Nor'easter Research Profile: Surviving the Changes-
Families Respond to
Fisheries Managementby Helen Mederer
Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
University of Rhode Island
To be a successful commercial fisherman demands a lot from a fisherman and his family. Fishing is physically demanding, dangerous, unpredictable, and isolating. The job leads toward a strong commitment to fishing beyond an activity traded for a paycheck, and to strong identification as a fisherman. It is a vocation that typifies the American ethic of hard work leading to high rewards. These characteristics of the occupation also require a particular way of organizing families, one involving separate lives of sea-based fishermen and their shore-based wives and children. Commercial fishing, it often has been said, constitutes a "way of life" for New England fishermen, their families, and communities.
Until fishery management measures were enacted, this way of life was workable and rewarding. Now, with increasing regulation, irrevocable changes are occurring in commercial fishing. Some fishing families will not survive these changes, while the survivors will find their identities and family lives profoundly altered. This article, based on a two-year study of a small group of fishing families in New England, discusses some of the effects of the transformation of the fishing industry on family life, and offers some ideas about how families respond to changes. This Sea Grant-sponsored study illustrates how the problem of dangerously declining fish stocks is not only biological in nature, but social as well.
Commercial Fishing as a Way of Life
It has been well established in numerous social science studies that fishing is more than a job; it is an identity and a lifestyle as well. It is this identity and lifestyle that fishermen value above all. In her interviews of New England fishermen, Madeleine Hall-Arber, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sea Grant marine advisor, found that this "way of life" seems to keep people fishing despite the long hours of hard work and uncertain financial reward. Her work describes the myriad types of independence and freedom, the strong egalitarian ethic, and the sense of community that constitute the fishing life. It is in this tradition that the present research attempts to describe family life of commercial fishermen and how and why the lifestyle is difficult to change.
There is a wealth of information in the scientific literature on commercial fishing families. Most of this research has examined the effects of father-absence on family interaction and power. These studies show that fishing families usually rely on a gender-defined division of labor, with husbands as main breadwinners and wives as full-time homemakers, and with men having limited power and roles when on land. Even today, with change in the fishing conditions a constant reality, daily life in fishing families involves clearly separate roles, with women dominating family life and men dominating work life. Few wives perform any direct fishing roles. Few husbands do housework. This arrangement creates independent lives for men on one hand, and for women and children on the other.
In my research in three major New England fishing ports, I interviewed separately approximately 30 fishermen and their wives about the details of family life in order to gain insight about how fishing family life was organized, and how it was changing. I found ample evidence of separate lives. For instance, one fisherman's wife simply said, "We like him being gone." Most interviewed wives answered quickly when I asked, "What's normal family life to you - when he's gone, or when he's home?" For the vast majority, "normal" family life occurs when the fisherman is at sea, and his periodic homecomings interrupt, for better or for worse, the normal rhythms of family life.
The interviews I conducted show that in order for families to function capably while the fisherman is gone, they develop family "strategies," including separation of family tasks, and independence in personality and behavior. These family adaptations to the occupation allow fishermen somewhat limited participation in the family while they are on land and keep wives economically dependent on husbands. But they also constitute an intricate and effective coping strategy that characterizes most fishing families. For instance, one wife commented:
"To tell you the truth, if he worked 9 to 5, I would probably kill him! I hate when he is home. If he takes regular time off, that's fine, anything beyond that, everyone just drives each other crazy. The kids will say, 'It's time to leave!'. You find yourself sitting, not being occupied, and every little thing is fidgety. My husband's family, they say, 'I don't know how you do it,' and I say, 'I love it.' There are some nights I can do whatever I want. If I want to sew, I don't have to stop at 3 o'clock and pick it up [to] make supper. I can sit right there and keep on going. I do my thing, the kids do their things, and he fishes."
Another wife said:
"I don't need somebody else here to make everything all right. One of my first questions when he comes in is when are you going fishing again, because he has come in and invaded my territory. We have to eat at a certain time, we have to do this. It's always WE. And then he's out the door, and you sort of relax. Because it's not hectic all of a sudden."
This wife commented on the adjustment to separate lives:
"When you first get involved [with a fisherman], there is a tremendous transition of learning how to live without a spouse around. But once you get through this adjustment, being married to someone who is home every night would be tremendously difficult; you've gotten yourself to the point of being very self-sufficient and independent."
Later, the same wife noted:
"When they are in, there is extra supper and more laundry. It's like leading a dual life. You have to almost flip, you're independent, and then you play a game; they want to feel involved and be involved, but yet, [I can handle it myself.]"
Another wife spoke eloquently of the realization of separate lives:
"He was tied up at home all winter. And that was a real difficult adjustment. It was funny, because the kids would look at him and say, 'That's not the way we do things around here, Dad.' And, I think it really hit him how much of a life we had built without him. And we went about our routine, and he met friends of the children that he didn't know. I mean there's no way we can convey to him what's happened in five days."
The interviews suggest to me that in order to be excluded from family life in such an evident way, fishermen's strong commitment to fishing is necessary. For instance, one fisherman said:
"I usually spend only one night at home, the boat is what your life revolves around. Most of us, our lives revolve around the home; my life revolves around the boat, you never get away from it, you just come home to visit. What happens is that fishing gets in your blood because you're away from all of this. You just come home to visit. [You're] either a fisherman, or [you're] part of society."
Another interviewed fisherman, when asked about his involvement in housework and home renovation, said:
"I left it up to her. After all, she lived there. I came there, but she lived there."
A wife described her husband's dedication to fishing versus family:
"Fishing can be a complete and total preoccupation, where everything centers around that. He adores the kids, but he doesn't do much with them. You kind of have to push him in that direction; it's not something that comes naturally to him. You're taking him away from what he wants to think about, which is fishing. There's never any real enthusiasm for mentally just getting away from fishing ."
Yet, some families took direct steps to keep the fisherman involved in family life. One wife commented:
"When he is home, it is a little bit different, because we would try and have time with him, where if we had plans, we would change our plans to do something with Dad. We would make sure we made room for him in the family when he came back; he has been determined to be more a part of the family."
Another wife spoke of an additional strategy:
"I used to keep a log when the kids were little of what they did, and when he was on the boat, he didn't even have TV or hear the news or anything, so I'd write down big things that happened. That was just a way of me trying to keep him abreast of things that were going on. We talk about everything when he comes in, and I talk about things that are coming up. And I've always tried to involve him."
Another element in the separate lives strategy is economic reliance on husbands. Wives report feeling strongly that they need to "be there" for children, and that breadwinning is not their responsibility. Yet, they realize their financial dependence. For instance:
"I don't work, and I resent that sometimes. I keep thinking I should go out and get a job, and then I think, I have a job, do I need to? I don't get paid for this, a weekly paycheck. On the other hand, if I want anything I can have it. He's always very generous. I sometimes resent saying, 'He's very generous with his money,' and then I have to correct myself and say, 'It's not his, it's ours.' Because I feel that I have a full-time job. I think I do have to rely on his income. That's one thing I don't want my daughter to have to do. I'm not self-sufficient."
A fisherman graphically described this separation of roles in fishing families:
"My whole philosophy of suburbia is, you ought to put a big fence around it, and men ought to come alongside and throw money over the side and go back where they belong."
This segregation of roles has been possible until now because of the relatively high incomes of fishermen over the last 15 years. As regulation of the industry continues, husbands and fathers are home more often, with either no paycheck or a paycheck that reflects a decreased ability to perform their main - and often only - family role. Men thus are losing their "ticket" into family life and upsetting the balance of work and family, forcing a change in the rhythm of "normal" family life.
To survive in fishing, or to make a transition out of fishing into another job, families' hard-won organization will have to change to accommodate to the changed conditions of work. The present study shows that some families are willing and able to change and some are not. My interviews found two distinct types of adaptation: The first type, utilized by most families, is behavioral strategies, such as postponing major purchases, utilizing savings, and going into debt. The usefulness of these behavioral strategies in coping with change varies. Certainly, using savings and postponing major purchases is a more effective way of coping than is going into debt. The ability of families to utilize behavioral strategies is dependent upon their understanding of budgeting and their past ability to save. The second type of adaptation I've labeled psychic strategies, in which successful coping with change includes fishermen's ability to modify their old identities as fishermen, spouses' abilities to share roles, and families holding less traditional attitudes toward gender and family. Utilizing these psychic strategies leaves fishing families better equipped to adapt their lives to the new circumstances.
Adaptable Families
The ability to share roles is somewhat rare in fishing families. Decreased control by males over breadwinning, however, changes established definitions of the husband/father identity and role. Reacting to the possibility of changing occupations, many fishermen spoke of the difficulty of changing identities. Most fishermen (not necessarily their wives) reported being willing to undergo reductions in their incomes if they could remain fishing. The most eloquent expression of this sentiment came from a bankrupt fisherman:
"I started fishing when I was 13; now I'm 49. My biggest fear is when I can't fish anymore, what will I be? Like what will be the repercussions of my self-worth? Did I make a mistake - a lot of question marks."
If husbands are no longer the dominant breadwinners, families may redefine the meaning and significance of wives' employment. Most families in the study, however, report a reluctance to think differently about roles. For instance, a fisherman who left fishing said:
"We've had 25 years of a successful marriage. My wife has done a wonderful job at raising our children and maintaining our home and our family. It's up to me to earn the money for necessities."
The wife of a struggling Gloucester fisherman reported:
"Well, the only issues that bother me right now is the fishing thing. I told him not to talk to me about it. I have enough to worry about, the kids, the house. He says we are going to starve to death; I don't want to hear that. 'You go out and get a second job!'"
Another wife with grown children made her feelings about employment clear:
"No, I don't [work outside the home]. I tried it for a while. I found it very hard. I hated leaving [my child] at the day care and when I got a chance to quit, I did. To tell you the truth, I'd rather be poor."
Adaptable families, though, were different. They were more into role sharing, and were flexible in how they thought about family organization. One wife, whose husband is no longer fishing, spoke about flexibility in homemaking roles:
"Nothing is a pattern. It's just different. Major decision making comes from me when I'm here. Some of it he goes along with; some of it he says, 'Well, let's change it.' And I say 'Fine, that's fine.' We try to compromise when he's around. [I had] to learn to step back and let someone else do something or make a choice, you know?"
Similarly, another wife commented on flexibility in breadwinning roles:
"I don't think we could make it on his salary. When I first went back to work it was just because I was tired of staying home, but now I need to work. Sometimes mine is the only paycheck we see for a couple of weeks."
It makes sense that families in which the husbands had roles other than breadwinning - however brief and episodic - are better equipped to change. The families in the study that are coping well are the families that "made room" for the absent member when he came home, and that are willing to be flexible in how they think about work and family roles. However, changing these established patterns of family life and family roles is difficult. The results of this study suggest that when fishing families are not flexible in roles, the ease of their transition out of fishing may depend on what occupation they are adopting. Jobs that allow families to maintain their "family strategy" of separate lives may be more compatible with families that are comfortable with separate spheres of work and family. Perhaps, besides the lure of open sky and vast expanses of water, the "way of life" also includes separation of family and work spaces.
Helen Mederer is University of Rhode Island Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology.
Related link: