“Stress That I Don't Need”: Gender Expectations and Relationship Struggles Among the Poor

• Published date: 01 June 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12387
• Author: Jennifer Sherman
• Date: 01 June 2017

J S Washington State University

“Stress That I Don’t Need”: Gender Expectations

and Relationship Struggles Among the Poor

Based on 55 qualitative interviews, this article

looks in depth at the ways in which gendered

expectations impact heterosexual romantic rela-

tionships among low-income and poor adults

in a small, western U.S. city. It nds that con-

tradictory understandings regarding meanings

and responsibilities associated with masculinity

and femininity present challenges to the forma-

tion and sustaining of committed relationships.

Although men desired to be providers and heads

of household with limited household responsibil-

ities, women wanted men with traditional work

ethics but egalitarian perspectives on sharing

both income generation and home and family

responsibilities. Participants’ unrealistic and

conicting gendered relationship expectations

combined with economic concerns and social

problems associated with economic strain to

contribute to relationship tensions and wariness

toward romantic involvements.

I have had men— [sighs] all my life and I’m just

like done. I’m done. Sheesh. Sheesh. I’m gettin’

too old for this, Dr. Sherman, I’m gettin’ too old.

Gettin’ too old to take care of men now.I’m gonna

take care a’ me.

–Rhonda Jackson, 51-year-old Black and Latina

careworker and separated mother of two

Department of Sociology, WashingtonState University,

P.O.Box 644020, Pullman, WA 99164–4020

(jennifer_sherman@wsu.edu).

Key Words: family,gender, poverty, relationships.

I met Rhonda Jackson (all names are

pseudonyms) in June 2011 for an interview

in her quiet, meticulously maintained apartment

in Section 8 housing. Scented candles perfumed

the air as she told me of her difcult life, lled

with low-wage work, troubled relationships,

drug and alcohol addictions, and failed attempts

at recovery. The tranquility of her sparse living

room contrasted disconcertingly with the chaotic

life she described. Rhonda’s troubles began in

her 20s, when a boyfriend introduced her to

crack cocaine. Since then, Rhonda had been

married and divorced, had two children, and

later remarried, all with men who were involved

with drugs. Now 90 days sober, she had recently

separated from her husband, a farm worker who

was also sober now. She appreciated his work

ethic, but she struggled with his controlling

behaviors. Rhonda worried that she would

struggle to stay clean without him in her life, yet

she was looking forward to being alone too. She

assured me that she would not pursue another

relationship, explaining, “When you have a

signicant other, you gotta concentrate on them,

them, them, them, them! I wanna have a lot of

time for me!” She went on to tell me, “I’m tired.”

Rhonda’s story was only slightly more dra-

matic than average among the low-income and

poor adults with whom I spoke in “Riverway,”a

sprawling small city in eastern Washington. The

majority of both men and women in my inter-

view sample had experienced some combination

of personal struggles, including drug and alco-

hol addictions and physical and sexual abuse.

For many, romantic partners had been a source

of or contributor to these problems. Many,

Journal of Marriage and Family 79 (June 2017): 657–674 657

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12387

658 Journal of Marriage and Family

similar to Rhonda, saw relationships as a burden

and confessed to wariness regarding romantic

involvements. A number told me that they

preferred to be on their own for now and were

not looking for romantic partners. Although not

all were ready to give up entirely, both men

and women struggled to nd the right balance

between companionship and complication,

and participants of both genders approached

relationships with reservations and caution.

Beyond the troubles that relationships had

created or exacerbated for many participants,

their concerns often also stemmed from fears

that they themselves or their partners would

fail to live up to their multiple, and at times

conicting, expectations. Men and women held

unrealistic and deeply gendered expectations of

themselves and their partners with regard to rela-

tionship responsibilities, including income gen-

erating, providing, parenting, and housework.

Their expectations, which echoed those held by

many middle-class adults, found little support

from the local labor market, which saddled both

men and women with low wages, insecure work,

and unpredictable working hours. Yetwhen they

or their partners failed to live up to expectations,

many grew frustrated with relationships, feeling

similar to Rhonda, “tired” of the burden of caring

for another person. Afraid of either becoming a

burden or having to care for a dependent partner,

often in addition to dependent children, many

questioned the value of romantic relationships.

This research, based on qualitative inter-

views with low-income and poor adults in

the wake of the Great Recession, looks at the

interaction between economic stress, labor

market constraints, and gendered expectations

with regard to work and family responsibilities

within relationships. Participants across age

groups repeatedly described conicts between

expectations and realities, which in addition

to social problems associated with poverty

presented numerous challenges to romantic

involvements. Men and women alike expressed

frustration and described conicts that strained

existing relationships and made them wary

about future relationships. In this article, I go

beyond previous studies of low-income and

poor families to investigate the impacts of

mundane gender conicts on romantic cou-

ples, documenting their struggles to nd or

be partners who can share home and nancial

responsibilities in gender-idealized ways, which

result in daunting challenges to couples that

compound other problems associated with

poverty, unemployment, and underemployment.

B

A broad literature has for decades documented

the ways in which changing gender expectations

and resulting conicts plague middle-class

family life. A great deal of research during

the past quarter century has looked at impacts

of changing economic conditions, including

deindustrialization and the erosion of the living

wage, on middle-income, two-parent fami-

lies (Bianchi, 1995; Bianchi & Milkie, 2010;

Coontz, 1992; Gerson, 2011; Hochschild,

1989; Silva, 2013). These structural forces

have pushed U.S. women into the workforce,

making two earners a necessity for many fam-

ilies (Cherlin, 2010; Cherlin, Burton, Hurt, &

Purvin, 2004). Much research has looked at the

repercussions of these trends for middle-class

families, including tensions between desires for

equality versus “tradition” within heterosexual

couples and mismatches between men’s and

women’s gender ideals (Bianchi & Milkie,

2010; Cotter, Hermsen, & Vanneman, 2011;

England, 2010; Gerson, 2011; Goldberg et al.,

2012; Goldscheider & Waite, 1991).

Hochschild’s (1989) groundbreaking study of

working two-parent families found that women

tended to desire more egalitarian sharing of

home and work life than their husbands, who

preferred more traditional arrangements. She

documented a number of outcomes of this con-

ict in gender ideologies, including unresolved

tensions, marital breakup, devaluation of home,

and care work and women’s acquiescence and

de-emphasis of their careers (Hochschild, 1989).

Numerous subsequent studies continue to look

at these issues, most nding that although men

have increased their share of household work

substantially, women still carry a disproportion-

ate burden (Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, & Robinson,

2000; England, 2010; Milkie, Raley, & Bianchi,

2009; Moen & Yu, 2000; Sullivan, 2006) and

that “gender segregation of tasks continues, with

wives performing the ‘core,’ traditionally femi-

nine tasks to a large degree and men concentrat-

ing their household labor on other, more episodic

or discretionary tasks” (Bianchi et al., 2000,

p. 209). Outcomes of this continued inequity

include stress for women (Moen & Yu, 2000)

as well as marital stress and divorce for couples

(Cooke, 2006; DeMaris, 2007; Taylor, Funk,