The value of parenting: gendered time expectations among the Spanish middle class

Abstract

This paper analyses the gendered expectations of time of Spanish middle-class parents. The main goal is to understand how parents value their parenting time. Parents embody a specific social structuring of the everyday that is both gendered and individualist. The claim of this paper is that the value of parenting time, despite being expressed in individual terms, is shaped by gendered social expectations. The methodological strategy includes the conduction of semi-structured interviews and participatory photography. The qualitative sample is composed of 28 professional parents with children under three living in Barcelona. The results reveal gendered time expectations happen outside negotiation. They are not a strategic outcome, but the relational consequence of the structured value of time in capitalist societies.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dafne Muntanyola-Saura

Dafne Muntanyola-Saura (PhD UAB 2008) is a Tenured Assistant Professor at the department of Sociology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She has been a postdoctoral scholar at Université de Nice, at the department of Cognitive Science at University de California, San Diego (UCSD), and at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid with the scholarships Caja Madrid, Fulbright and Alianza. Her research crosses over the disciplinary boundaries of cognitive science and sociology of the arts to cover social interactions in professional and artistic settings with a strong theoretical component. She has worked with experts in hospitals, and artists in visual arts, dance and filmmaking. She published in Theory & Psychology, Revue de Synthèse, Quality & Quantity; Gender, Work & Organization and Revista Internacional de Sociología among others. She is member of the Board of Sociology the Arts at the European Sociological Association (ESA).

Núria Sánchez-Mira

Núria Sánchez-Mira is Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) LIVES, University of Lausanne. She was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre d’Estudis Sociològics sobre la Vida Quotidiana i el Treball (QUIT), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She has been visiting fellow at the European Work and Employment Research Centre, University of Manchester (UK), and the Soziologisches Forschungsinstitut Göttingen, at the Georg-August-Universität (Germany). She was awarded the Ángel Rozas Award to Research in the Social Sciences from the Cipriano García Foundation for her doctoral dissertation on the impact of the Great Recession on work–family arrangements across Europe.