Hochschild, the best-selling author of The Second Shift, interviewed everyone from top executives to factory hands. What she found was startling news: none of these working parents was taking the company up on chances for flex-time, paternity leave, or other "family-friendly policies." Instead, they were fleeing homes invaded by the pressures of work, while the workplace seemed transformed into a strange kind of surrogate home. Hochschild paints a picture of spouses as efficiency experts, children as emotional bill-collectors, and parents who feel like helpful mentors mainly to their workmates. "An important, provocative, ground-breaking analysis" (Newsweek), The Time Bind exposes the rifts in our crunch-time world and reveals how the way we live and work isn't working anymore.

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