A01=Mirra Komarovsky
Author_Mirra Komarovsky
Category=JBFC
Category=JBSF2
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eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Product details
- ISBN 9780759107311
- Weight: 426g
- Dimensions: 164 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 22 Oct 2004
- Publisher: AltaMira Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In The Unemployed Man and His Family, noted sociologist and feminist Mirra Komarovsky poses the question: what happens to the authority of the male head of the family when he fails as a provider? Between 1935 and 1936, Komarovsky interviewed 59 families in 1935-36 in which the male had been unemployed for at least a year. Interestingly, in many cases, the husband's struggle in the economic sphere did not offset the solidity and happiness of the marital relationship. But unemployment seems to have affected the men's sense of their own position as head of household and providers. For one thing, it undermined their sense of themselves as breadwinners. Most found it unbearably humiliating to accept relief. Perhaps her most important finding—which still resonates today—was that those men who thought of themselves exclusively as providers suffered far more than those who had developed alternative identities as father and husband.
Mirra Komarovsky was professor emeritus of sociology at Barnard College and Past-President of the American Sociological Association. Michael S. Kimmel teaches at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
