The Outsourced Self

Starred review from February 27, 2012
It used to take a village, but these days it takes a full-service mall, much of it in cyberspace. Finding a mate, planning a wedding, potty-training a child, or being a better father—once intuitive, ordinary tasks involving family, friends, and neighbors—now require the services of paid experts, trainers, and a plethora of coaches, such as Internet dating coach Evan Katz, aka e-Cyrano, or Family360, which teaches executives to “invest time and attention in ‘high leverage’ family activities.” Incisive, provocative, and often downright entertaining, U.C. Berkeley sociologist Hochschild (The Second Shift) compares Turner, Maine—the self-sufficient farming village where she spent summers as a child—with the global marketplace, where it’s possible to outsource burials at sea. Hochschild’s most compelling chapters center on surrogate motherhood: at India’s Akanksha Clinic (the world’s largest group of commercial surrogates), surrogates are instructed to think of their wombs as “carriers, bags, suitcases, something exterior to themselves,” and are forbidden to breast feed the babies they’re paid to carry for strangers. Hochschild makes the trenchant observation that many pressing for a greater expansion of the free market, gutting of regulations, and cuts in social services are the same people who call for stronger family values, perhaps unaware of the way the market distorts them. Agent: Georges Borchardt, Georges Borchardt, Inc.

March 15, 2012
An eminent sociologist explores how service-for-pay is replacing the support of family members, friends and neighbors, and how this shift is impacting lives. Hochschild (Sociology/Univ. of California, Berkeley; The Commercialization of Intimate Life, 2003, etc.) approaches her subject from three directions: her personal experience, the stories of providers of an array of services and the stories of people who sought their services. Some of the services, such as child care, have been around for a long time; others, such as online dating and wedding planning, are more recent inventions. The author examines every stage of life, from birth to death. Hochschild interviewed women who act as surrogate mothers for infertile couples, as well as those who hire others to bear children for them; she talked to a man who has made a business of scattering the ashes of the dead. She also looks at people who help women select a wedding gown, help a couple choose a baby's name and teach a man how to become a better father. There are even "rent-a-friend" services. Perhaps the most surprising service that she uncovered is that of a wantologist, who "helps you name your goals." Hochschild's personal story, which she returns to from time to time, is a far more common one--that of trying to find the right care for an elderly ailing relative. The book, chock-full of quotes from the numerous people she interviewed, has a casual and at times almost gossipy feel, and the author gives short shrift to what all this means and how we are dealing with it. Anecdote-rich, analysis-poor--more a series of snapshots than sociological study.

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November 15, 2011

As evidenced by highly regarded books like The Second Shift and The Time Bind, distinguished sociologist Hochschild always manages to catch the zeitgeist. Now, in her first big book in 15 years, she considers how market forces have intruded into our private lives. Sobering reading that echoes Michael J. Sandel's urgent message in What Money Can't Buy. But buy this.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2012
In her best-selling books The Time Bind (1997) and The Second Shift (1989), Hochschild examined how working mothers and two-income families balanced their home lives with the demands of holding down a career. Here she takes a look at personal life in the Internet age, where the trend is to reach for market services to fulfill needs traditionally met by family, friends, and the community. From online dating services to RentAFriend.com, where members pay $24.95 a month to review prospective friends, our basic capacity to develop personal relationships is being commoditized and outsourced. Hochschild examines the effect of market forces on marriage, child rearing, counseling, caregiving, and even death, where large, national funeral homes are supplanting traditional, local funeral parlors with a more consumer-based approach. This is a thoughtful exercise in taking stock of the aspects of life that get devalued in a culture that promotes the belief that the market can do no wrong. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)