Content uploaded by Karla Bergen
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Karla Bergen on Mar 13, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
Women's narratives about commuter marriage: How women in commuter marriages account for and communicatively negotiate identities with members of their social networks
Abstract
Electronic text and images (PDF). Mode of access: World Wide Web. Title from title screen (site viewed on August 24, 2006). PDF text: v, 317 p. Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2006. Includes bibliographical references. UMI publication number: AAT 3208052.
... Sebuah pengaturan rumah tangga yang pada sebagian waktunya salah satu dari pasangan tinggal di dekat tempat kerjanya disebut dengan istilah commuter marriage. Menjaga rumah tangga tanpa bantuan atau dukungan dari pasangan dapat membuat ibu yang menjalani commuter marriage mengalami kelelahan fisik dan emosional (Bergen, 2006). Ketidakberadaan suami dalam keseharian ibu yang menjalani commuter marriage mungkin dapat mengakibatkan berkurangnya dukungan suami pada ibu. ...
... Pasangan yang tinggal terpisah ini bertemu kembali setiap jangka waktu tertentu. Pengaturan rumah tangga seperti ini disebut dengan istilah commuter marriage (Gerstel & Gross, 1982;Williams, Sawyer, & Wahlstrom, 2006;Bergen, 2006;Papalia, Olds, & Feldman, 2009). ...
... Menjaga rumah tangga tanpa bantuan atau dukungan dari pasangan dapat membuat ibu yang menjalani commuter marriage mengalami kelelahan fisik dan emosional (Bergen, 2006). Ketidakberadaan suami karena secara terus-menerus berpergian atau bekerja yang merupakan ciri-ciri dari commuter marriage, jika merujuk pada hasil penelitian Tsou (2010), ternyata merupakan salah satu indikator pernikahan yang dianggap negatif oleh para ibu. ...
Skripsi, Januari 2013.
Sebuah pengaturan rumah tangga yang pada sebagian waktunya salah satu dari pasangan tinggal di dekat tempat kerjanya disebut dengan istilah commuter marriage. Ketidakberadaan suami dalam keseharian ibu yang menjalani commuter marriage mungkin dapat mengakibatkan berkurangnya dukungan suami pada ibu. Penelitian ini dilakukan untuk melihat perbedaan parenting self-efficacy pada ibu dengan commuter marriage dan ibu yang tinggal dengan suaminya.
... Others often view commuter marriage with suspicion because spouses violate the normative assumption that married couples live together (e.g., Bergen, 2006;Rhodes, 2002). Given the commonsense notion that most people marry to be "together," others may wonder why a happily married couple would choose to live apart. ...
... Specifically, researchers have suggested that because commuter marriages are unconventional and challenge cultural norms for married couples, they are more prone to disapproval from network members (e.g., Gerstel & Gross, 1984;Stafford, 2005). Bergen (2006) found commuter wives reported others expressed sympathy for their family and had numerous questions about the marital relationship, reflecting the cultural expectations that husbands and children needed a mother and wife in the home to cook, clean, and manage their day-to-day care. ...
... Messages that question the decision of wives to commute are often based on traditional cultural expectations for wives that center on caring for husband, children, and home (Bergen, 2006;Kingston, 2004). Kingston (2004) noted wives are expected to provide "domestic backup and emotional support" (p. ...
This interpretive study focused on messages reported by commuter wives from social network members concerning unpaid family labor, including domestic work and relational work with spouses and children, and wives' subsequent communication about the accomplishment of such labor within their marriages and families. We conducted a thematic analysis of interview transcripts with commuting wives from five focus groups (n = 25) and 50 individual interviews through the lens of gendered role expectations. We found commuter wives received messages from social network members portraying men as incapable of family labor and expressing traditional gendered expectations for wives to perform caregiving. Commuting wives discussed how they and their families implemented several strategies for accomplishing the domestic chores of family labor. In addition, many couples needed to negotiate new strategies for relational maintenance, and communication emerged as a discrete form of caregiving labor. In spite of the fact that these wives were resisting cultural expectations for married women by commuting to pursue their own careers, the findings of this study illustrate tensions in the (re)production of traditional gendered expectations for unpaid family labor for commuter wives.
... All of the aforementioned relational contexts have been studied in regard to both how families present their identities to others (external identity) and how families discursively construct their own family identity (internal identity). Bergen and colleagues' previous research (Bergen, 2006(Bergen, , 2010a(Bergen, , 2010bBergen, Kirby, & McBride, 2007) has primarily focused on how commuting spouses construct and negotiate their marital identities with others (i.e., external identity); less attention has been given to how the marital partners themselves discursively construct their relationship (i.e., internal identity). ...
... The notion that commuter marriages are considered nonnormative by commuter spouses themselves has been documented in previous research. Participants in Bergen's (2006Bergen's ( , 2010a study clearly used the dominant culture's frame of reference when describing their commuter marriages as ''weird,'' ''unusual,'' ''out of the box,'' and ''not normal,'' during research interviews, buttressing Jehn et al.'s (1997) assessment of commuter marriage as an oxymoron. In sum, previous research has explored how spouses try to make their commuter marriage intelligible to others. ...
The goal of the present study was to examine the sites of discursive struggle in the talk of
commuter wives and how the interpenetration of discourses construct meaning for
those in the commuter marriage. Fifty individual interviews were analyzed using contrapuntal
analysis to examine competing discourses. From our analysis, two sites of
discursive struggle emerged from the talk of commuter wives about their marital relationships:
(a) discursive struggles of integration and (b) discursive struggles of conventionality.
The voices of these participants responded to and anticipated both distal
(cultural) and proximal (relational) discourses along the utterance chain constructing
meaning around what it meant to be in a commuter marriage. Additionally, these data
provided theoretical expansion in highlighting the understudied aspects of the distal notyet-
spoken in meaning construction surrounding relationships.
... Commuter wives recognize they do not fit the norm (Bergen, 2006). To reconcile the difference between the master narrative and their own marriages, these women must make sense of that difference. ...
... These justifications suggest that husbands are not harmed by wives' absence. Bergen (2006) found that both commuter wives and their husbands received expressions of sympathy for the husband and interpreted these messages as perceptions that husbands were lonely or suffered from wives' absence. Accounting for the difference from the master narrative of marriage, commuter wives explained their husbands were not harmed by the commuting arrangement, and in fact, often viewed the time apart as a benefit. ...
This study investigated interactions between commuter wives and their social networks. Five focus groups involving 25 women provided insight into interactions of women in commuter marriages with members of their social networks. The focus-group findings provided the basis for individually interviewing 50 women in commuter marriages. Using interpretive thematic analysis, results revealed that questions were the most common type of message commuter wives reported receiving from others. Question content involved (a) requests for general and logistical information, (b) determination of the reasons for the commuting arrangement, and (c) negative evaluations of commuter marriages. These findings support the interpretation that the term “commuter wife” represents a socially unintelligible identity to many social network members; for women, being a commuting professional and being a wife are incongruent. This study advances our understanding of how individuals in this context negotiate an unconventional identity in social interaction.
This manuscript is one of many in a special issue of the Journal of Applied Communication Research on “Communication and Distance,” Volume 38, No. 1. The purpose of this paper was to examine how, if at all, commuter wives reference the master narrative of marriage in discussing their own marriages. The personal narratives of 25 commuter wives who participated in focus groups and 49 commuter wives who participated in individual interviews were recorded and transcribed. Thematic analysis of the transcripts in the interpretive tradition found that participants used “accounts” in the form of excuses and justifications to explain the difference of their own marriages from the dominant US master narrative of marriage.
Historically, ethnography of communication has viewed participant observation as the central and necessary methodological point of departure for any ethnographic endeavor. However, as this article illustrates, this becomes problematic when particular topics of inquiry do not provide ample opportunities for observation. After struggles to participant observe conversations on women's marital naming practices, I was able to research this topic and produce participant observation-like understandings after I incorporated focus groups into my methods. Based upon these experiences and study, this article urges ethnography of communication scholars to step outside their traditional methodological practices, when necessary, and integrate the focus group method into their research protocols.
This analytic monograph lays out a constructionist approach to family as a social form. From its consideration as a phenomenological object , to its everyday usages, and its organizational embeddedness, the form is provided a conceptual framework for empirical investigation.
