We live in a thriving society, where job insecurity is widespread and seen as inevitable. Companies are transforming the organization of work.

While new working conditions provide gains for some workers, others are losing. Home life offers little comfort: While the diverse types of families are becoming more acceptable than ever, stability is increasingly lacking in our intimate lives.

In the Tumbleweed community, sociologist Allison Bogue examines the ways in which we address issues of commitment and flexibility at work and at home in a society where insecurity is the norm. Drawing on 80 in-depth interviews with three groups of parents who differ in their experiences about job insecurity and family structure, Pugh explores how people adapt to the new culture of insecurity and how these same adjustments affect what we can expect from each other.

In the face of constant insecurity both at work and at home, people build stronger walls between the two, expect little or nothing of their jobs and put almost all of their expectations for communication on their close relationships. Bogg says this trend often has an impact on making intimate life more difficult, re-producing the dynamics they are looking for.

Bogg shows that our experiences of insecurity are the way we talk about commitments, how we interpret them as obligations we will not tolerate or tolerate, and how we imagine what we owe to each other - in fact, how we can fabricate a fabric of connected life.