Coping with capitalism: Gender and the transformation of work-family conflicts in former East Germany

This dissertation analyzes how the stratification processes and social values of contemporary market society create obstacles to combining work and family, especially for women. It is based on examination of the transition from East German state socialism to West German welfare capitalism and how it changed work-family conflicts for typical East German families. It contributes to our knowledge of postsocialist transitions and develops a model of how work-family conflicts are embedded in broader contexts of social hierarchy. For this study, in-depth interviews covering changes in work and family were conducted with more than 80 East German parents four years after East and West Germany were unified.; The unique situation of German unification revealed processes which remain part of the almost invisible background of everyday life in more ordinary times. As state socialism collapsed and the new, capitalist labor and consumer markets began to emerge, changed modes of social stratification resulted in new experiences of work and family activities. Men and women began to construct new meanings for work and family roles and the conflicts between them within the context of emerging social hierarchies based on occupational status and income.; This dissertation goes beyond quantitative indicators of social change and reveals the human face of economic transition. It shows how changes in the workplace and marketplace after German unification resulted in pervasive experiences of increased social stratification, decreased social solidarity, and the overwhelming power of money. Because capitalist conditions simultaneously increased the desirability and the difficulty of succeeding at work, and posed family responsibilities as obstacles to success, these processes sharpened the conflict between work and family in everyday life and highlighted gender as a mechanism of stratification. Analysis of how particular couples responded to these changes as they grappled with practical problems of combining work and family vividly conveys the micro-level ramifications of economic transition. The specific findings illustrate the general point that contexts of social hierarchy are constitutive elements of work-family conflicts because processes of meaning and identity construction involved in work and family roles refer to social hierarchies which extend beyond the family and the workplace.