Relative to gender, race, and class, age relations are undertheorized. Yet age, like gender, is routinely accomplished in daily life. Grandmothers and adult daughters simultaneously do age and gender as they support one another in managing paid work and domestic responsibilities. Drawing on ethnographic data and interviews with 90 single mothers and 30 grandmothers (babushki) in Russia, I explore intergenerational negotiations for support. Both single mothers and grandmothers are held accountable for doing gendered age, but labor and marriage markets tip the balance in favor of single mothers. Single mothers re-create youth privilege, finding their lives simpler with a babushka. Some grandmothers embrace newer discourses of femininity, challenging assumptions about age and family status that oblige them to perform care work. But most grandmothers do whatever they can to help daughters, feeling more dependent than ever on them because of the uncertainties of capitalism and the state’s retrenchment. I contribute to theories of age and gender intersectionality by making visible both single mothers’ youth privilege and grandmothers’ unpaid, often devalued, care work.
AfontsevS.KesslerG.MarkevichA.TyazhelnikovaV.ValetovT.2008. The urban household in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1900-2000: Patterns of family formation in a turbulent century. The History of the Family13: 178-194.
2.
AllenK. R.WalkerA. J.2006. Aging and gender in families: A very grand opening. In Age matters: Realigning feminist thinking, edited by CalasantiT.M.SlevinK.F.New York: Routledge.
3.
AlwinD. F.2002. Generations x, y, and z: Are they changing America?Contexts1 (4) 42-51.
4.
AshwinS., ed. 2000. Gender, state and society in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia. London: Routledge.
5.
AshwinS.LytkinaT.2004. Men in crisis in Russia: The role of domestic marginalization. Gender & Society18:189-206.
6.
BurawoyM.KrotovP.LytkinaT.2000. Involution and destitution in capitalist Russia: Russia’s gendered transition to capitalism. Ethnography1 (1) 43-65.
7.
CalasantiT.2003. Theorizing age relations. In The need for theory: Critical approaches to social gerontology, edited by BiggsS.LowensteinA.HendricksJ.Amityville, NY: Baywood.
8.
CalasantiT. M.SlevinK. F.2001. Gender, social inequalities, and aging. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
9.
CalasantiT. M.SlevinK. F., eds. 2006. Age matters: Re-aligning feminist thinking. New York: Routledge.
10.
CalasantiT.SlevinK. F.KingNeal. 2006. Ageism and feminism: From “et cetera” to center. NWSA Journal18 (1) 13-30.
11.
CaldwellM. L.2004. Not by bread alone: Social support in the New Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
12.
ClarkeS.2002. Making ends meet in contemporary Russia: Secondary employment, subsidiary agriculture and social networks. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
13.
ConnidisI. A.WalkerA. J.2009. (Re)visioning gender, age, and aging in families. In Handbook of feminist studies, edited by LloydS. A.FewA. L.AllenK. R.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
14.
Demographic Yearbook of Russia. 2010. Statistical Handbook/Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat). Moscow: Information and Publishing Centre, Statistics of Russia.
15.
DeVaultM. L.1991. Feeding the family: The social organization of caring as gendered work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
16.
EnglandP.2010. The gender revolution: Uneven and stalled. Gender & Society24:149-66.
17.
FerreeM. M.2010. Filling the glass: Gender perspectives on families. Journal of Marriage and Family72: 420-39.
18.
GalS.KligmanG.2000. The politics of gender after socialism: A comparative-historical essay. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
19.
GinnJ.ArberS.1995. “Only connect”: Gender relations and ageing. In Connecting gender and ageing: A sociological approach, edited by ArberS.GinnJ.Buckingham: Open University Press.
GurkoT. A.2008. Faktor kachestvennogo i kolichestvennogo vosproizvodstva naseleniia [Alimonies: A factor for qualitative and quantitative population reproduction]. Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniya34:110-20.
22.
HackstaffK. B.1999. Marriage in a culture of divorce. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
23.
HochschildA. R.MachungA.1989. The second shift. New York: Avon.
24.
HöjdestrandT.2009. Needed by nobody: Homelessness and humanness in Post-socialist Russia. Culture and society after socialism series, edited by GrantB.RiesN.Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
25.
KanjiS.2009. Age group conflict or cooperation? Children and pensioners in Russia in crisis. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy29:372-87.
26.
KanjiS.2010. Labor force participation, regional location, and economic well-being of single mothers in Russia. Journal of Family and Economic Issues. Published online, April27.
27.
KiblitskayaM.2000. Once we were kings: Male experiences of loss of status at work in post-communist Russia. In Gender, state and society in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, edited by AshwinS.London: Routledge.
28.
KingN.2006. The lengthening list of oppressions: Age relations and the feminist study of inequality. In Age matters: Realigning feminist thinking, edited by CalasantiT. M.SlevinK. F.New York: Routledge.
29.
KlugmanJ.MotivansA., eds. 2001. Single parents and child welfare in the New Russia. UNICEF. New York: Palgrave.
30.
KrekulaC.2007. The intersection of age and gender: Reworking gender theory and social gerontology. Current Sociology55:155-71.
31.
KrekulaC.2009. Age coding—On age-based practices of distinction. International Journal of Ageing and Later Life4 (2) 7-31.
LaRossaR.2005. Grounded theory methods and qualitative family research. Journal of Marriage and Family67:837-57.
34.
LedenevaA. V.1998. Russia’s economy of favours: Blat, networking and informal exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
35.
LokshinM.HarrisK. M.PopkinB. M.2000. Single mothers in Russia: Household strategies for coping with poverty. World Development28:2183-98.
36.
McMullinJ. A.1995. Theorizing age and gender relations. In Connecting gender and ageing: A sociological approach, edited by ArberS.GinnJ.Buckingham: Open University Press.
37.
McMullinJ. A.2000. Diversity and the state of sociological aging theory. The Gerontologist40:517-530.
38.
McMullinJ. A.BergerE. D.2006. Gendered ageism/age(ed) sexism: The case of unemployed older workers. In Age matters: Realigning feminist thinking, edited by CalasantiT. M.SlevinK. F.New York: Routledge.
39.
MooreV.A.2001. “Doing” racialized and gendered age to organize peer relations: Observing kids in summer camp. Gender and Society15:835-58.
40.
MoskoffW.1983. Divorce in the USSR. Journal of Marriage and the Family45:419-25.
41.
RidgewayC. L.CorrellS. J.2004. Unpacking the gender system: A theoretical perspective on gender beliefs and social relations. Gender & Society18:510-31.
42.
RismanB. J.2004. Gender as a social structure: Theory wrestling with activism. Gender & Society18:429-50.
43.
RotkirchA.2000. The man question: Loves and lives in late 20th century Russia. Helsinki: Department of Social Policy.
44.
RotkirchA.TemkinaA.ZdravomyslovaE.2007. Who helps the degraded housewife? Comments on Vladimir Putin’s demographic speech. European Journal of Women’s Studies14:349-57.
45.
ShevchenkoO.2009. Crisis and the everyday in Postsocialist Moscow. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
46.
SternheimerS.1985. The vanishing babushka: A roleless role for older soviet women?Current Perspectives on Aging and the Life Cycle1:315-33.
47.
TartakovskayaI.2000. The changing representation of gender roles in the Soviet and post-Soviet press. In Gender, state and society in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, edited by AshwinS.London: Routledge.
48.
TcherninaN. V.TcherninE. A.2002. Older people in Russia’s transitional society: Multiple deprivation and coping responses. Ageing and Society22:543-62.
49.
TeplovaT.2007. Welfare state transformation, childcare, and women’s work in Russia. Social Politics14:284-322.
50.
TemkinaA.2010. Childbearing and work-family balance among contemporary Russian women. Finnish Yearbook of Population ResearchXLV:83-101.
51.
UtrataJ.2008a. Keeping the bar low: Why Russia’s nonresident fathers accept narrow fatherhood ideals. Journal of Marriage and Family70:1297-1310.
52.
UtrataJ.2008b. Counting on motherhood, not men: Single mothers and social change in the New Russia. PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley.
WestC.ZimmermanD. H.2009. Accounting for doing gender. Gender & Society23:112-22.
56.
WilliamsJ.2000. Unbending gender: Why family and work conflict and what to do about it. New York: Oxford University Press.
57.
ZakharovS.2008. Russian federation: From the first to second demographic transition. Demographic Research19:907-72.
58.
ZdravomyslovaE.2010. Working mothers and nannies: Commercialization of childcare and modifications in the gender contract (a sociological essay). Anthropology of East Europe Review28:200-225.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
