Review:
Career encounters with 'the third shift'
"The Third Shift: Managing Hard Choices in Our Careers, Homes, and Lives as Women"
By Michele Kremen Bolton
Jossey-Bass, 338 pages
Review by Larry Keller
CNN.com/career Senior Writer
(CNN) -- "In essence, every day is lived at least twice, like a videotaped instant replay that won't shut off."
After working all day and being attentive to families at night, many of the United States' weary and worried women then begin what author Michele Kremen Bolton calls "the third shift."
In "The Third Shift: Managing Hard Choices in Our Careers, Homes, and Lives as Women," Bolton describes this as reliving the day and agonizing over work-family issues, often being self-critical in the nagging thought that one's efforts at the office or at home weren't up to snuff.
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"The unstated subtext is that street-corner violence, adolescent drug and alcohol addiction, and even teen-age pregnancy would be lessened if mothers stayed at home and tended their blocks."
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— Michele Kremen Bolton, "The Third Shift"
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"I am struck again and again," Bolton writes, "by the many women whose lives remain dictated not by the much-publicized external glass ceiling of the workplace but by an internal glass ceiling of their own third shift."
It's a shift described as being psychologically rather than physically exhausting -- and Bolton's book is meant to help women cope.
Three challenges
In Bolton's view, there are three dilemmas women repeatedly face in the third shift:
• The identity challenge -- expressing yourself as you really are vs. trying to be someone others will accept. Example: A female airline pilot is ostracized by her peers but doesn't want to hang out with women co-workers, lest she be mistaken for a flight attendant.
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QUICK VOTE
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• The task challenge -- getting the job done vs. fretting about how others feel. Example: A fledgling entrepreneur sells her services much too cheaply because she's overly concerned about her relationship with her new client.
• The balance challenge -- spending time on your own achievements vs. being helpful to others. Example: A senior female executive with a first-rate resume and a fat pension doesn't have the husband and children she once hoped for.
The third shift is a subject in which Bolton is well-versed. She was on-faculty for nearly 20 years in the College of Business at San Jose State University in California. She's a founding partner of ExecutivEdge of Silicon Valley, an executive development and management consulting firm.
Most important, Bolton, with help from San Jose State graduate students, interviewed 117 women in the Silicon Valley area between 1994 and 1998 regarding work-family issues. Those interviews formed the basis of her theories in this book.
This could have been a dry, academic treatise, but Bolton wisely begins each chapter with a case study, in which women or composites of women whom she and her associates interviewed describe the work-life issues with which they grapple.
Third shift is on Venus
Bolton argues convincingly that most men don't have third-shift anxieties keeping them awake nights or diminishing their enjoyment of leisure time. She writes:
"American women are caught in the cultural schizophrenia of mutually exclusive expectations, facing increasing pressure (and opportunities) to assume increasingly active responsibility in the workplace, while at the same time encouraged to remain in traditional roles in a society hammered daily by haunting media exposes of neglected children. The unstated subtext is that street-corner violence, adolescent drug and alcohol addiction, and even teen-age pregnancy would be lessened if mothers stayed at home and tended their blocks. On the other hand, the second income of working women makes our consumer society hum."
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MESSAGE BOARD
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Are you living with a third shift? Or are you married to a woman who is? Do you agree with Michele Kremen Bolton that only women suffer from "third shift" anxiety about balancing work and homemaking?Tell us what you know.
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While studies show that many modern dads want to achieve a better balance between work and spending time with their kids, there's "no evidence," Bolton asserts, "that men are sharing the deeper, innerinner dilemma -- beyond work-family balance -- faced by women today."
Nor are men apt to understand the turmoil this dilemma causes women, Bolton says. "Many men don't care to be viscerally reminded of what they've given up to get to the top," Bolton writes. "Moreover, they are culturally conditioned to appear macho and decisive rather than vulnerable and reflective, and therefore reticent to take the time to ruminate about their choices, at least in public."
She goes on to cite a study in which 2 percent of male supervisors said they thought their female subordinates faced hardships because of their gender, while two-thirds of women reported such experiences.
Bolton says, however, that "The Third Shift" is no male-bashing broadside, and it isn't. She's more interested in helping women solve work-family conflicts than in assigning blame for them.
No easy outs
To her credit, Bolton doesn't offer the quick, painless fixes you find in some self-help books. Instead she suggests realistic solutions that require work on the part of the reader.
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Bolton argues convincingly that most men don't have third-shift anxieties keeping them awake nights or diminishing their enjoyment of leisure time. She says, however, that "The Third Shift" is no male-bashing broadside, and it isn't.
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Take the first of the challenges, she cites, that of maintaining one's identity. Among other things, Bolton says women need to consider making a "breakaway" from work in the form of a sabbatical, or at least vacation time away, even though they might rightly fear jeopardizing their career growth.
The idea is to examine what you want from work, and what changes you'd like to make. Too driven to even contemplate what questions to ask yourself? Bolton offers suggestions.
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Michele Kremen Bolton
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"It is senseless for women depleted from mental, emotional or physical exhaustion to delay their breakaway for too long, or naively assume that a vacation with the family or a few moments of quiet meditation substitutes for the real thing," she asserts.
For women grappling with this phenomenon, one of Bolton's tips is to "act as if" -- as if you know what you're doing, even if you're afraid you don't. She uses one of the women she interviewed -- all have been given pseudonyms -- to illustrate.
"Amy Rosen" doesn't pretend to know things she doesn't, Bolton writes. But manages her inner doubts by gathering data, asking questions, then moving forward and acting.
"She is often uncertain, but she realizes that reflection without visible action won't quiet her third shift," Bolton writes. "And it sure won't get the job done. So she acts as if."
As for the balance challenge, Bolton's advice includes finding other women with whom to share their third-shift concerns. This not only will ease their emotional burden, she writes, but also will help them gain some survival tips from women going through the same woes.
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