated from her telework to buy care for the children outside of the house for these two days per week, and then to spend time completely with them on another day of the week. The weekly pattern of child care thus parallelled the work cycle. When Roz was teleworking on Thursdays and Fridays the children were in care all day, on Tuesdays Roz was with them all day at home and did not telework, while on Monday and Wednesday mornings the children went to playcentre and Roz has time to herself or the business

(561 ).

In response to a question about whether Roz would consider being a mother at home full-time she responded with a clear "no, I need my career" but she enjoyed this mixed pattern of time with the children and time to work, noting that on Tuesdays she 'just totally enjoyed being at home"

(5 1 1 )

and devoting herself to play activities and not having "anything to do with work"

(52 1).

Roz felt that she ideally wanted to have "major chunks" of work time when the children were not in the house so that she could "focus", because when the children were in the house they were her "primary" responsibility

(493).

She was annoyed when clients called her at times when the children were awake and at home, especially if the baby was crying, and was irritated at callers' lack of awareness about children. She said:

They keep talking as if there's nothing wrong, I get the impression that they don't understand that I really should go and look after the baby and not worry about them.

I

usually get the feeling that this person obviously hasn't got children, or they've got older children and they forget what it's like (308).

Roz's attitude was in marked contrast to Pam Brody's feeling that if callers made concessions because the baby was crying in the background, they were being "patronising". Rather, Roz wanted to keep 'work' and 'home' separate as much as she could because she was aware of the demanding nature of both. Roz thus used teleworking and the money it generated to take ''the pressure off' herself in terms of "meeting the needs of two children", and saw herself as '�iust purely doing it for the time out"

( 1 80-2).

Roz emphasised that without including the cost of child care into her contract, she "couldn't have done (the work)" ( 150) because the care of the children was almost entirely her responsibility. Ben's responsibilities for

the

children were limited to taking time with them at the end of the day and during the weekends. Ben felt that "if Roz could get a job that paid better than (his)" then he would be at home with the children, and that the division of caring labour was purely a "economic thing" (101). However Roz had been offered two such jobs and hadn't taken them because it would have disrupted Ben's career. A number of other comments Ben made about care giving suggested that he struggled at times to "meet the children's needs as a father", and thought he would fmd being the primary carer difficult when he reflected on a friend's experience of doing so:

I

got the impression the husband wasn't taking it very well, in that he's a bit like me, you know, he's a 'doer' and he was fmding it really frustrating, from the point of view that he' s an achiever and here were the children and he wasn't able to get things done ( 10 1 ).

Ben remembered his experience of spending four weeks at home 'developing the property' where he had found Joss's presence an "impediment" and "incredibly frustrating" because

the

two-year-old did not want to do "chore after chore" (39). Ben thought that

in

contrast to his own "struggles" Roz had an "extraordinary rapport" with the children and an

'\mcanny ability just to switch into them"

(35),

which he also used as a justification for

his

own lack of assistance with the children. He recounted a conversation he had with Roz about

his

going out to work and leaving her with the children:

she said "you must breathe a sigh of relief when you drive down the driveway" and I would have to be honest and say that's true. Because I'm usually rushing in the morning. I get up, I try and get loss to brush his teeth with me, but if he doesn't I just keep going, because inevitably I'm, quarter to eight, we work eight to five, although my hours aren't fixed, but I just try by virtue of my standing to be there at eight o 'clock and I have breakfast and I'm out the door. Roz must think I'm deserting her at times, but as I say she has an incredible rapport with children

(36).

Ben felt he "needed to be" involved with the children and that he did not know how families coped where

the

man worked, went out to "Rotary Club" and the "mother and wife did the whole thing"

(86).

In their family, according to Ben, he and Roz saw the child rearing as a "partnership" where Ben also had a part to play

(86).

For example, Roz said they were "working toward" Ben taking the children to care in the mornings "depending on what he's got on" so that Roz could "get straight into it at

8.00

am" and thus extend her teleworking

time (326). This

did not in fact eventuate in the three years I knew the leffs and underscored how the "partnership" largely rested on Ben providing certain structured care for loss on the weekends when Roz asked him to. In addition, Ben occasionally came home to care for the children for "short, irregular periods" while Roz attended on-site meetings, an experience he sited as the only disadvantage of Roz's telework

(29).

Although Roz could not avoid these on-site commitments, she usually organised them around the children's nap time, during which Ben could by his own estimation "still be productive workwise"

(3 1 ).

Roz did not use Ben as a 'back-up' caregiver when she was sick, and although

his

o rganisation had 'domestic leave' provisions she didn't "envisage having to actually use (them)"

(575).

The division of caring labour in the leffs's household was thus the outcome of a number of factors including the priority the both gave to Ben's career, their reliance on

his

income and the couple's gendered expectations of one another and themselves. Also critical was Ben's expressed sense of resistance about performing caring work and his acknowledgement of how difficult he found it. He said:

Boy I don't know how some people hack two kids every day of the week at home, boxed up with them, boy! It's a real hard task and I wouldn't blame some mothers for getting suburban neurosis, you know, I could see it happening

(27).

In document Impacto de los cambios climáticos y ambientales en el crecimiento y la respuesta fisiológica de "Prosopis caldenia" (BURKART) (página 58-62)