Bend to avoid breaking: Job loss, gender norms, and family stability in rural America

Abstract

Using ethnographic and interview data, this article explores how labor market transformations affect gender norms and family life in a rural community that has historically been tied to a single industry. It argues that the gender strategies pursued by couples heavily impact their relationships and families. Flexibility with regard to gender norms is key to creating stable relationships in a context of labor market change that threatens the existing gender order. For couples that are tied rigidly to traditional breadwinner/homemaker gender roles, men's inabilities to be the sole providers create marital and family tensions. On the other hand, couples in which men are able to refocus their conceptions of masculinity on more attainable goals such as active parenting experience less strife and more satisfaction. The research finds that rural men are more flexible with regard to masculine identity than found by previous scholars, particularly with regard to conceptions of fatherhood. The article explores in depth the processes and discourses that facilitate flexible gender identities in this conservative rural community. © 2009 by Society for the Study of Social Problems, Inc.