December 29, 2014 • 39 mins
Millions of working moms work night shifts to reap its possible parenting benefits. Cristen and Caroline look into the intersections of motherhood and shift work, as well as health risks associated with working while the kids are sleeping.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and with a holiday season in full swing,
we wanted to talk about the night shift because I'm
a feeling that year round, well, I don't have a
(00:24):
feeling I know statistically year round that a lot of
people work the night shift, but especially during the holidays,
more of us might be picking up a graveyard shift,
perhaps as a temporary seasonal worker, or if you're in
more of a manufacturing or transportation kind of job, night
shift work probably picks up during this time. And this
(00:47):
is something that we don't talk about very much when
it comes to workplace issues. A lot of what we
talked about, especially in the podcast, we're focused on nine
to five jobs. Yeah, night jobs definitely present their own
specific benefits, but also challenges. And I was really interested
in the research that Kristen and I did as far
as how it affects women and what women have to
(01:10):
do with night work in particular, because right off the bat,
you might just think, well, how is this a women's issue?
How does you know? What do women have to do
with this? Like men work night night shifts too, and
that's absolutely true. But there are some very interesting parallels
between the decision to work a night shift, or the
fact that maybe you feel you have to, and your
perception of motherhood and what being a good mother is.
(01:34):
So first off, let's talk about how many people are
working the night shift, what kind of jobs they have,
and why they choose to work while a lot of
us are sleeping. UM. So the big conversation about night
shift really kicked off in two thousand four, UM, when
the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that about a fifth
(01:56):
of full time workers, or fifteen million people in the
US work the night shift. And since then there's a
very good chance that that number has only grown, particularly
due to the global workplace and technology influencing things. UM.
But that two thousand four stat is the most recent
data that we have. Yeah, And and from that data,
(02:18):
looking at specifically numbers, between two thousand and one and
two thousand four, more men than women did work alternate shifts,
but the percentage of women certainly is growing. And from
that two thousand four data, about five of working women,
or just over three million, work the night shift. And
that's coming from the New York times, and of course
(02:39):
the numbers growing thanks to our global twenty four our
workplace and technology. Yeah, and this kind of work is
far likelier to be more blue collar work than white collars.
So the kinds of jobs most commonly associated with night
shift work include leisure and hospitality. Um, the very fact
(03:00):
that if you want a Taco Bell girld Stuff burrito
at one in the morning, you can get it because
someone is working the night shift. Mining apparently has a
lot of night shift work involved. Transportation, flight attendants listening
probably know this well, or pilots listening, warehousing jobs, the
(03:21):
arts and entertainment, the things that we go see after
we get off of our nine to five emergency care services.
So a lot of nurses will work the night shift.
There's been a lot of research specifically on the health
impacts of night shift nursing. Also custodial UH jobs people
(03:41):
who come in and clean up our offices after relieve,
clean up our schools, and also protective services like police officers, firefighters,
and then there are the call centers. This is where
the global workplace and tech really intersects with this, and
in fact, there's an entire book about this out of
a researcher It's Stanford called working the night Shift, all
(04:02):
focused on how this has created an entirely new industry
for women in India with call center work. Yeah, but
it's it's such a broad topic with so much depth
because it's it's not just like, oh, well, all of
these women in India now have all of these jobs
available to them. It also a companies are really kind
of disturbing conversation about sexual violence and patriarchal cultures in
(04:27):
countries like India, where all of a sudden, women are
in the workplace and they're traveling to and from work
at night and all of the danger that they face there. Well,
and we'll talk about this more in terms of gender
dynamics abroad and at home. I think it also intersects
a lot, this idea of women working through the night,
taking a graveyard shift, and how that uh intersects with
(04:48):
our domestic duties, particularly for moms. But before we go
any farther, Caroline, you are a former at least evening
shift worker. Yeah, I am. Right out of college. I
worked in a newspaper for four years and my typical
shift was four to midnight. Sometimes I work five to
one and having come just out of college. It was
(05:10):
actually kind of perfect because it meant that I did
not have to get up at six thirty in the
morning to shower and put on fancy clothes. I did
still have to wear business clothes, which doesn't make any sense.
And Caroline is a very fancy dressed in the office
by the way, right it's usually you know, a ballgown, Yes,
a ballgown, lots of sequence. I'm wearing a feather boa
(05:31):
right now. Um, but yeah, I know it. It was
great when I first started. Um, it wasn't very hard
to transition into. But as you would expect, a lot
of challenges eventually crop up when you, oh, I don't know,
want to date someone. Because what accompanied my crazy hours
was also the fact that my weekend was in the
middle of the week, which just made relationships impossible. I
ended up dating a lot of bartenders. I won't get
(05:53):
into that history right now, but you do have issues
with feeling sort of out of mainstream society because you
totally realize, like, oh, wow, okay, society is built for
people who work eight to five, and I can go
grocery shopping at one o'clock in the morning and that's
great because no one's at Kroger. Or I can go
(06:14):
to the mall at you know noon and no one's there.
But you miss out on a lot, like I never
ever got to celebrate Christmas on the day of with
my family because of crazy and crazy night shift work.
So they wouldn't even let you off for Christmas. I
got Thanksgiving off. It was a either or situation. So
but there's some Scrooge business running running that paper. And
(06:36):
to be fair, Thanksgiving is a way more fun in
my family than Christmas is, owing to all of the
wine that pours liberally. But um, as an evening shift worker,
I still didn't face quite the difficulties that night shift
workers do people who work eleven and seven or twelve
to eight. Because when I went home it was dark.
You know, it made I would still wake up at
(06:57):
like ten thirty in the morning. I'd have time to
go to the gym and make lunch and take a shower,
go into work at four o'clock, get off work, it's dark,
you go to bed two hours after you get home.
It all makes perfect sense. Um. And I also was
working a white collar journalism office job, so I also had,
you know, really great benefits and stuff like that, as
(07:20):
much as they can be great for a newspaper. But
um I my evening shift work was not quite in
the same league as a lot of the night shift
work that we'll be talking about. And significantly for our conversation,
you didn't have kids at the time. That's a huge
factor with night shift work. Um And in fact, this
is coming from a book written by Harriet Pressor, who's
(07:44):
a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland called
Living in seven Economy six of dual earner incomes who
have kids under five and earn less than fifty dollars
have at least one partner working a non standard schedule,
And that gets to a lot of the common reasons
(08:07):
for why people work the night shift, because not only
is it sometimes the nature of the job, such as
you know, if you are a flight attendant, then you
have flights that leave and you have to be on them.
Um sometimes it might be more a product of not
finding another job with a more standard schedule, but there's
also a shift work premium involved. A lot of times
(08:28):
night shift workers will make more hourly because it messes
up your life. Yeah, because you're working when everybody else
is slumbering. And then, of course another aspect that's tied
up with money a lot of the times, and also
just family is the whole issue of childcare. A lot
of times, if you work at night but your partner
works during the day, then you can kind of tag
(08:49):
team and trade off and you don't necessarily have to
pay all of that money that goes into daycare. And
some people just prefer it. They really enjoy working when
the you know, the workplace might be a little quieter.
They can go to the grocery store and no one
is there. Um, some people are just naturally night owls um.
(09:09):
But when it comes to women on the night shift,
it's really fascinating how much motherhood is a big focus.
And Harriet Pressor, that sociologist who wrote the book on
this growing night shift economy that we're living in, she said, quote,
women don't typically think of themselves as night workers, but
society has gotten used to women working in the day
(09:32):
is dual earners, and now working at night is less deviant.
Hence we're seeing growing numbers of women on the night shift.
Because it used to be more of a strictly male,
blue collar kind of thing. Yeah, and we mentioned childcare
a second ago. If you want to get into the
stats of that, twenty six percent of night shift workers
choose that line of work to make childcare easier. This
(09:55):
is coming from a Center for Work Life Law at
University of California and the Center for America Progress, and
they found that flexibility schedule wise saves a lot of
money on childcare, saves a lot of time commuting, and
you probably don't have to spend all that money on
like super corporate clothes or feather boas like Caroline, all
of my ball gowns and feather boas. Now, when it
(10:16):
comes to single moms, um, this was a statistic out
of h really in depth peace on women in night
shift work at Psychology Today. Forty per cent of single
moms of young children reported shift or weekend work. And
I was hoping to actually find more in depth uh
information and research on single motherhood and night shift work
(10:40):
because it is so much more common and it seems
even more challenging um to juggle both of those things.
But I have a feeling that for single moms, that
appeal of being at home when the kids come home
from school and working while they're asleep is definitely a
big draw, yeah, absolutely, and a knee it to ILTA.
Gary looked into this in her book Weaving, Work and Motherhood.
(11:04):
She actually interviewed a group of night shift moms about
their schedules and why they do it, and she found
that kind of across the board, working the night shift
allowed women to be quote the kind of mothers they
want to be. Essentially, that time at home when you
work the night shift reflects the same type of pattern
(11:26):
that stay at home moms have. And this whole thing
was cross cultural. She talked to all different types of
women from different backgrounds, and they were all working within
sort of this dominant cultural norm and ideal about motherhood.
That I might be sleep deprived, i might feel like
I'm losing my mind because I'm working the night shift
and I'm working the day shift taking care of my children.
(11:48):
But at least I'm home and they see me and
I'm visible. That whole issue of visibility comes up again
and again well, and the importance of visibility in terms
of this domestic construct of home is where mom is.
And she writes that these women are quote denormalizing sleep
in order to absorb the contradictions of working away from home,
(12:10):
and you see that theme come up again and again.
And this is research that was happening in the mid nineties,
and you still see these same themes today of working
moms who might be forced to work the night shift
for economic reasons, which is often a big case, but
also moms working the night shift by choice, partially because
(12:30):
it's sort of it almost makes them even more super
moms because they're like, I can go out, I can
make the money, but I can also be here for
the kids. I can make their lunches, I can meet
them at the bus, I can do all of these things. Yeah. Well,
and um, Gary, when she's talking to these women, one
of the things that's emphasized so much, which I as
someone who's not a parent, you know, I was struggling
(12:52):
to understand. But a lot of these women were not
only you know, striving to be there for their kids.
I totally get that, but they were also actively downplaying
their employment to their children and the fact that they
even had jobs, which I wasn't. I didn't quite put
my finger on as as getting it. I mean, Gary
writes about how these women's labor force participation ends up
(13:16):
as a result being almost invisible. The fact that they're working.
Was She talked to one woman who was like, I
didn't even know that my grandmother worked for forty years
because when we went over to her house and she
was baking us cookies, it was just grandma and she
was home, she was always there. But this woman had
been working for decades and just you know, downplayed it. Well.
I think it goes to the point that only until recently,
(13:41):
quite recently, are we and still becoming more comfortable with
the idea of a full time, dedicated working mom. You know,
there's still that that conflicts sometimes of the stay at
home versus the working mom. And I don't want to
use the phrase mommy wars because it is the worst
and that's how people talk about it. Um. But there
(14:03):
was a study also in the journal Qualitative Sociology that
looked at night shift nurses and it found similar motivations. Um.
It concluded that night shift nurses really thought of themselves
as stay at home moms by limiting that public visibility. Again, Caroline,
it's they sort of work in secret almost. They're still
(14:27):
highly involved in their kids lives by a virtue of
the hours that they work, and it's sort of allows
them to straddle both worlds, which also to me sounds
incredibly exhausting. Yeah, you're spread super thin, and and it's
just interesting that, you know, these women by and large
are choosing to emphasize the visibility of motherhood over the
(14:51):
visibility of career, even though they are both. I mean,
they're obviously career women. They're they're working a job of
whatever kind, blue collar, white collar, whatever um, and they're
struggling to take care of their children. And speaking of
the more white collar and of the spectrum, there was
a piece on this in The New York Times by
journalists Jamie Rich talking about what she called a sophisticated
(15:16):
subculture of mothers, the new ladies of the Evening, And
this is really focused on kind of creative class of
writer's photographers, but also entrepreneurs and even stay at home
moms that she lumps into this taking on night shift
work basically to extend their work day. Or if you're
(15:37):
stay at home mom, after everybody goes to sleep, then
you stay up to take care of all the family business,
and but you still have time to make all the cupcakes.
There there are lots of mentions of walking kids to
school of making cupcakes, of p t A p t
O meetings, and but but this was framed in um
(15:59):
in a differ like less economically motivated kind of wakes
like they're they're fine, they're just choosing to do this too. Really,
I mean it kind of does fit again to pedal
an unfortunate phrases today, the whole having it all. Yeah,
I mean a lot of women too. And I don't know,
I can't remember if Rich discuss this or not, but
(16:20):
the idea of like, oh, well, I chose this path
because it would help me get a leg up in
my career faster, I'd be able to accomplish things that
maybe I wouldn't be able to accomplish if I worked
during the day or whatever. And just just that general
theme of of choice that you know, I have a
supportive spouse or partner, and um, I'm in a career
(16:42):
where I make plenty of money. Um, and I can
accomplish all this stuff because I'm just I'm just choosing
to work at night versus the maybe the blue collar
work where a lot of women feel forced to accept
jobs like that. Yeah, and it's interesting to see how
this is going to play out. But that kind of
flex time is still distinct from actual shift work, where
(17:04):
you are going, you know, to your job to complete
a specific shift. And in the second half of the podcast,
we've got to talk about a lot of red flags
that have recently been raised about some of the potential
health risks and even maybe relationship downsides that come along
with work in the night shift. But let's talk about
(17:27):
some of the effects that these jobs actually have on
people's lives. For instance, the fact that, and this isn't
hard to imagine, a lot of relationships can end up
suffering when schedules get wonky. Yeah, sort of. The irony
of how motherhood is often a motivation for women working
the night shift. Many of them report that while they
(17:50):
feel like their mother in to the very best of
their abilities, they never see their husbands or their partners. Um. So,
there was, for instance, dated study from that found that
night shift couples have higher rates of divorce and it's
all because of minimizing a couple of times spent together
in favor of taking the night shift that favors the kids. Yeah,
(18:15):
and you also lose friendships when you're on an opposite schedule.
I mean, I I worked an evening shift and work
at night shift. But I mean, my my friend group
was my coworkers and uh, a woman who was my
hairstylist and became my best friend because she also had
a weird schedule and kept weird hours and we adored
each other and so that worked out. Um. But yeah,
(18:38):
you had fabulous air, dude. Dude. Um, But yeah, I
mean it's it's it's easy to see the fact that, like,
when you're working such a weird schedule, you're very limited
and who you can hang out with, especially if you're single.
That's why I ended up dating like the worst people
because my whole dating and friendship pool was was pretty limited. Caroline,
(18:59):
idea for a new eating app or night Owls for
a night owls? Yeah, I feel like that. Would you
call it after midnight they won't get shady at all?
Or maybe I wear my sunglasses at night. Nope, that's
too long. Okay. Sleep deformation, though understandably, can can tinker
with your mood because a lot of these women. One
(19:21):
thing we didn't mention is how for a lot of
these working moms they slept. They didn't come home from
their night shift and then sleep for eight hours. They
would come home, take a quick nap, wake up in
time to see the kids off sleep for maybe like
four hours, then be back up again to see them
(19:43):
when they came home. I mean, they were sleeping in
these short bursts, and so they accumulated this sleep debt, which,
as we all know, as anyone who's ever been exhausted
beyond belief knows, it can make you a little cranky. Yeah. Absolutely,
And so you're you're yelling at your kids, you're yelling
at your spouse. I mean, that doesn't exactly strengthen bonds,
(20:06):
and indeed it might not be so great for parenting.
There was a study of mothers working the night shift
that found the children of these ladies had elevated levels
of aggressive and anxious or depressed behavior. So it's it's
not like they're bad parents necessarily. Obviously they're doing their best.
They are probably working. Most likely they're working this shift
(20:28):
to benefit their family. But man, I mean, when I
get sleep deprived, I'm not exactly a pleasant person. No,
And then this visibility factor comes up again in a
different way than we talked about earlier, in terms of
visibility in the labor force, in visibility and motherhood speaking
to Psychology Today, Carol Lieberman, who's a psychiatrist at u
(20:49):
c l A's Neuropsychiatric Institute who has treated shift workers, said,
night shift workers begin to feel like second class citizens.
They begin to feel invisible for all of those different
reasons of just keeping the opposite schedule as everybody else. Yeah,
you absolutely feel like you're on the outside looking in, Like, oh,
how nice that everything is geared towards you people. It's
(21:11):
like being left handed, Caroline. Finally someone can understand my
polight exactly, but at a more basic level too. Though
night shift work can lead to more dangerous commutes, a
study out of OSHA found that car crashes account for
of work related deaths, and seven percent of those are
(21:33):
linked to drowsiness or falling asleep at the wheel, and
fatigue can also exacerbate driver and attention, speeding and running
off the road. So you really got to be careful
that you keep your sleep pattern on schedule if possible,
if you are working the night ship, to make sure
that you get to and from your place of work
safely for yourself and other people on the road exactly.
And part of that is your whole circadian rhythm and
(21:55):
I mean, I generally had an understanding of this before
we did this research, but I didn't realize just how
just the severe effects that messing with your circadian rhythm
could have. Has a lot of sleep impacts. So of
course your circadian rhythm is basically like, oh, you get
up when it's light outside, and you get sleepy when
it's start outside, thanks melotonin. Well, so messing with your
(22:17):
circadian rhythm can lead to of course sleep loss, which
is even worse for single moms, and this feeling of
constant exhaustion. But more than that, it can increase your
risk for real actual health disorders, things like diabetes, obesity,
heart disease, breast cancer, ulcers, depression, and of course sleep issues.
There's a new study published in the Proceedings of the
(22:39):
National Academy of Sciences which found night shift workers use
up less energy carbohydrates and proteins and burn fewer calories
while sleeping, which puts them at an elevated obesity risk.
And this is just one of many study findings coming
out on the relationships between night shift work, and there's
(22:59):
even out something called shift work disorder, which represents a
constellation of a lot of these symptoms, a lot of
which are linked to sleep lost and less exposure to sunlight.
And also how working night shifts under artificial light tends
to tinker with our melanin production. And melanan is really
(23:21):
important because in women it regulates the pituitary and ovarian hormones,
including estrogen, and elevated estrogen levels are linked to higher
rates of cancer in women. They're blowing my mind, like,
I had no idea. I had no idea that these
things were connected. Needs sun, Caroline, we do need sun.
(23:42):
And I recently, after after reading this, so, I recently
was guilted by my neighbors into bringing my plants inside
because it's like freaking freezing in Atlanta these days, unseasonably.
And uh, I was like, well, what am I gonna do?
I just have like regular lights. It's not like I
have magical vitamin D plant lights in my house. And
I was like, oh wait, but they may have hydroponic
(24:02):
hydroponics set up in your apartment for my spider plant. Uh.
So I went to home Depot and sure enough, they
do have plant lights that you can screw in a
regular bulb. So I got those plug him into two
different lamps in my kitchen plants are happy. But after
researching for this episode, I was like, maybe I should
spend more time in my kitchen with the full spectrum plant, Like,
do you light? Is it? Is it calming light? I mean,
(24:25):
I I it's who my kidding, It's totally psychostomatic. Is
it all the same? Is it kind of like a
dog whistle? Like it's it's pretty much invisible? Yeah, I
mean it's it's great light and the lights. The lights fine,
And when I put them in I felt happier. But
that could also just be that I felt like I'd
finally accomplished something on my to do list. But so
this whole cancer thing, I mean to get back into
(24:47):
this and get off my plants. I had no idea
that there was such a domino effect in terms of
things like melanie production knocking over all of these hormone
dominoes creating a greater risk for cancer. And so in
two thousand seven, the World Health Organization's Center for Research
on Cancer listed shift work as a possible carcinogen, and
(25:10):
on top of that, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
said that night shift working women were at a fort
increased risk of being diagnosed with early stage ovarian cancer.
And there has been a lot of media coverage on
links between shift work and elevated risk for breast cancer,
(25:31):
possibly due to low vitamin D levels from less sunlight
exposure for instance. Uh. There have been a lot of
studies on this, but there was one from two thousand
twelve from Denmark which found at higher risk, and Time
magazine reported that the effect was cumulative. Women who worked
at least three night shifts a week for six years
(25:53):
had twice the risk of breast cancer as those who
worked two night shifts a week, and men on the
night shift aren't immune from cancer risks as well. A
two thousand twelve study found that men on the night
shift have a three times higher risk of being diagnosed
with prostate cancer. And that's crazy, that's these are significant studies.
This isn't just like, oh, maybe you might want to know.
(26:14):
This is like, dude, stop working the night shift, or
I mean, the night shift is not going to go away.
It's only growing and growing and growing. So is it
going to be on employers too? I don't know. Create
facilities in such ways that it either mimics daylight or
builds in enough time off to where or compensates people. Certainly,
(26:37):
I hope they're giving them healthcare benefits, although I doubt
that that's the case since a lot of these workers
are hourly. So hey, universal healthcare coverage, there's a bonus. Um.
So yeah, I mean it's a it's a giant question mark.
I mean, the w h O declaring it as a
possible criscinogen. That's that's hardcore. That's pretty serious. I mean,
there has been research into very specific step that workers
(27:00):
can take to sort of reverse the whole um terrible
effects that night shift work can have on your circadian rhythms.
And this is coming from the American Psychological Association, but
those things include, on the worker's day off, going to
sleep as late as possible um, and on a work day,
(27:21):
the worker would be exposed to intermittent bright light. They
would wear sunglasses on the way home from the night shift,
and then go to sleep as early as possible. Therefore
trying to sort of even out the differences between your
days on and your days off, tricking your brain into thinking, oh,
it's this time of the day or at that time
of the day, exposing yourself to light to sort of
even out. And it did have a positive effect on
(27:43):
the circadian rhythm and on the hormones and everything, but
it's still like, oh, it's such a much greater burden. Well,
and how realistic is that for most working moms, in
particular on the night shift, especially single moms who are
trying to balance all of this stuff together. I mean,
and they're also additional just basic tips in terms of
(28:04):
limiting caffeine, sticking to a routine, if you take naps
no more than fifteen minutes otherwise it actually makes you
more tired, um, and catching up on sleep on your
days off. But again, I mean, if you have kids
in the picture, and especially if you don't have a
partner spouse in the home as well to pitch in,
(28:27):
then I mean, I can't imagine. I can't imagine juggling
all of this and and reading about these moms on
the night shift only hammered home to me how incredibly
devoted these women were to being the best moms that
they could possibly be, because I can't fathom that kind
of schedule on top of responsibility for little ones or
(28:52):
even bigger ones, anyone that is not me, even my dog, yeah,
my my sister in law. I don't know. What her
schedule is now, But she's an e OUR nurse and
forever she worked the seven pm to seven am shift. Um,
but I think she worked like only three or four
days a week because there were such long shifts. Yeah,
there was. There was an overnight pharmacist that we read
(29:13):
about who worked seven days on seven to seven I think,
and then seven days off. So I could see something
like that where you have a long, long enough time off.
I think this happens a lot too with like E
M T workers. You have enough time off to where
you can't actually catch up on your sleep. But I
just wonder, I mean, and I don't know, I just
(29:33):
wonder if that's better or worse. My mother is a
flight attendant who flies to Germany every month, and you
know that's enough to get your whole sleeping schedule out
of whack. And when she comes home, it's Mom, I
love you. She's not right for like a day or
two because she still has to she's getting reacclimated to
Eastern Standard time after being in Germany, and then a
(29:55):
week later she'll go out again and repeat the process.
And you know, while she hasn't had any of the
significant like specifically cancer effects that we've talked about here.
I mean, it's it's it's not good for you to
be messing with your sleep cycle so much. Right, So
then the question is, well, what do you do because
some people have to have these jobs. These jobs are
(30:18):
not going to go away. These jobs are very much needed,
especially in a global economy. So how are we going
to make sure that we keep night shift workers healthy? Well,
I think it needs to be recognized as the important
health and life factor that it is. And and in
one of the sources we read, they talked to a
consultant who works for a company called us I think
(30:38):
it's just called Circadian or something like that, where their
whole entire purpose is to help equip companies to become
part of the twenty four hour global workforce. And so,
in my limited opinion, I mean, it might take having
a company like that, or a group of consultants like
that go into these companies and be like, here's how
you have to treat your employees. Here's what you have
(31:00):
to give them or allow for them to do. Give
them these bright, special full spectrum lights. But I mean,
in reality, that's that's great. If you're in a call center,
if you are at a corporate job, if you're working
the night shift at a newspaper for instance. Um, but
how realistic is that if you are part of a
custodial staff, you know. I mean there's there's steps that
(31:21):
can be taken, for sure, but I think the big
first step is just to realize what a horrific health
effect that working the night shift can have. Yeah, And
I think it also is imperative that more visibility is
put on these workers because for you know, the majority
of us working daytime shifts jobs, they are they're invisible,
(31:47):
and we kind of take their services for granted in
many ways because we come back to the office after
you know, full night's sleep and look that someone took
the trash out, and we go to you know, we
go to dinner and look someone is cleaning our dishes.
We don't have to do that. So there's yeah, there's
there's a lot more attention that needs to be paid.
And and if anything, this these health findings are so
(32:10):
arresting that it's gotten a lot of media attention. So hopefully, um,
it will continue to get media attention. Well, I mean
I feel like it event ties into things we've talked
about on the podcast before and if you want to
go broader in terms of better flex hours and child
care options for families, because God, if you, no matter
what your job is, blue collar, white collar, whatever, if
(32:33):
you had super secure, affordable childcare, then maybe you wouldn't
have to work the graveyard shift, right or if you do.
There was one overnight daycare center that we read about
in all of the the articles that we read researching
for this podcast, just just one, just one, and that
wasn't and people were very uncomfortable even with the you know,
(32:55):
a lot of parents treated it as a last resort.
They don't want to, you know, have other people watch
shame your kids while we sleep. And then when you
get off work, let's say it two in the morning,
you still have to go wake your kid up at
two i am and drag her home, you know, so
you're waking your kid up. So yeah, it's challenging, and
I have a feeling there are probably some night shift
workers listening. I know that we've heard from some night
(33:16):
shift folks before who listened to podcasts to get them
through that those quieter, darker hours. So first of all,
if you are working the night shift, this is our
shout out to you, and we also would love it
if you shouted us out. What is it like working
the night shift? What kind of job do you work,
why do you work it? And have you seamlessly integrated
(33:38):
it into the rest of your life or have you
experienced these kinds of health disruptions, schedule disruptions. Let us
know what it's like on the night shift. Mom Stuff
at how Stuffwork dot com is our email address. You
can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast and messages
on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages to
share with you right now. So I've got a letter
(34:03):
here from Laura in our episode about whether cat calling
is harassment, and we have been getting so many letters
on this one. So Laura, right, I just finished listening
to your episode on cat calling on my drive to
work this morning. I'm a Midwestern transplant to a Southern
city and work as an engineer what at Senfield in
a manufacturing facility in a small southern town. As an
(34:26):
educated female Yankee, I often feel out of place. While
listening to the episode, I was thinking back on instances
when I may have been cat called. I couldn't think
of a single instance where I had been particularly rattled,
but definitely felt like strangers have told me to put
a smile on my face. But then, while walking back
to my office from the manufacturing floor just a few
(34:46):
minutes ago, a male shop employee that I don't know
told me to quote smile. There's no need to look
so gloomy. Unfortunately, my instant reaction when people talk to
me is to usually smile, so I grinned immediately and
he looked please. After I'd processed what he had said,
I scowled and stalked off. I usually do my morning
rounds with a male engineer, but he wasn't able to
(35:07):
join me this morning, so I was by myself for
a change. We've walked past the same person nearly every morning,
and he's never made any inappropriate remarks when I was
with someone else. Do you have any suggestions for how
I should have better handled the situation. A major part
of my job is to improve communication and trust between
the engineering department and the manufacturing floor, so I've always
(35:29):
tried to be very neutral in my exchanges with everyone
at work. This was not an instance that I felt unsafe,
just annoyed. I don't think it would be worth the
confrontation to go back to the employee and tell him
he was out of a line. But I definitely want
to be prepared the next time. So that's a great question,
(35:49):
especially when it comes to the whole smile thing, because
it seems so benign and yet as someone, I mean,
I I can relate. I've been told to smile and
it was the last thing I wanted to do at
that moment. It was infuriating. But if you're in a
management position, and especially if you why you know, you
(36:12):
have a communications kind of role, what do you do?
He said, smile? There's no need to look so gloomy.
Maybe she could have just said I'm not gloomy. I'm
just doing my job and then smile, yeah, Or I'll smile.
Keep doing your job and I'll smile or something. Keep
doing a great job and I'll smile. Yeah, I'll smile
(36:34):
when you keep doing your job. Yeah. I think it is,
especially in a situation like this in the workplace, and
especially being in a management position, it might be one
of those sort of what is it catch a fly
with honey, That's not how the clichet goes, But you
know what I mean, Like, I don't I think you're right.
I mean, if you turned around and tried to confront
him about it, probably not a good idea, but but yeah,
(36:58):
keeping the focus on the work instead of maybe calling
someone out for their inappropriate I mean, obviously there are
different types of inappropriate behavior, but in this instance, I
think keeping the focus on just the work and saying
something to the effect of, um, I'll smile when you
get the job done. Yeah, and maybe you can even
said to in in response to smile, there's no need
(37:19):
to look so gloomy. Could have said, well, there's no
no need for you to worry about my facial expressions.
And I think that's a great one. Yeah. So hope
that helps Laura, and keep doing what you do. And lady, Okay,
I have a letter here from Cliff, who just recently
started listening to our podcast. Kristen Hey Cliff, and Cliff says,
(37:39):
as I do the mundane computer processing that my job requires,
I find the listening to your podcast makes my day
go faster and once in a while I actually learned something.
One other thing. I am male. This wouldn't normally mean much,
but to understand what follows, it probably helps to know
this recently, I was listening to your podcast. Is cat
calling harassment at work? I was interrupted by my team
(38:00):
leader with an unrelated question, and after I answered her question,
the conversation continued. I mentioned what I was listening to,
and then I found it really interesting. Seems I'm always
promoting the podcast nowadays. Her reply stunned me when she said, oh,
people complaining about that again. I asked her what she meant,
and she said, those guys are only complimenting the girls,
and these women should lighten up. I proceeded to offer
(38:22):
some of the examples your podcast presented, such as the
two thousand five event you sided where a man was
masturbating on the street in front of the woman he
was harassing. She said, that was, of course wrong, and
he deserved whatever punishment he ultimately received, but that was
certainly a rare case. Most men who do the cat
calling are only trying to give the girls a compliment,
she said, I let the subject drop at this point.
(38:43):
I bring this up because it is evidence to me
that this isn't just men who need to be made
aware of how this harassment demeans the victim. There are
a lot of women who just seemed to not get it.
Either nuff said, keep up the good work because I'll
be listening. So thank you, Cliff. I hate your story,
but I I really appreciate you you sending it to us. Yeah,
(39:03):
and I absolutely agree that this is not just an
issue of educating men. It's an issue of educating everybody.
And that's usually the case with most of the socio
cultural gender topics that we talk about, where it's it's
not just women pointing a finger outside. We gotta preached
our own choir as well. So keep the letters coming, everybody.
(39:26):
Mom stuff at how stuff Works dot com is our
email address and to find links all of our social
media as well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts,
including this one. There's one place to go, and it's
stuff Mom Never Told You dot com For more on
this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff
(39:48):
Works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and with a holiday season in full swing,
we wanted to talk about the night shift because I'm
a feeling that year round, well, I don't have a
(00:24):
feeling I know statistically year round that a lot of
people work the night shift, but especially during the holidays,
more of us might be picking up a graveyard shift,
perhaps as a temporary seasonal worker, or if you're in
more of a manufacturing or transportation kind of job, night
shift work probably picks up during this time. And this
(00:47):
is something that we don't talk about very much when
it comes to workplace issues. A lot of what we
talked about, especially in the podcast, we're focused on nine
to five jobs. Yeah, night jobs definitely present their own
specific benefits, but also challenges. And I was really interested
in the research that Kristen and I did as far
as how it affects women and what women have to
(01:10):
do with night work in particular, because right off the bat,
you might just think, well, how is this a women's issue?
How does you know? What do women have to do
with this? Like men work night night shifts too, and
that's absolutely true. But there are some very interesting parallels
between the decision to work a night shift, or the
fact that maybe you feel you have to, and your
perception of motherhood and what being a good mother is.
(01:34):
So first off, let's talk about how many people are
working the night shift, what kind of jobs they have,
and why they choose to work while a lot of
us are sleeping. UM. So the big conversation about night
shift really kicked off in two thousand four, UM, when
the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that about a fifth
(01:56):
of full time workers, or fifteen million people in the
US work the night shift. And since then there's a
very good chance that that number has only grown, particularly
due to the global workplace and technology influencing things. UM.
But that two thousand four stat is the most recent
data that we have. Yeah, And and from that data,
(02:18):
looking at specifically numbers, between two thousand and one and
two thousand four, more men than women did work alternate shifts,
but the percentage of women certainly is growing. And from
that two thousand four data, about five of working women,
or just over three million, work the night shift. And
that's coming from the New York times, and of course
(02:39):
the numbers growing thanks to our global twenty four our
workplace and technology. Yeah, and this kind of work is
far likelier to be more blue collar work than white collars.
So the kinds of jobs most commonly associated with night
shift work include leisure and hospitality. Um, the very fact
(03:00):
that if you want a Taco Bell girld Stuff burrito
at one in the morning, you can get it because
someone is working the night shift. Mining apparently has a
lot of night shift work involved. Transportation, flight attendants listening
probably know this well, or pilots listening, warehousing jobs, the
(03:21):
arts and entertainment, the things that we go see after
we get off of our nine to five emergency care services.
So a lot of nurses will work the night shift.
There's been a lot of research specifically on the health
impacts of night shift nursing. Also custodial UH jobs people
(03:41):
who come in and clean up our offices after relieve,
clean up our schools, and also protective services like police officers, firefighters,
and then there are the call centers. This is where
the global workplace and tech really intersects with this, and
in fact, there's an entire book about this out of
a researcher It's Stanford called working the night Shift, all
(04:02):
focused on how this has created an entirely new industry
for women in India with call center work. Yeah, but
it's it's such a broad topic with so much depth
because it's it's not just like, oh, well, all of
these women in India now have all of these jobs
available to them. It also a companies are really kind
of disturbing conversation about sexual violence and patriarchal cultures in
(04:27):
countries like India, where all of a sudden, women are
in the workplace and they're traveling to and from work
at night and all of the danger that they face there. Well,
and we'll talk about this more in terms of gender
dynamics abroad and at home. I think it also intersects
a lot, this idea of women working through the night,
taking a graveyard shift, and how that uh intersects with
(04:48):
our domestic duties, particularly for moms. But before we go
any farther, Caroline, you are a former at least evening
shift worker. Yeah, I am. Right out of college. I
worked in a newspaper for four years and my typical
shift was four to midnight. Sometimes I work five to
one and having come just out of college. It was
(05:10):
actually kind of perfect because it meant that I did
not have to get up at six thirty in the
morning to shower and put on fancy clothes. I did
still have to wear business clothes, which doesn't make any sense.
And Caroline is a very fancy dressed in the office
by the way, right it's usually you know, a ballgown, Yes,
a ballgown, lots of sequence. I'm wearing a feather boa
(05:31):
right now. Um, but yeah, I know it. It was
great when I first started. Um, it wasn't very hard
to transition into. But as you would expect, a lot
of challenges eventually crop up when you, oh, I don't know,
want to date someone. Because what accompanied my crazy hours
was also the fact that my weekend was in the
middle of the week, which just made relationships impossible. I
ended up dating a lot of bartenders. I won't get
(05:53):
into that history right now, but you do have issues
with feeling sort of out of mainstream society because you
totally realize, like, oh, wow, okay, society is built for
people who work eight to five, and I can go
grocery shopping at one o'clock in the morning and that's
great because no one's at Kroger. Or I can go
(06:14):
to the mall at you know noon and no one's there.
But you miss out on a lot, like I never
ever got to celebrate Christmas on the day of with
my family because of crazy and crazy night shift work.
So they wouldn't even let you off for Christmas. I
got Thanksgiving off. It was a either or situation. So
but there's some Scrooge business running running that paper. And
(06:36):
to be fair, Thanksgiving is a way more fun in
my family than Christmas is, owing to all of the
wine that pours liberally. But um, as an evening shift worker,
I still didn't face quite the difficulties that night shift
workers do people who work eleven and seven or twelve
to eight. Because when I went home it was dark.
You know, it made I would still wake up at
(06:57):
like ten thirty in the morning. I'd have time to
go to the gym and make lunch and take a shower,
go into work at four o'clock, get off work, it's dark,
you go to bed two hours after you get home.
It all makes perfect sense. Um. And I also was
working a white collar journalism office job, so I also had,
you know, really great benefits and stuff like that, as
(07:20):
much as they can be great for a newspaper. But
um I my evening shift work was not quite in
the same league as a lot of the night shift
work that we'll be talking about. And significantly for our conversation,
you didn't have kids at the time. That's a huge
factor with night shift work. Um And in fact, this
is coming from a book written by Harriet Pressor, who's
(07:44):
a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland called
Living in seven Economy six of dual earner incomes who
have kids under five and earn less than fifty dollars
have at least one partner working a non standard schedule,
And that gets to a lot of the common reasons
(08:07):
for why people work the night shift, because not only
is it sometimes the nature of the job, such as
you know, if you are a flight attendant, then you
have flights that leave and you have to be on them.
Um sometimes it might be more a product of not
finding another job with a more standard schedule, but there's
also a shift work premium involved. A lot of times
(08:28):
night shift workers will make more hourly because it messes
up your life. Yeah, because you're working when everybody else
is slumbering. And then, of course another aspect that's tied
up with money a lot of the times, and also
just family is the whole issue of childcare. A lot
of times, if you work at night but your partner
works during the day, then you can kind of tag
(08:49):
team and trade off and you don't necessarily have to
pay all of that money that goes into daycare. And
some people just prefer it. They really enjoy working when
the you know, the workplace might be a little quieter.
They can go to the grocery store and no one
is there. Um, some people are just naturally night owls um.
(09:09):
But when it comes to women on the night shift,
it's really fascinating how much motherhood is a big focus.
And Harriet Pressor, that sociologist who wrote the book on
this growing night shift economy that we're living in, she said, quote,
women don't typically think of themselves as night workers, but
society has gotten used to women working in the day
(09:32):
is dual earners, and now working at night is less deviant.
Hence we're seeing growing numbers of women on the night shift.
Because it used to be more of a strictly male,
blue collar kind of thing. Yeah, and we mentioned childcare
a second ago. If you want to get into the
stats of that, twenty six percent of night shift workers
choose that line of work to make childcare easier. This
(09:55):
is coming from a Center for Work Life Law at
University of California and the Center for America Progress, and
they found that flexibility schedule wise saves a lot of
money on childcare, saves a lot of time commuting, and
you probably don't have to spend all that money on
like super corporate clothes or feather boas like Caroline, all
of my ball gowns and feather boas. Now, when it
(10:16):
comes to single moms, um, this was a statistic out
of h really in depth peace on women in night
shift work at Psychology Today. Forty per cent of single
moms of young children reported shift or weekend work. And
I was hoping to actually find more in depth uh
information and research on single motherhood and night shift work
(10:40):
because it is so much more common and it seems
even more challenging um to juggle both of those things.
But I have a feeling that for single moms, that
appeal of being at home when the kids come home
from school and working while they're asleep is definitely a
big draw, yeah, absolutely, and a knee it to ILTA.
Gary looked into this in her book Weaving, Work and Motherhood.
(11:04):
She actually interviewed a group of night shift moms about
their schedules and why they do it, and she found
that kind of across the board, working the night shift
allowed women to be quote the kind of mothers they
want to be. Essentially, that time at home when you
work the night shift reflects the same type of pattern
(11:26):
that stay at home moms have. And this whole thing
was cross cultural. She talked to all different types of
women from different backgrounds, and they were all working within
sort of this dominant cultural norm and ideal about motherhood.
That I might be sleep deprived, i might feel like
I'm losing my mind because I'm working the night shift
and I'm working the day shift taking care of my children.
(11:48):
But at least I'm home and they see me and
I'm visible. That whole issue of visibility comes up again
and again well, and the importance of visibility in terms
of this domestic construct of home is where mom is.
And she writes that these women are quote denormalizing sleep
in order to absorb the contradictions of working away from home,
(12:10):
and you see that theme come up again and again.
And this is research that was happening in the mid nineties,
and you still see these same themes today of working
moms who might be forced to work the night shift
for economic reasons, which is often a big case, but
also moms working the night shift by choice, partially because
(12:30):
it's sort of it almost makes them even more super
moms because they're like, I can go out, I can
make the money, but I can also be here for
the kids. I can make their lunches, I can meet
them at the bus, I can do all of these things. Yeah. Well,
and um, Gary, when she's talking to these women, one
of the things that's emphasized so much, which I as
someone who's not a parent, you know, I was struggling
(12:52):
to understand. But a lot of these women were not
only you know, striving to be there for their kids.
I totally get that, but they were also actively downplaying
their employment to their children and the fact that they
even had jobs, which I wasn't. I didn't quite put
my finger on as as getting it. I mean, Gary
writes about how these women's labor force participation ends up
(13:16):
as a result being almost invisible. The fact that they're working.
Was She talked to one woman who was like, I
didn't even know that my grandmother worked for forty years
because when we went over to her house and she
was baking us cookies, it was just grandma and she
was home, she was always there. But this woman had
been working for decades and just you know, downplayed it. Well.
I think it goes to the point that only until recently,
(13:41):
quite recently, are we and still becoming more comfortable with
the idea of a full time, dedicated working mom. You know,
there's still that that conflicts sometimes of the stay at
home versus the working mom. And I don't want to
use the phrase mommy wars because it is the worst
and that's how people talk about it. Um. But there
(14:03):
was a study also in the journal Qualitative Sociology that
looked at night shift nurses and it found similar motivations. Um.
It concluded that night shift nurses really thought of themselves
as stay at home moms by limiting that public visibility. Again, Caroline,
it's they sort of work in secret almost. They're still
(14:27):
highly involved in their kids lives by a virtue of
the hours that they work, and it's sort of allows
them to straddle both worlds, which also to me sounds
incredibly exhausting. Yeah, you're spread super thin, and and it's
just interesting that, you know, these women by and large
are choosing to emphasize the visibility of motherhood over the
(14:51):
visibility of career, even though they are both. I mean,
they're obviously career women. They're they're working a job of
whatever kind, blue collar, white collar, whatever um, and they're
struggling to take care of their children. And speaking of
the more white collar and of the spectrum, there was
a piece on this in The New York Times by
journalists Jamie Rich talking about what she called a sophisticated
(15:16):
subculture of mothers, the new ladies of the Evening, And
this is really focused on kind of creative class of
writer's photographers, but also entrepreneurs and even stay at home
moms that she lumps into this taking on night shift
work basically to extend their work day. Or if you're
(15:37):
stay at home mom, after everybody goes to sleep, then
you stay up to take care of all the family business,
and but you still have time to make all the cupcakes.
There there are lots of mentions of walking kids to
school of making cupcakes, of p t A p t
O meetings, and but but this was framed in um
(15:59):
in a differ like less economically motivated kind of wakes
like they're they're fine, they're just choosing to do this too. Really,
I mean it kind of does fit again to pedal
an unfortunate phrases today, the whole having it all. Yeah,
I mean a lot of women too. And I don't know,
I can't remember if Rich discuss this or not, but
(16:20):
the idea of like, oh, well, I chose this path
because it would help me get a leg up in
my career faster, I'd be able to accomplish things that
maybe I wouldn't be able to accomplish if I worked
during the day or whatever. And just just that general
theme of of choice that you know, I have a
supportive spouse or partner, and um, I'm in a career
(16:42):
where I make plenty of money. Um, and I can
accomplish all this stuff because I'm just I'm just choosing
to work at night versus the maybe the blue collar
work where a lot of women feel forced to accept
jobs like that. Yeah, and it's interesting to see how
this is going to play out. But that kind of
flex time is still distinct from actual shift work, where
(17:04):
you are going, you know, to your job to complete
a specific shift. And in the second half of the podcast,
we've got to talk about a lot of red flags
that have recently been raised about some of the potential
health risks and even maybe relationship downsides that come along
with work in the night shift. But let's talk about
(17:27):
some of the effects that these jobs actually have on
people's lives. For instance, the fact that, and this isn't
hard to imagine, a lot of relationships can end up
suffering when schedules get wonky. Yeah, sort of. The irony
of how motherhood is often a motivation for women working
the night shift. Many of them report that while they
(17:50):
feel like their mother in to the very best of
their abilities, they never see their husbands or their partners. Um. So,
there was, for instance, dated study from that found that
night shift couples have higher rates of divorce and it's
all because of minimizing a couple of times spent together
in favor of taking the night shift that favors the kids. Yeah,
(18:15):
and you also lose friendships when you're on an opposite schedule.
I mean, I I worked an evening shift and work
at night shift. But I mean, my my friend group
was my coworkers and uh, a woman who was my
hairstylist and became my best friend because she also had
a weird schedule and kept weird hours and we adored
each other and so that worked out. Um. But yeah,
(18:38):
you had fabulous air, dude. Dude. Um, But yeah, I
mean it's it's it's easy to see the fact that, like,
when you're working such a weird schedule, you're very limited
and who you can hang out with, especially if you're single.
That's why I ended up dating like the worst people
because my whole dating and friendship pool was was pretty limited. Caroline,
(18:59):
idea for a new eating app or night Owls for
a night owls? Yeah, I feel like that. Would you
call it after midnight they won't get shady at all?
Or maybe I wear my sunglasses at night. Nope, that's
too long. Okay. Sleep deformation, though understandably, can can tinker
with your mood because a lot of these women. One
(19:21):
thing we didn't mention is how for a lot of
these working moms they slept. They didn't come home from
their night shift and then sleep for eight hours. They
would come home, take a quick nap, wake up in
time to see the kids off sleep for maybe like
four hours, then be back up again to see them
(19:43):
when they came home. I mean, they were sleeping in
these short bursts, and so they accumulated this sleep debt, which,
as we all know, as anyone who's ever been exhausted
beyond belief knows, it can make you a little cranky. Yeah. Absolutely,
And so you're you're yelling at your kids, you're yelling
at your spouse. I mean, that doesn't exactly strengthen bonds,
(20:06):
and indeed it might not be so great for parenting.
There was a study of mothers working the night shift
that found the children of these ladies had elevated levels
of aggressive and anxious or depressed behavior. So it's it's
not like they're bad parents necessarily. Obviously they're doing their best.
They are probably working. Most likely they're working this shift
(20:28):
to benefit their family. But man, I mean, when I
get sleep deprived, I'm not exactly a pleasant person. No,
And then this visibility factor comes up again in a
different way than we talked about earlier, in terms of
visibility in the labor force, in visibility and motherhood speaking
to Psychology Today, Carol Lieberman, who's a psychiatrist at u
(20:49):
c l A's Neuropsychiatric Institute who has treated shift workers, said,
night shift workers begin to feel like second class citizens.
They begin to feel invisible for all of those different
reasons of just keeping the opposite schedule as everybody else. Yeah,
you absolutely feel like you're on the outside looking in, Like, oh,
how nice that everything is geared towards you people. It's
(21:11):
like being left handed, Caroline. Finally someone can understand my
polight exactly, but at a more basic level too. Though
night shift work can lead to more dangerous commutes, a
study out of OSHA found that car crashes account for
of work related deaths, and seven percent of those are
(21:33):
linked to drowsiness or falling asleep at the wheel, and
fatigue can also exacerbate driver and attention, speeding and running
off the road. So you really got to be careful
that you keep your sleep pattern on schedule if possible,
if you are working the night ship, to make sure
that you get to and from your place of work
safely for yourself and other people on the road exactly.
And part of that is your whole circadian rhythm and
(21:55):
I mean, I generally had an understanding of this before
we did this research, but I didn't realize just how
just the severe effects that messing with your circadian rhythm
could have. Has a lot of sleep impacts. So of
course your circadian rhythm is basically like, oh, you get
up when it's light outside, and you get sleepy when
it's start outside, thanks melotonin. Well, so messing with your
(22:17):
circadian rhythm can lead to of course sleep loss, which
is even worse for single moms, and this feeling of
constant exhaustion. But more than that, it can increase your
risk for real actual health disorders, things like diabetes, obesity,
heart disease, breast cancer, ulcers, depression, and of course sleep issues.
There's a new study published in the Proceedings of the
(22:39):
National Academy of Sciences which found night shift workers use
up less energy carbohydrates and proteins and burn fewer calories
while sleeping, which puts them at an elevated obesity risk.
And this is just one of many study findings coming
out on the relationships between night shift work, and there's
(22:59):
even out something called shift work disorder, which represents a
constellation of a lot of these symptoms, a lot of
which are linked to sleep lost and less exposure to sunlight.
And also how working night shifts under artificial light tends
to tinker with our melanin production. And melanan is really
(23:21):
important because in women it regulates the pituitary and ovarian hormones,
including estrogen, and elevated estrogen levels are linked to higher
rates of cancer in women. They're blowing my mind, like,
I had no idea. I had no idea that these
things were connected. Needs sun, Caroline, we do need sun.
(23:42):
And I recently, after after reading this, so, I recently
was guilted by my neighbors into bringing my plants inside
because it's like freaking freezing in Atlanta these days, unseasonably.
And uh, I was like, well, what am I gonna do?
I just have like regular lights. It's not like I
have magical vitamin D plant lights in my house. And
I was like, oh wait, but they may have hydroponic
(24:02):
hydroponics set up in your apartment for my spider plant. Uh.
So I went to home Depot and sure enough, they
do have plant lights that you can screw in a
regular bulb. So I got those plug him into two
different lamps in my kitchen plants are happy. But after
researching for this episode, I was like, maybe I should
spend more time in my kitchen with the full spectrum plant, Like,
do you light? Is it? Is it calming light? I mean,
(24:25):
I I it's who my kidding, It's totally psychostomatic. Is
it all the same? Is it kind of like a
dog whistle? Like it's it's pretty much invisible? Yeah, I
mean it's it's great light and the lights. The lights fine,
And when I put them in I felt happier. But
that could also just be that I felt like I'd
finally accomplished something on my to do list. But so
this whole cancer thing, I mean to get back into
(24:47):
this and get off my plants. I had no idea
that there was such a domino effect in terms of
things like melanie production knocking over all of these hormone
dominoes creating a greater risk for cancer. And so in
two thousand seven, the World Health Organization's Center for Research
on Cancer listed shift work as a possible carcinogen, and
(25:10):
on top of that, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
said that night shift working women were at a fort
increased risk of being diagnosed with early stage ovarian cancer.
And there has been a lot of media coverage on
links between shift work and elevated risk for breast cancer,
(25:31):
possibly due to low vitamin D levels from less sunlight
exposure for instance. Uh. There have been a lot of
studies on this, but there was one from two thousand
twelve from Denmark which found at higher risk, and Time
magazine reported that the effect was cumulative. Women who worked
at least three night shifts a week for six years
(25:53):
had twice the risk of breast cancer as those who
worked two night shifts a week, and men on the
night shift aren't immune from cancer risks as well. A
two thousand twelve study found that men on the night
shift have a three times higher risk of being diagnosed
with prostate cancer. And that's crazy, that's these are significant studies.
This isn't just like, oh, maybe you might want to know.
(26:14):
This is like, dude, stop working the night shift, or
I mean, the night shift is not going to go away.
It's only growing and growing and growing. So is it
going to be on employers too? I don't know. Create
facilities in such ways that it either mimics daylight or
builds in enough time off to where or compensates people. Certainly,
(26:37):
I hope they're giving them healthcare benefits, although I doubt
that that's the case since a lot of these workers
are hourly. So hey, universal healthcare coverage, there's a bonus. Um.
So yeah, I mean it's a it's a giant question mark.
I mean, the w h O declaring it as a
possible criscinogen. That's that's hardcore. That's pretty serious. I mean,
there has been research into very specific step that workers
(27:00):
can take to sort of reverse the whole um terrible
effects that night shift work can have on your circadian rhythms.
And this is coming from the American Psychological Association, but
those things include, on the worker's day off, going to
sleep as late as possible um, and on a work day,
(27:21):
the worker would be exposed to intermittent bright light. They
would wear sunglasses on the way home from the night shift,
and then go to sleep as early as possible. Therefore
trying to sort of even out the differences between your
days on and your days off, tricking your brain into thinking, oh,
it's this time of the day or at that time
of the day, exposing yourself to light to sort of
even out. And it did have a positive effect on
(27:43):
the circadian rhythm and on the hormones and everything, but
it's still like, oh, it's such a much greater burden. Well,
and how realistic is that for most working moms, in
particular on the night shift, especially single moms who are
trying to balance all of this stuff together. I mean,
and they're also additional just basic tips in terms of
(28:04):
limiting caffeine, sticking to a routine, if you take naps
no more than fifteen minutes otherwise it actually makes you
more tired, um, and catching up on sleep on your
days off. But again, I mean, if you have kids
in the picture, and especially if you don't have a
partner spouse in the home as well to pitch in,
(28:27):
then I mean, I can't imagine. I can't imagine juggling
all of this and and reading about these moms on
the night shift only hammered home to me how incredibly
devoted these women were to being the best moms that
they could possibly be, because I can't fathom that kind
of schedule on top of responsibility for little ones or
(28:52):
even bigger ones, anyone that is not me, even my dog, yeah,
my my sister in law. I don't know. What her
schedule is now, But she's an e OUR nurse and
forever she worked the seven pm to seven am shift. Um,
but I think she worked like only three or four
days a week because there were such long shifts. Yeah,
there was. There was an overnight pharmacist that we read
(29:13):
about who worked seven days on seven to seven I think,
and then seven days off. So I could see something
like that where you have a long, long enough time off.
I think this happens a lot too with like E
M T workers. You have enough time off to where
you can't actually catch up on your sleep. But I
just wonder, I mean, and I don't know, I just
(29:33):
wonder if that's better or worse. My mother is a
flight attendant who flies to Germany every month, and you
know that's enough to get your whole sleeping schedule out
of whack. And when she comes home, it's Mom, I
love you. She's not right for like a day or
two because she still has to she's getting reacclimated to
Eastern Standard time after being in Germany, and then a
(29:55):
week later she'll go out again and repeat the process.
And you know, while she hasn't had any of the
significant like specifically cancer effects that we've talked about here.
I mean, it's it's it's not good for you to
be messing with your sleep cycle so much. Right, So
then the question is, well, what do you do because
some people have to have these jobs. These jobs are
(30:18):
not going to go away. These jobs are very much needed,
especially in a global economy. So how are we going
to make sure that we keep night shift workers healthy? Well,
I think it needs to be recognized as the important
health and life factor that it is. And and in
one of the sources we read, they talked to a
consultant who works for a company called us I think
(30:38):
it's just called Circadian or something like that, where their
whole entire purpose is to help equip companies to become
part of the twenty four hour global workforce. And so,
in my limited opinion, I mean, it might take having
a company like that, or a group of consultants like
that go into these companies and be like, here's how
you have to treat your employees. Here's what you have
(31:00):
to give them or allow for them to do. Give
them these bright, special full spectrum lights. But I mean,
in reality, that's that's great. If you're in a call center,
if you are at a corporate job, if you're working
the night shift at a newspaper for instance. Um, but
how realistic is that if you are part of a
custodial staff, you know. I mean there's there's steps that
(31:21):
can be taken, for sure, but I think the big
first step is just to realize what a horrific health
effect that working the night shift can have. Yeah, And
I think it also is imperative that more visibility is
put on these workers because for you know, the majority
of us working daytime shifts jobs, they are they're invisible,
(31:47):
and we kind of take their services for granted in
many ways because we come back to the office after
you know, full night's sleep and look that someone took
the trash out, and we go to you know, we
go to dinner and look someone is cleaning our dishes.
We don't have to do that. So there's yeah, there's
there's a lot more attention that needs to be paid.
And and if anything, this these health findings are so
(32:10):
arresting that it's gotten a lot of media attention. So hopefully, um,
it will continue to get media attention. Well, I mean
I feel like it event ties into things we've talked
about on the podcast before and if you want to
go broader in terms of better flex hours and child
care options for families, because God, if you, no matter
what your job is, blue collar, white collar, whatever, if
(32:33):
you had super secure, affordable childcare, then maybe you wouldn't
have to work the graveyard shift, right or if you do.
There was one overnight daycare center that we read about
in all of the the articles that we read researching
for this podcast, just just one, just one, and that
wasn't and people were very uncomfortable even with the you know,
(32:55):
a lot of parents treated it as a last resort.
They don't want to, you know, have other people watch
shame your kids while we sleep. And then when you
get off work, let's say it two in the morning,
you still have to go wake your kid up at
two i am and drag her home, you know, so
you're waking your kid up. So yeah, it's challenging, and
I have a feeling there are probably some night shift
workers listening. I know that we've heard from some night
(33:16):
shift folks before who listened to podcasts to get them
through that those quieter, darker hours. So first of all,
if you are working the night shift, this is our
shout out to you, and we also would love it
if you shouted us out. What is it like working
the night shift? What kind of job do you work,
why do you work it? And have you seamlessly integrated
(33:38):
it into the rest of your life or have you
experienced these kinds of health disruptions, schedule disruptions. Let us
know what it's like on the night shift. Mom Stuff
at how Stuffwork dot com is our email address. You
can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast and messages
on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages to
share with you right now. So I've got a letter
(34:03):
here from Laura in our episode about whether cat calling
is harassment, and we have been getting so many letters
on this one. So Laura, right, I just finished listening
to your episode on cat calling on my drive to
work this morning. I'm a Midwestern transplant to a Southern
city and work as an engineer what at Senfield in
a manufacturing facility in a small southern town. As an
(34:26):
educated female Yankee, I often feel out of place. While
listening to the episode, I was thinking back on instances
when I may have been cat called. I couldn't think
of a single instance where I had been particularly rattled,
but definitely felt like strangers have told me to put
a smile on my face. But then, while walking back
to my office from the manufacturing floor just a few
(34:46):
minutes ago, a male shop employee that I don't know
told me to quote smile. There's no need to look
so gloomy. Unfortunately, my instant reaction when people talk to
me is to usually smile, so I grinned immediately and
he looked please. After I'd processed what he had said,
I scowled and stalked off. I usually do my morning
rounds with a male engineer, but he wasn't able to
(35:07):
join me this morning, so I was by myself for
a change. We've walked past the same person nearly every morning,
and he's never made any inappropriate remarks when I was
with someone else. Do you have any suggestions for how
I should have better handled the situation. A major part
of my job is to improve communication and trust between
the engineering department and the manufacturing floor, so I've always
(35:29):
tried to be very neutral in my exchanges with everyone
at work. This was not an instance that I felt unsafe,
just annoyed. I don't think it would be worth the
confrontation to go back to the employee and tell him
he was out of a line. But I definitely want
to be prepared the next time. So that's a great question,
(35:49):
especially when it comes to the whole smile thing, because
it seems so benign and yet as someone, I mean,
I I can relate. I've been told to smile and
it was the last thing I wanted to do at
that moment. It was infuriating. But if you're in a
management position, and especially if you why you know, you
(36:12):
have a communications kind of role, what do you do?
He said, smile? There's no need to look so gloomy.
Maybe she could have just said I'm not gloomy. I'm
just doing my job and then smile, yeah, Or I'll smile.
Keep doing your job and I'll smile or something. Keep
doing a great job and I'll smile. Yeah, I'll smile
(36:34):
when you keep doing your job. Yeah. I think it is,
especially in a situation like this in the workplace, and
especially being in a management position, it might be one
of those sort of what is it catch a fly
with honey, That's not how the clichet goes, But you
know what I mean, Like, I don't I think you're right.
I mean, if you turned around and tried to confront
him about it, probably not a good idea, but but yeah,
(36:58):
keeping the focus on the work instead of maybe calling
someone out for their inappropriate I mean, obviously there are
different types of inappropriate behavior, but in this instance, I
think keeping the focus on just the work and saying
something to the effect of, um, I'll smile when you
get the job done. Yeah, and maybe you can even
said to in in response to smile, there's no need
(37:19):
to look so gloomy. Could have said, well, there's no
no need for you to worry about my facial expressions.
And I think that's a great one. Yeah. So hope
that helps Laura, and keep doing what you do. And lady, Okay,
I have a letter here from Cliff, who just recently
started listening to our podcast. Kristen Hey Cliff, and Cliff says,
(37:39):
as I do the mundane computer processing that my job requires,
I find the listening to your podcast makes my day
go faster and once in a while I actually learned something.
One other thing. I am male. This wouldn't normally mean much,
but to understand what follows, it probably helps to know
this recently, I was listening to your podcast. Is cat
calling harassment at work? I was interrupted by my team
(38:00):
leader with an unrelated question, and after I answered her question,
the conversation continued. I mentioned what I was listening to,
and then I found it really interesting. Seems I'm always
promoting the podcast nowadays. Her reply stunned me when she said, oh,
people complaining about that again. I asked her what she meant,
and she said, those guys are only complimenting the girls,
and these women should lighten up. I proceeded to offer
(38:22):
some of the examples your podcast presented, such as the
two thousand five event you sided where a man was
masturbating on the street in front of the woman he
was harassing. She said, that was, of course wrong, and
he deserved whatever punishment he ultimately received, but that was
certainly a rare case. Most men who do the cat
calling are only trying to give the girls a compliment,
she said, I let the subject drop at this point.
(38:43):
I bring this up because it is evidence to me
that this isn't just men who need to be made
aware of how this harassment demeans the victim. There are
a lot of women who just seemed to not get it.
Either nuff said, keep up the good work because I'll
be listening. So thank you, Cliff. I hate your story,
but I I really appreciate you you sending it to us. Yeah,
(39:03):
and I absolutely agree that this is not just an
issue of educating men. It's an issue of educating everybody.
And that's usually the case with most of the socio
cultural gender topics that we talk about, where it's it's
not just women pointing a finger outside. We gotta preached
our own choir as well. So keep the letters coming, everybody.
(39:26):
Mom stuff at how stuff Works dot com is our
email address and to find links all of our social
media as well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts,
including this one. There's one place to go, and it's
stuff Mom Never Told You dot com For more on
this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff
(39:48):
Works dot com
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