Conclusion
This chapter has considered a range of arguments about the nature and causes of time pressure, an issue made all the more important by the centrality of time sovereignty to equality and social justice. We have seen that time is multidimensional and is experienced diferently by diverse groups of people in modern societies. Extensive analysis of time-use research does not reveal straightforward patterns or causal connections. Rather, it shows that to fully account for the time-pressure paradox, a complex interplay of demographic and economic factors needs to be considered. Key to this are the major repercussions that women’s entry into the labor market and the rise of dual-earner families have had for how households are organizing their time.
Acceleration as a phenomenon, then, cannot be understood as a uniform experience of the shortage of time. The many people who are highly time stressed have combinations of characteristics—they have full-time hours of market work, they have family responsibilities, and they are women. Time pressure tends to be especially acute for women whose time is disproportionately constrained by domestic responsibilities. And this is in a context where more and more value is placed on “quality time” with children. Mothers cope by combining leisure time with looking after children, making women’s leisure time less leisurely than men’s.
Such multitasking, or intensive use of time, exposes the limits of conceptualizing time pressure solely in terms of the volume or duration of (clock) time available. That is why I have emphasized the character of time by looking at issues of temporal disorganization and temporal density. Time scarcity may result not so much from a shortage of time but because of the increasing complexity of scheduling personal, domestic, and work activities. Taking this approach reveals that the experience of harriedness is not uniform, but takes a variety of forms. Time pressure may be experienced by employed lone mothers, by two-job parent families who work shifts, and by dual-career managerial or professional couples, but the sense of time squeeze and the mechanisms causing it difer. The extent to which money can be deployed to alleviate time pressure also difers between these groups.
Chapter three
82