The Families and Work project is sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and San José State University.  The Sloan Foundation is interested in learning about the impact of work on family life and the University is committed to understanding  the  lives of people in the Silicon Valley.  We have conducted a two-year study that explores dual income middle class families whose daily lives are shaped by the demands of work and career building.  How are such families affected by the intrusions of work?  How do they in turn try to manage those intrusions? 

Our fieldwork to date has consisted of numerous projects that have explored topics such as the incorporation of consumer electronics into households, the use of communications devices and media in the workplace, public understandings of technology and its role in daily life, and models of community and technology held by elite decision makers.  These projects ultimately resulted in Work, Identity, and Community in Silicon Valley (WICSV), funded by the National Science Foundation, the project that we have conducted over the past three years, in which most of you participated.  That interview-based project explores the relationships between work and family life.  We discovered that generalizations about the relationship of work and family are too simple. The specifics of work matter. Although there are general trends, such as the increased hours that many people work, the characteristics of industries, employers, jobs, and positions affect how such trends play out in specific families.  For example, some individuals that we have interviewed describe a work world of exceedingly long hours with little personal control over when they work.  Others speak of being able to spend more time at home, but they are subject to their employer’s demand for “accessibility” in case of a crisis at work.  For others, work may affect home life through a rigorous travel schedule, and for still others, it is the challenge of working across time zones that drives the daily rhythm of work.  All these interviewees speak globally of the intrusiveness of work, but their families are affected by very specific dimensions of work. 

The specifics of family life matter.  Some of our interviewees speak of the difficulties of raising children and how those difficulties change as the children grow older and are involved in different activities.  Some interviewees tell us of heated discussions where tired wage earners debate who is going to serve as parent to whom in particular situations.  Indeed, we have found that in families with two career builders, each one is typically reluctant to place constraints on the work habits of the other since the shoe may soon be on the other foot.  Values and assumptions regarding obligations at work and at home are significant, and they may be affected in complex ways by cultural backgrounds.  The Sloan Families and Work Project extended our previous research.  First, we concentrated on middle class families with two career builders.  Second, we used observation, not just interviewing.  And once again, we are using Silicon Valley as a site to explore issues of national concern. 

The project traced the connections between specific dimensions of work and family life.  It identifies (1) dimensions of work;  (2) how they affect family life; (3) the facets of family life that are affected; (4) the processes by which families manage the demands of work; and (5) how elements of family life are exported from home into the workplace.  The project paid special attention to the role of technology in mediating work/family relationships, as well as the significance of cultural variations in family backgrounds. 

Actual families are complex, shifting ecologies of practices that let some facets of work enter the family in some ways and keep other facets away.  For example, nightly family dinners are sacred for some of our interviewees, and they always go home for dinner, play and homework with their children.  Later, if necessary, they return to the workplace for a few more hours.  Other people work at home, but only on certain types of tasks such as reading human resources materials, answering E-mail, or writing performance reviews.  Still others cite their refusal to have a cellular phone in their car as evidence that they only work “at work,” but then they describe how they mentally rehearse their whole day during the morning commute.  It is the diverse ways that work and family connect and disconnect, and the diverse ways of managing these relationships that is notable in our interviewees’ lives.  It is this diversity that we capture in our project. 

Anthropologists are a notoriously contentious bunch, and a single perspective does not characterize the discipline.  However, anthropologists are often concerned about how the people themselves understand the demands of work and the obligations of family.  We  use traditional anthropological methods in doing the research.  We are committed to capturing the daily lives of the families through taking detailed field notes and informal interviews. We sought to describe events, situations, and interactions, and then to tease out how they are embedded in larger systems of meaning.  Observing the details of daily life and relationships are the hallmarks of anthropology, whether it is in the Amazon or Silicon Valley.

Living in the Eye of the Storm:
      Controlling the Maelstrom in Silicon Valley
               Darrah, C.N., English-Lueck, J.A., and 
               Freeman, J.M.