Social capital theorists have shown that some people do better than others in part because they enjoy larger, more supportive, or otherwise more useful networks. But why do some people have better networks than others? „Unanticipated Gains” argues that the answer lies less in people's deliberate "networking" than in the institutional conditions of the churches, colleges, firms, gyms, childcare centers, schools, and other organizations in which they happen to participate routinely.

The book illustrates and develops this argument by exploring the experiences of New York City mothers whose children were enrolled in childcare centers. “Unanticipated Gains” examines why scores of these mothers, after enrolling their children in centers, dramatically expanded both the size and usefulness of their personal networks, often in ways they did not expect. Whether, how, and how much the mothers' networks were altered – and how useful these networks were – depended on the apparently trivial but remarkably consequential practices and regulations of the centers, from the structure of their PTOs, to the regularity of their fieldtrips to amusement parks and zoos, to their ostensibly innocuous rules regarding pick-up and drop-off times. Relying on scores of in-depth interviews with mothers, quantitative data on both mothers and centers, and detailed case studies of other routine organizations (from beauty salons and bath houses to colleges and churches), “Unanticiapted Gains” shows that how much people gain from their connections depends substantially on institutional conditions they often do not control, and through everyday process they may not even be aware of.