Class advantage and the gender divide: flexibility on the job and at home.

Using a survey, interviews, and observations, the authors examine inequality in temporal flexibility at home and at work. They focus on four occupations to show that class advantage is deployed in the service of gendered notions of temporal flexibility while class disadvantage makes it difficult to obtain such flexibility. The class advantage of female nurses and male doctors enables them to obtain flexibility in their work hours; they use that flexibility in gendered ways: nurses to prioritize family and physicians to prioritize careers.

Future employment among homeless single mothers: the effects of full-time work experience and depressive symptomatology.

This study examines the relationship between work and depressive symptomatology for extremely destitute single mothers-mothers who have experienced an episode of homelessness. Using longitudinal data collected from 294 respondents who became homeless in 1992 and were followed for approximately two years, we find that a history of full-time work is the best predictor of whether a woman will find full-time employment in the aftermath of an episode of homelessness. Even an extensive history of part-time or informal work was not predictive of finding employment after leaving a homeless shelter.

Homeless mothers and depression: misdirected policy.

This paper is a critique of recent service-intensive shelter programs for homeless mothers and the policies that underlie these shelters. We first document the process by which mental health problems and family homelessness became so closely but mistakenly linked. We then demonstrate empirically that shelter programs for homeless families nonetheless presume that mental health problems are part of the causal nexus of family homelessness and indiscriminately deliver mental health services to homeless mothers.

Kinkeeping and friend keeping among older women: the effect of marriage.

Based on interviews with widows and wives, this article analyzes the effects of marriage and widowhood on older women's help to kin and friends. Although married women provide more help to kin than do widows, most of these differences can be explained in terms of the greater material resources marriage provides. In contrast, even controlling for other social characteristics, widows spend more time and give more practical help, in particular, to more friends than do wives.