THE PHONE IN THE HOME: AMBIGUITY, CONFLICT AND
CHANGE
Dr Leslie Haddon
School of Cultural and Community Studies
Arts B
University of Sussex
Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QN
UK
Paper presented at the COST 248 Workshop:
‘The European Telecom User’.
April 13-14th 1994 Lund, Sweden
The domestic telephone has only comparatively recently been re-discovered by social
scientists. The previous neglect may well reflect the fact that within households the phone
remains an invisible, taken-for-granted object - when asked to list the technologies in their
home, our research shows that many people simply forget that the telephone is there, even if
it is in regular use. That neglect may also reflect the way in which the basic phone and
perhaps phone use has changed relatively little and relatively slowly over a long time period.
However, innovations relating to the domestic phone over the last 15 years together with the
prospect of more developments in the pipeline are adding to the pressure to reflect upon the
role of the phone in the home.
Although histories of the telephone’s development have been in circulation for some time, it
is only recently that we have witnessed the beginnings of a literature discussing social
dimensions of the domestic phone. To date, most social scientists have concentrated on the
basic phone rather than some of the newer telecoms products and facilities now available.
Much, though not all, of this work has, at times rather descriptively, focused on questions
such as demographics and patterns of phone use, the functions of the phone, attitudes to the
phone and styles of interaction on the phone (Fielding and Hartley, 1987)
In addition to these various classifications of usage, research on gender and the phone has
perhaps gone furthest in exploring some of the meanings which this technology can have in
the home. Feminist writers have not only noted distinctions between male and female styles
of phoning (i.e. ‘social/intrinsic’ versus ‘functional/ instrumental’ uses of the phone - Moyal,
1989) but have emphasised how much social phoning supports women’s role of maintaining
links with the wider family as well as enabling them to sustain networks of contacts with
other women (Rakov 1988; Moyal 1989). In other words, such analysis links phone
behaviour to gendered social relations, i.e. to both domestic responsibilities and relations
with others outside of the home.
The Sussex research upon which this paper is based aimed to explore the various ways in
which the telephone was given meanings and roles in the home - and was also sometimes the
source of anxieties and conflict. In other words, we aimed to go beyond the details of
subscription, acquisition of equipment or patterns of usage to explore the telephone as a
cultural object, to chart its place in everyday life and how people’s experience of the
domestic phone can change over time. At this stage in our work, the empirical material has
only been partially analysed. Hence, these preliminary comments, supplemented by
examples, are meant indicate some of the frameworks, levels of analysis issues which might
be utilised and issues which might be addressed in future research.
In one sense, many of the examples given in this paper inevitably touches upon some themes
which are likely to be familiar from personal experience and industry folklore. Nevertheless,
they are intended address some of the dimensions of the phone’s role in the home which have
sometimes been neglected in the literature: for example, the interaction amongst household
members concerning phone use, the regulation of the technology, and strategies employed to
control the phone where its presence leads to problems or disrupts family life.
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The UK Research
This project was initiated at Brunel University in West London, where Professor
Silverstone’s team looked at a range of information and communication technologies (ICTS)
in the home. In addition to the phone and supplementary telecoms technologies and services,
this research examined TV, radio, computers and interactive games technologies. That first
three-year phase developed the initial conceptual framework and carried out extremely indepth studies with 20 households, experimenting with a wide variety of methodologies
(Silverstone, R. 1991; Silverstone, Hirsch, and Morley, 1992). This work located these ICTs
within the whole culture of the home and its domestic politics, while being sensitive to key
dimensions such as gender, class and age.
A further three-year extension of that work, which is currently reaching its conclusion, has
been conducted at Sussex University. Each year, in-depth qualitative case studies focused on
a different target group: respectively, teleworkers, lone parents and the recently retired.
These foci enabled us to examine, respectively, the effects of changes in the relationship
between home and work, differences and change in household composition and change over
the life cycle. Of these studies, the telework material has been furthest developed (Haddon
and Silverstone, 1992 and 1993), in large part because such a radically new way of working
gave rise to a range of new issues around the home’s ICTs.
In the studies of individual households we wanted to appreciate the social context in which
ICTs were located. Adult members of the 20 or more households which participated each
year filled out detailed diaries of their activities over the course of a week. They were
subsequently interviewed on two occasions for a total of between 3-6 hours. Informal
questions elicited information on a wide range of past experiences and contemporary
domestic life. For example, we asked questions about their biography and memories of ICTs,
transitions in their life, current domestic routines, financial circumstances and patterns of
purchasing, social activities both inside and outside the home and the relationship with
kinfolk and other social networks. Of course, we also asked numerous questions about the
use and meaning of ICTs and how these had changed over time. The following discussion
groups together some of themes which emerged in relation to the all ICTs in the UK,
including the phone.
Ambiguity
The fact that the telephone is an ambiguous object might seem surprising given the near
universal desire for this technology. Indeed, in our research nearly everyone gave it a high
priority, often saying that nowadays they would find their everyday life very difficult without
a phone. Even where it was rarely used, the reassurance of its presence and that fact that it
allowed people to be ultimately contactable if need be were important justifications for
having a phone. Nevertheless, some ambivalence was expressed. For instance, some people
remained nervousness about communicating via this medium - only doing it when they had
to. And this was by no means an experience exclusive to the ‘older’ elderly who had grown
up without phones. But more often ambivalence about the phone related to the degree to
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which people felt they had control over the technology - in particular in relation to its
potential intrusiveness and the fear of escalating costs.
Intrusiveness
There has been some discussion in the telephone literature of ‘problem calls’ (Doderick and
LaRose, 1992) - i.e. calls ranging from unsolicited telemarketing to obscene messages . In all
three studies, reference was also made to the various unwanted phone calls from
acquaintances whom our participants wanted to avoid. But even apart from these, there are
times when people find incoming calls in general to be intrusive upon their privacy and
peace. Given the feminist writings on way women network over the phone, it is worth
adding that this is not just a male response to the outside world invading the haven of the
home. Women too, especially those who are major users of the phone for work or at work,
sometimes suffered from ‘phone fatigue’. They wanted a break from the demands of the
telephone and sometimes wished to devote their attention to interactions with others in the
home: for instance, with partners or children. Incoming calls could also interfere with the
routines of the home, coming at unsociable or simply inconvenient times - such as late at
night or early in the morning, or when parents were getting children off to school or nursery
or getting them to bed -a situation more likely to be mentioned by women. The other side of
this particular coin was illustrated in the study of the elderly, who, were usually willing to be
contacted at most times but were sometimes apprehensive about choosing a time to call their
adult children because they saw them as leading busier lives.
The whole issue of the disruptiveness of calls arose most acutely in the study of teleworkers
for a variety of reasons. Here, there was a frequent assumption by employers or clients that
because teleworkers were home-based that they could be contacted about work issues outside
of normal core hours - i.e. at evenings and weekends. While this was not deemed to be a
problem by some, for others it was disruptive to family life: home was no longer a haven
from paid labour. On the other hand, when their friends did not appreciate that the even if
they were at home, teleworkers still had to get through their workload, incoming social calls
to teleworkers could be a distraction from that work. In addition, the sheer volume of calls
into the home often increased with the arrival of telework, meaning that other members of the
teleworker’s household could occasionally feel pestered by the phone.
Strategies for controlling such intrusiveness have been documented in previous research (e.g.
Doderick and LaRose, 1992) but it worth emphasising from our own work that these tactics
often rely on social as much as technological solutions. The implication is that we need to be
as sensitive to the regulation of the telephone and the understandings that are built up about
its usage as to the new services and equipment that phone users adopt. For instance, one
common approach was to attempt to lay down rules about contactability so that calls were
steered to certain times: which was successful to greater and lesser extents in different
households. Some of our participants also employed crude but effective means of making
themselves unavailable: e.g. by unplugging the phone or turning the ringer off so that calls
could not be heard. Leaving the phone off the hook was another strategy, although the
telecom companies in the UK sends a loud signal down the line to deter this. However, one
innovative participant in our research refused to be defeated by this arrangement and resorted
to the low-tech solution of burying the handset in cushions to suppress this noise.
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Other solutions required more expenditure. Call-barring on incoming calls was sometimes
used, but more usually people resorted to some form of buffer so that they could control the
timing of messages, to delay them, without losing them. By far the most common solution in
this category was the answering machine, . For example, answering machines were not just
used to capture the messages left when people were out of the home - in many cases they
were in operation even when the teleworkers, or others, were at home but did not want to be
disturbed. Here, then, we have an interesting case of a technology which is advertised as a
means of enabling contactability or reachability being used sometimes to actually control that
contactability. Alternatives included answering services, and some teleworkers resorted to
making themselves only contactable by fax machines and E-Mail - where they could chose
when to respond. Such solutions enabled households to maintain a the boundary between the
sanctuary of home and the outside world.
Cost
The cost of using the phone was usually the other dimension which required some control.
This was less of problem in affluent households with few economic worries, but was an issue
for more than just the poor. Many middle-class households had limited disposable income,
since they had committed they money to high mortgages or children’s private education.
Such lifestyle choices meant they still had to be careful about their expenditures. The case of
self-employed teleworkers also highlighted situations where future income was sufficiently
uncertain that some caution with money was necessary.
Nevertheless, concern about costs was most acute among those on low incomes, namely the
lone parents and some elderly living solely on state benefits - the very people for whom the
phone could be vital for emergencies or as a social lifeline when they felt trapped in the home
in the evenings. This worry lead to outgoing calls being steered to times when cheaper
tariffs operated when possible - although ringing up various state agencies and the council
about problems related to living on a low income generally had to be done in the daytime.
Calls were also rationed, both in terms of the number of calls and their length. Often,
children’s use was rationed, with the instigation of rules about what counted as necessary and
unnecessary calls. In such households, children obviously had less access to a
communications resource than many of their peers and in this sense experienced some sense
of disadvantage. Despite such measures, the phone bill often remained a source of worry,
always threatening to get out of control.
Conflict
Domestic conflict around phone use exists primarily because the telephone is a communal
resource, with different demands being made on it by different household members. Such
conflicts can centre around control of what other household members can access via the
phone - as when parents showed concern about their children’s secret use of premium price
sexlines. Young children’s access, in particular, sometimes has to be monitored since they
can treat phones as playthings. Examples of such mis-use from our research include children
turning the ringer off so that parents are not aware of incoming calls or else children calling
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random numbers, including the emergency services. At times there are privacy issues at
stake, as some household members, and this is more likely to be teenage children, want to
make private calls while their parents may want to know whom they are calling. We have
found instances of tensions between partners over the acquisition of extra telecoms
equipment using joint household financial resources - for one teleworker buying extra
extensions and handsets was deemed to be a ‘necessary’ expenditure for telework while his
wife expressed strong reservations about whether this was worthwhile. While there can be
conflict around all these issues, the most frequent sources of irritation and negotiation seem
to be around cost and the appropriation of the phone, to which we now turn.
The size of bills can become a very serious concern indeed either in the case of communal
living arrangements or when families have other people sharing their household: such as
lodgers or au pairs. We have picked up the horror stories of huge bills arriving due to illicit
use of the phone. Bills can also be an issue between partners, and one which has been
exacerbated sometimes be the innovation of itemised billing. More frequently, it is a source
of heated debate between parents and teenage children over the latter’s social calls - more so
when money is tight.
But it is not just the cost of calls which can be a source of discontent. Where one household
member appropriates the phone, blocking the phone with their frequent or long calls, this
denies access to others. This problem was at it’s most acute in the case of those teleworkers
who had only one phone line. Here, such social calls blocked potentially important incoming
work-related calls. We could, of course, extrapolate and anticipate similar problems could
occur not just in the case of work messages but wherever other household members need to
be contactable - e.g. because of their involvement in activities outside of the home. The other
point about the appropriation of the phone returns us again to the theme of intrusiveness.
Other household members can resent the number of calls coming in for someone who is at the
heart of social networks and also resent the fact that they have to take on the role of secretary,
forever answering calls and taking messages for that person.
Once again, strategies to handle these conflicts entail both social and technological solutions.
Persuasion only works some of the time, but there are plenty of examples of parents who
managed to ration their children’s calls, limit them to low tariffs or succeed in defining
‘necessary’ and ‘unnecessary’ communications. Where such persuasion does not work, the
issue can remain on on-going sore point or else parents resort to other strategies such as
charging children for calls or deducting pocket money to pay for their calls. In one case,
exasperated parents ended up installing a second line for their children, whose usage the
children then financed between themselves: with the result that this displaced any
disagreements so that they now took place amongst the children rather than between the
parents and children.
Another tactic involved attempting to control the location of the phone. One variation
involved not allowing children to have access to extensions or cordless phones, and placing
the main phone handset in a relatively ‘public’ place within the home, such as a hall. This
meant that calls could be more easily monitored. Alternatively, parents have tried to make
the location as uncomfortable as possible - although determined teenagers appear to be able
to settle down to long phone calls even in the most awkward of spaces. Some parents have
utilised call barring - stopping either incoming or outgoing calls at some points of the day, or
allowing only local calls. And even sabotage has been resorted to, as one parent got so
frustrated that he disabled his daughters phone so that she could not make outgoing calls
from her bedroom. However, she managed to sometimes evade that control by initiating calls
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on the main phone and then moving to the bedroom phone to continue her conversation at
leisure.
Change
The final concern of this paper relates to three different form of changes:
a) innovations and new telephone options
b) broader societal trends and
c) the evolving circumstances of households
Changing Telephone Options
British homes have seen a huge range of changes in the telecoms industry over the past 15
years with the liberalisation and then privatisation of British telecom, competition from
Mercury, phone lines packaged with cable, the greater availability of handsets and
extensions, the proliferation of features on phones and of phone services, and the promotion
of cordless phones and mobile telephony. This relatively sudden change has had some
influence upon the experience of the telephone. For example, we have already noted how the
availability of some innovations such as the answerphone can enable people to have more
control over the phone. Examining each of these developments would constitute a whole
research agenda, beyond the scope of our work to date but the subject of a future project we
hope to conduct. However, it is possible at this stage to signal at least some of the issues
which might be worthy of further attention.
1) The first observation is that it is not only telecoms suppliers who innovate in terms of
providing new telephone opportunities. The radio phone-in, for example, has created a whole
new form of messaging but was initiated by the broadcasting industry. It is also worth adding
that other industries’ innovations can have repercussions for phone use - as when teletext
provided an alternative source of information to that which could be provided as a phone
service.
2) Another area of study concerns the route by which innovations enter the home. For
example, specialised phones and alarms are sometimes bought for elderly parents as presents.
In our study of teleworkers, a range of telecoms technologies such as answerphones, cordless
phones, mobile phones and faxes entered the home because of work, although these
technologies were sometimes later used for social purposes.
3) The availability and falling costs of some supplementary telecoms technologies has
enabled the multiplication of phone technologies: as with the second or third extension and
handset, second telephone lines, second answerphones etc. In terms of their meaning for
household members, these can entail changes as significant as the adoption of totally new
technologies. For example, extensions can enable more privacy for individuals within the
home - but as we have seen in the section on conflicts with teenage children, this also means
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that some phone users can more easily evade the surveillance of others household members.
Extensions, especially into areas such as the bedroom, can also deliver a greater sense of
security or of being contactable in case of emergencies - as was made clear both by our
female lone parents and the young elderly who worried about the health and security of their
own ageing parents. This example also shows how it is important to pay attention to the
consequences of more mundane innovations as well as more high-profile technologies and
services.
4) One last issue to explore is the process of discovering use and finding out the implications
of a technology or service after it has been acquired or made available. For example,
cordless phones are often bought for the convenience of being able to use them around the
house and garden. However, a number of mothers mentioned that whereas their young
children had learnt that they could more easily misbehave when they parents went were tied
to a phone handset which was based in a fixed location, the cordless phone enabled parents
to move and follow the children around, monitoring them which they were holding a phone
conversation. One or two people had also found that having a long extension lead which
even reached into the bathroom and toilet opened up whole new telephonic experiences.
Changing phone use in the longer term
A second form of change has been in the way POTS - the ‘plain old telephone system’ - is
used and how the nature and pattern of messages has developed over the last few decades.
For example, we had some glimpses of generational effects from our current research. Many
parents observed that their children who had grown up with the phone were much more at
ease with it then they had been at that age. They also identified teenage phone chatting as a
phenomenon of more recent decades. When some of our elderly samplewere younger, they
remembered phones as being regulated much more strictly, and only being used for more
formal business. That said, some of those in our retired cohort who came from wealthier
backgrounds noted that they used to regularly chat on the phone to their peers when they
were young in the 1940s - so it is not an entirely new practice and already existed in some
social circles.
Turning to another form of social change, some of the retired sample also noted how they
used the phone more now because of the dispersal of both their relatives and friends. While
this is in part a life-cycle phenomenon, it also reflects some broader changes in mobility
patterns and, for example, the break up of some traditional working class communities such
as those of London’s East End. One further example of a potential shift over time is in
relation to shopping. A number of our participants reported that they increasingly used the
phone to check whether what they wanted was at shops before going to them - suggesting
that the use of the phone as an adjunct to shopping might become at least as significant as the
idea of teleshopping.
Changing household circumstances
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The final form of change which bears examination is how the changing circumstances of
households affects both phone use and interest in supplementary telecoms equipment and
services. Such change can not only lead to the introduction of new telecoms technologies but
also change the experience of the phone which is already present. In other words,
technologies such as the phone can have a ‘career’ in the home in their own right, where
there is a transformation of not only of usage but of status over time.
For example, the move to teleworking meant substantial changes in the experience of phones
for many of the participants in our study. It has already been noted that teleworking
sometimes provided the rationale for introducing a new telecoms infrastructure into the home
which then found other uses besides a work role. But it was not only the arrival of new
technologies which is important. Sometimes rules and understandings about existing
technologies need to be re-negotiated. For example, by no means all households could justify
separate work lines. Apart from the issue of social calls blocking work calls, some household
members, usually children, were sometimes banned from answering the phone at certain
times of the day, or else had to learn to improve their phone manner when taking messages.
Since teleworkers were often conscious of the need to create an image of themselves as
competent workers who worked in a convivial environment that would not hinder the work,
they were also in the business of impression management. Having children shouting in the
background, or a loud TV playing could shatter this image. Hence, the phone had to be
relocated in quieter spaces or else the general sound regime of the house be more tightly
regulated. Lastly, the change in the time structure of the day - when teleworkers worked, met
family and social commitments or took their leisure, could influence the whole pattern of
telephone calls.
The lone parent study provides another illustration of a change in circumstances, especially in
cases where parents split up with partners to form new households. The trauma of breaking
up itself sometimes meant that the phone became a psychological lifeline to outside support
networks. Where that break-up had been difficult, the phone could now enable these lone
parents to control communication with their ex-partners, retaining some contact but
distancing themselves from their ex-partners by avoiding difficult face-to-face discussions.
A considerable amount of contact between children and the departed parent - usually the
father - was now managed over the phone. And the phone became an important tool for
managing the logistics of moving children who now spent time in two households.
In addition to these examples of changes in circumstances, changes over the life cycle of the
household can have a bearing upon the role of the phone. Quite simply, at different points in
their biographies, people can use the phone in different ways and feel the need for telecoms
facilities which they did not desire at another point in time. For example, from the period
when people reach their late middle age and early retirement their own teenage or adult
children usually leave home, thus generating a whole new pattern of phone contact. The
arrival of grandchildren can provide a further stimulus to such contact. At about the same
time, their own elderly parents now in their 80s and 90s, can require more attention, which
often stimulates more and regular phone calls and also the installation of new telecoms
equipment such as special phones or alarms. In addition to the phone needs generated by this
enhanced role of carer, even if at a distance, some ‘young elderly’ take on new roles with the
onset of official retirement including new paid jobs, informal or formal voluntary work,
educational activities and some sports. Not only can these entail new patterns of phoning but
sometimes much more organisational phoning in cases where the elderly volunteer their
efforts for administrative positions or attend committee meetings because they have the ‘free’
time and are looking for active, purposeful roles to replace work. This, however, is only one
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pattern of life after retirement. Others withdraw into the home, sometimes partly because of
mobility or other health problems. Lacking opportunity for face-to face contact with
inaccessible friends and relatives, the phone can become as social lifeline, just as it had for
the lone parents.
Conclusions
Some of the issues and themes discussed here would have relevance for the study of new
phone-based technologies and services. For example, if sections of the population are
already worried about the costs entailed by the phone, how much are these concerns going to
carry over into other telecom based pay-per-use services? When asked about future services,
some of our participants objected to the size of the phone bill that would entail - ultimately,
whatever you got via the phone, it was still ‘the phone bill’. Or if we take the example of
mobile phones, such technologies raise new questions about contactability and intrusiveness.
Although mobile phone users may want to be directly contactable some of the time, they may
well have to negotiate new rules about when they can be reached - and indeed, some already
use the buffer of answerphone services to control contactability. Meanwhile, if the telephone
can be intrusive in the private space of the home, under what circumstances can it be
intrusive in other, more public, spaces? Will we see ‘no mobile phone’ zones to complement
‘no smoking’ ones? To take a third example, if those concerned with impression
management, such as many teleworkers, want to keep control over the perception that is
being conveyed via the phone, then the videophone can actually undermine that control by
giving out information about a person’s appearance and surroundings that contradict the
image they are trying to convey. No wonder, then, that so many of our participants from this
group were dubious about consequences of videophone technology.
While the observations in this paper can be used to generate such questions, the main aim
was to indicated how much more can be involved in studying the domestic phone beyond
looking at the nature of phone messages or what the ability to communicate telephonically
can enable. In other words, what might we take in account when analysing the residential
phone as a cultural object, when analysing phone consumption? We certainly need to be
sensitive to issues of space, both in the sense of changing location of those outside the home
and the organisation and regulation of space inside the home. An example of the first case
was the effects of the dispersal of family and friends and of the second case, the location of
phones in public and private spaces within the home. We also have to be aware of the effects
on phone use of the more general organisation of domestic time - which changes at different
points in the life course and as home circumstances alter. Of course, involvement in social
networks and patterns of activity also alter over time and have a bearing on the role of the
phone. In effect, the argument based on our research is that it useful to have a considerable
amount of background information about the general organisations of a household’s daily life
to put phone use into context.
Although the phone is a widely desired and essentially uncontroversial technology - in
contrast to some people’s very negative reactions to television, for example - this paper has
also noted how research on the domestic phone needs to take into account the tensions which
this technology can at times raise, and the on-going need to maintain some control over the
phone. In addition, there are various ways in which the phone can be the source of some
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conflict of interest in the home, with attempts to regulate its use and resistance to such
efforts.
The final focus was on the different form of change - in terms of innovations and new
telephone options and perhaps a new ‘telephone literacy’ as people discover what they can do
with phones; in terms of the consequences of broader societal trends for the role of the phone;
and in terms of the effects of the changing circumstances of households. Evolving patterns of
adoption and use as well as new domestic tensions and strategies evoked by telecoms
technologies lie at the intersection of these different forms of change. One challenge for
researchers is to hold onto all these different strands well as disentangle their effects.
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