Regardless of the communication modality, my research in Australia found that women are more likely than men to value keeping in touch with relatives, with almost 90 percent of women saying that the landline is either “important” or “very important,” especially as a useful way of maintaining contact. The same gendered pattern holds for mobile phones and e-mails. This usage pattern also holds true for American women, who use landlines, mobile phones, e-mails and instant messaging more than men do.25 They also contact children more often than men, especially using landlines and mobile phones.
Interestingly, this overall configuration is consistent with the earlier literature on the gendering of the landline telephone. Such studies show that a feminine culture of “kinkeeping,” caring, and mutual support played a much more central part in women’s use of the landline than in men’s. As Lana Rakow reported from her American study of telephoning, women’s talk is a form of caregiving, gendered work that women do to hold together the fabric of the community, building and maintaining relationships.26 This emotional, or care, work is an aspect of intimacy underemphasized in mainstream writing on the family. Whether these gendered patterns are being incorporated into mobile phone usage is still an open question.
What is broadly accepted is that communication has become more central to intimate relationships. Anthony Giddens in particular argues that modern marriages and partnerships are based on a dialectic of mutual self-disclosure, a sharing of inner thoughts and feelings.27
Chapter six
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