Traditional 1 Ideologies, Nontraditional Lives 2 Francine M. Deutsch 3 and Susan E. Saxon Mount Holyoke College This study examined how blue-collar couples who alternate work shifts and share the care of their children reconcile their traditional gender ideologies with their nontraditional lives. In-depth interviews were conducted with twenty-three alternating shift couples in which the husband was a blue-collar worker. Ninety-six per cent of the participants were White, and the remainder were Hispanic. The results suggested that despite their nontraditional behavior, these couples maintained traditional gender identities by adherence to three central beliefs about their families: 1) the father was still the breadwinner; 2) the mother only worked in the paid labor force because of financial pressures; and 3) the mother was still the central parent. The ways in which each of these myths is constructed, and the functions they serve of both maintaining traditional gender identity, and of obscuring potential conflicts between husbands and wives over identity are discussed. Sex Roles, Vol. 38, Nos. 5/6, 1998 331 0360-0025/98/0300-0331$ 15.00/0 Ó 1998 Plenum Publishing Corporation 1 Although we use the term “traditional ” throughout the paper to denote the breadwinner/housewife family that was idealized in 1950’ s television shows like Ozzie and Harriet, we use it only as a practical shorthand. We are mindful that the use of the word “traditional ” is fraught with problems. We recognize that the 1950’ s decade was hardly traditional. It was an anomalous historical period that reversed long-term trends of reduced fertility and more flexible gender roles (Skolnick, 1991). We also note that real families of the 1950 ’ s were much more diverse than those tv representations suggested (Coontz, 1992). We retained the term “traditional ” because most Americans, including the alternating shift couples in this study, use the term and understand it to mean the breadwinner/housewife family. 2 This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant BSN-9108826 to Francine M. Deutsch. Portions of this manuscript were presented at the Association of Women in Psychology Conference, Oakland, California, March 1994. The authors wish to thank Susan Trumbetta for contributing to the development of the telephone and in-depth interviews, Joan Dwight for transcribing the audiotapes, Jean Talbot for coding occupational prestige, Natasha Domina for Ethnograph coding, Denise Gould for her advice on data analysis, and Gerald A. Epstein for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript. 3 To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department of Psychology and Education, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA 01075.