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Rating: 
Summary: Disturbing Look at Psuedo-Families
Review: Hocschild's book can be criticized for being limited to only one case study -- a real Fortune 500 Company. That aside, she presents disturbing findings that do ring true with other observations on contemporary corporate culture. Most significant is the way in which an organization manipulates total quality managerial approaches to create work groups that begin to provide greater levels of social satisfaction than our families do. This is not to say that Hochschild blames the corporate top brass entirely -- she also points out the ways in which parents and spouses have willingly shifted thier time allotment and devotional energies from familiy settings to work groups. Hochschild's book not only asks what becomes of the family if such a trend is prevalent, but also what becomes of an entire generation that may be placing more and more value on work-related achievements than on the nurturing experiences of family life. While again it should be pointed out that Hochschild's findings are based on a singular case study, her observations have a disturbing resonance with other looks at the fast and furious pace of attaining the American Dream. I would recommend this book to anyone who has questioned the supposed virture of climbing career ladders, as well as to those who have suspected that families are being gradually shoved out of the mainstream of American social life. Another work that is very related, and amplifies many of Hochschild's findings (while taking a more general perspective) is Stephen Bertman's excellent "Hyperculture," also available at Amazon. Perhaps we see here the beginning of the most significant issue of the next millenium: how do we define what is of REAL value as the assault on our time continues?
Rating: 
Summary: This is a book everyone should read
Review: I picked this book up just by chance. I found it truthful, enlightening and very thought provoking. It is clear that the battle for our time is present. How should we be judged? Are we to be judged based on the hours of servitude or our accomplishments? What is the ultimate effect of long hours on our lives and families? In the modern job shuffle, are the hours justified?
Rating:
Summary: Excellent - though follow up research doesn't confirm
Review: Summary:
The book is essentially a report of the findings of a 3-year qualitative study by the author, Arlie Hochschild, of a Fortune 500 company's 'family-friendly' practices. The author interviewed people in all tiers of the organization, conducted surveys, followed employees, and did participant observations to try to understand how the company's family-friendly policies were being implemented. The result is The Time Bind. Though the company wants to give the impression that it is family-friendly, certain factors are working against the company actually living up to its policies. One is that for many of the managers at the company 'face time' or actually being at work is more important than actually doing anything at work. If your understanding of 'family-friendly' includes the possibility of working fewer hours, this is going to work against anyone that wants to participate in an hour reduction program. Another thing that the author posits that is working against family friendliness is that companies are turning the work environment into a safe and comforting environment (though doing this actually covers up the temporariness inherent in companies) and in essence are replacing the home environment or turning the home environment into something more akin to what work environments have traditionally been seen as being (e.g. scheduling time for kids and spouses, running from one thing to the next, not being able to rest, etc.). The result is that many people actually want to spend more time at work then they do at home because they feel more relaxed at work then they do at home. (Read the book to understand this argument more fully.) My Comments:
I think the book is great. Admittedly one could claim that the author is biased - perhaps she is a social democrat that hates capitalism and sees her efforts as a way of attacking capitalism. I guess that is a possibility. And it does lead to the one criticism I see in the book: Arlie Hochschild never openly states the perspective she brings to the table in exploring the ramifications of The Time Bind. At one point she does posit that children that are left home alone have a higher rate of drug and alcohol abuse than do kids that are not left home alone. So, I guess her bias does seep out through comments like that. But, for individuals that share her bias (which is probably most people), I think this book does a great job of illustrating that capitalism really does have some problems - one being the deemphasizing of the family and the focus on work instead. In this sense, I can't help but comment that perhaps Emile Durkheim, in claiming that the eventual dissolution of religious authority that lent solidarity to society would be replaced by the workplace, seems to find a home in The Time Bind. Overall, the book is very well-written and engaging. The findings are presented using specific people and their stories which makes the book more like a morally laden collection of stories. But the scholarship does not appear to be influenced by the plight of the individuals. And, the author does not write this book at a scholarly level and fill it with sociological jargon. The book should be readable by anyone. I would highly recommend it. Caveat:
There has been some follow up research done on Hocschild's theories about how the workplace has become more like home and vice versa. Most of the research says this isn't necessarily accurate. Though there could be some truth to this, the more likely cause of increased time spent working is due to managerial demands and more women working full time rather than people just wanting to be at work.
Rating: 
Summary: Some good insights but nothing real original.
Review: The basis of this book is great and the author has a terrific way with words but she loses the reader after about page 55, where she goes off into all sorts of liberal and unproven theories about modern family life. Her research was limited to one major American company and does not illuminate why there are so many problems in balancing work and family life.
Rating:
Summary: Despite what some people think, it's about home.
Review: The Time Bind is not about work. The reason that Hochschild uses so much work based data is because she wants to show that there is nothing at work in particular that makes us HAVE to be there. She talks about the horrible lack of support for young families that ends up making work more pleasant than home because at least at work parents are supported and know when they are doing the right thing or the wrong thing. (At home you never know if taking or not taking the lollipop from your 2-year-old will render them into raving loonies in 20 years.) The only time she really gets into how work itself contributes is when she says that many family friendly policies are an illusion or are believed to be an illusion by the workers. However, this book is not quite as clear as the Second Shift, which I thought was brilliant. It is also clarified by a knowledge of the Second Shift; it's easier to see the family orientation if you're familiar with her other work.
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Summary: An important examination of a self defeating paradigm
Review: The Time Bind was interesting in that it stops us long enough to examine the endless pressures that we believe are immutable. Ms Hochschild raises questions of how much pressure we may create for ourselves, how that is reinforced by the workplace and the economic, social, political climate that fosters it and the painful consequence of reduced quality of life. In attempting to raise our consciousness on this matter and to ask about our priorities we are invited to step briefly outside the current paradigm to consider saner possibilities. Since so many people seem so very dissatisfied, this can only be a good thing.
Rating: 
Summary: Arise, ye (female) prisoners of expoitation!
Review: This book is a worthwhile read more for its failings than for its substance, but it is definitely a worthwhile read for the failings alone. I saw Ms. Hochschild, a Berkeley sociologist, interviewed by David Gergen and found her recommendations at the end of the interview oddly "out of sync" with her prior comments about her study of the conflict between work and family life. Having gone on to a career as a human resource manager after graduating from Berkeley, however, I wanted to know more about the book for both personal and professional reasons. How disappointing it was! Perhaps the strongest point in the book is Ms. Hochschild's revelation of data showing a high degree of correlation between wealth/education and working women., i.e.: many women who work don't do so because they have to but because they want to. At this point, the reader is rightly anticipating a meaty development of the question of why women would feel so strongly that they have to work when the reality is that they simply want to work. For example, have "no fault" divorce laws made women more economically insecure? Have the more strident elements of the feminist movement made sacrifice for the sake of family socially and psychologically a "suckers choice"? Unfortunately, Ms. Hochschild's ideological bent prevents her from developing this in a professional way; her work suffers from it, and reader is left sorely disappointed. For example, she doesn't gather data from people who have chosen to leave the workplace, only from those who have chosen to stay --- as even sociologists at Berkeley used to say, "Where's the control group"? Accordingly (given the skewed data input and her ideological bent), her "analysis" of causality is curiously warped: its all management's fault for having introduced Total Quality Management (which gives employees more power over their work) as a machiavellian scheme to exploit them even further! Having watched and tried to help a number of women and men over the years as they struggled with the feminist lie that careers are more important than family, and having helped introduce TQM and other "enrichment" plans partly to help employees manage the conflict, I know this is a lie. There are numerous books out that provide practical and valuable guidance to men and women who are dealing with the work/family life conflict. This isn't one of them. Nor does it provide a sound foundation for the making of social policy. Alas, how the light from the "Athens of the West" dimmed
Rating:
Summary: good first 40 pages
Review: This book was good for the first 40 pages but that's it. Hochschild gets across the interesting truth that some Americans work and don't spend time with their families because work is a reprieve from the stress of home and family life. This is really the crux of the book; the rest is mainly filler. Hochschild doesn't provide much more insight or scientific rigor and support to these observations. I agree with the above reviewer that the writing is quite poor: convoluted; however, I wouldn't even give the writing the compliment of being novel-like. The writing is trite and character placements a headache.
Rating:
Summary: Ugh! Kill me!
Review: What can I say? Arlie Russell Hochschild says some interesting things about the state of the family unit in the 90s, but I just don't buy it. She writes pages and pages decrying capitalism and its corrupting influences after studying the employees at ONE COMPANY. If that seems credible enough for you, maybe you'll swallow this convuluted book. But even looking beyond her flawed argument, her writing style presents many problems. She writes not like she's presenting an intelligent sociological phenomenon, but like a novel already slated for the best seller list. And she provides case study after case study, in what looks like an attempt to bolster her thesis, but what turns out to be just boring. So try and skip chapters 5, 9, 10, 12, and 13. Actually, on second thought, just try and skip this book.
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