ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses central features of the women's work in their families, and considers the loss of loved ones, the impact of these losses on the women's lives, and their responses to these losses. Pregnancy signaled the end of most women's employment lives, at least until their children were grown. Women's educational level, childbearing history, and social class influenced their work histories. Men have power over the public world of work; women have control over the private world of home and family. Women's involvement with home and family reveals a dimension of their lives popularly obscured from public appreciation: their work of caring. Women's work for home and family-the work of caring-is, decidedly, work. Some of the work of women is emotional work, for example, calming a frightened child or helping a husband deal with defeat and insecurity, and emotions are suspect in our philosophical and cultural traditions.
