“How Do You Get Two Houses Cleaned?”: Accomplishing Family Caregiving in Commuter Marriages

Abstract

This interpretive study focused on messages reported by commuter wives from social network members concerning unpaid family labor, including domestic work and relational work with spouses and children, and wives' subsequent communication about the accomplishment of such labor within their marriages and families. We conducted a thematic analysis of interview transcripts with commuting wives from five focus groups (n = 25) and 50 individual interviews through the lens of gendered role expectations. We found commuter wives received messages from social network members portraying men as incapable of family labor and expressing traditional gendered expectations for wives to perform caregiving. Commuting wives discussed how they and their families implemented several strategies for accomplishing the domestic chores of family labor. In addition, many couples needed to negotiate new strategies for relational maintenance, and communication emerged as a discrete form of caregiving labor. In spite of the fact that these wives were resisting cultural expectations for married women by commuting to pursue their own careers, the findings of this study illustrate tensions in the (re)production of traditional gendered expectations for unpaid family labor for commuter wives.