The tumbleweed society : working and caring in an age of insecurity / Allison J. Pugh.

"Drawing on 80 in-depth interviews with three groups of parents (mostly women) who vary in their experiences of job insecurity, Pugh explores how people adapt to the new American landscape of uncertainty and insecurity--some with cool acceptance, others with denial or pragmatism, and still others with astounding altruism and over-commitment. She observes that many workers today adopt what she calls the "one-way honor system." Faced with perpetual insecurity both at work and at home, Pugh finds that people defensively construct stronger and thicker walls between the two, expecting little or nothing from their jobs and placing nearly all of their expectations for enduring and fulfilling connections on their intimate relationships. This trend, she argues, often has the effect of making individuals' intimate lives, in which some invest so much in an effort to countervail the insecurity of work, in fact more fraught, reproducing the very "tumbleweed" dynamics they seek to check. By examining how we adapt ourselves, and prepare our children, for a new environment of uncertainty, Pugh gives us a finely detailed rendering of what "commitment" now means and how we still try to find it"-- Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Machine generated contents note: -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: Managing the Unrequited Contract -- Chapter 3: New Economy Winners and the Moral Wall -- Chapter 4: The Imperative of Detachment -- Chapter 5: The Knots of Duty -- Chapter 6: The Giving Trees -- Chapter 7: The Stable Oasis -- Chapter 8: Duty and the Flexible Child -- Chapter 9: The Coral Society -- Epilogue -- Appendix A: Commitment Talk -- Acknowledgements -- Endnotes -- Bibliography -- Index.