Everybody has a certain standard idea of how each gender should be viewed by the eyes of the world. Everybody has that one particular person or particular couple that sets those standard ideas for them. I have a particular couple that helps set my standards for femininity and masculinity. This couple happens to be my own grandparents. As expected, they are indeed old-fashioned; however, they also have a heavy touch of the new era of family relations that is lived by society today. That is the basic backbone of an impeccable standard for the concepts of masculinity and femininity. I consider to be genuinely close to my grandparents throughout my years of growing up. They have been a part of my life ever since I could remember. They were considered …show more content…
I consider my parents unbalanced due to the fact that my mother does a whole lot more than she should. Granted, my father has a well paying job, though it seems like that’s all he does compared to my mother. She, on the other hand, also has a decent paying job, but does everything around the house along with anything and everything for my younger brother and I. Frequently, I catch her doing yard work while my father is taking a nap on the living room couch. My mother never gets a break and my father doesn’t seem to mind that she does a lot of additional work. Their relationship isn’t the healthiest due to their lack of equality in the roles of masculinity and femininity. My grandparents’ way of using these gender roles is an equilibrium between the ancient era and the ultramodern era. This equilibrium doesn’t let the past slip away and become completely …show more content…
This certain condition she discusses throughout her essay is known as nostalgia. In her following essay she states the following quote, “People today understandably feel that their lives are out of balance, but they yearn for something totally new; a more equal distribution of work, family, and community time for both men and women, children and adults.” (Coontz 33). This particular quote is referring back to, of course the 1950s, or any other time before the 21st century. Back then, these gender roles of a married couple were significantly different due to the females having the role of the “housewife” and the males having the role of doing all the work that earns the money. Now, the female role involves having a paying job as plenteously as the male and isn’t all alone when it comes to cooking, cleaning around the house, or taking care of each child present. The modern generation does seem like the preferable option, however, the past should never be
In the 19th Century it was the Father who was known to be the one that worked, or the breadwinner for the family. However, after World War II we began to see a shifting in this as the women’s right’s movement took place and women began to get paid more for working and now entered the workplace regularly. This also occurred because of the great economic growth that was occurring at the time. So as things changed economically, the family progressed with it as well. However, not all was a positive progression as during this time we also began to see divorce increase as well as and increase in the number of women who became pregnant without having been married. These were huge changes and shifts in the family dynamics as the family became under pressure from the ever-changing economics and culture. With both parents entering the workforce, little supervision is given to the children. This was totally unlike the Leave it to Beaver family, the Cleavers in which only the father went to work and the mother had time to care for the kids. Having both parents work definitely cut into family time or time that in the past had been spent between parents and children. This gave way to leaving society an open door in having a greater impact on children then they would have received at home through the training and modeling of their parents. Because of their thinking to progress with the world around them and in the way the world was progressing in thought, it left an open door for their families to become impacted negatively by
May begins by exploring the origins of this "domestic containment" in the 30's and 40's. During the Depression, she argues, two different views of the family competed -- one with two breadwinners who shared tasks and the other with spouses whose roles were sharply differentiated. Yet, despite the many single women glamorized in popular culture of the 1930's, families ultimately came to choose the latter option. Why? For one, according to May, for all its affirmation of the emancipation of women, Hollywood fell short of pointing the way toward a restructured family that would incorporate independent women. (May p.42) Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday and Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, for example, are both forced to choose between independence and a happy domestic life - the two cannot be squared. For another, New Deal programs aimed to raise the male employment level, which often meant doing nothing for female employment. And, finally, as historian Ruth Milkman has also noted, the g...
Women in the sixties were very limited on what they did. A woman was expected to marry in her twenties, and then start a family with her husband. A woman’s main duty was to raise her children, and focus on the home. Author Stephanie Coontz states in her book about sixties women, “The women is not to expect a whole lot out of life. She is someone’s keeper she is her husband and her children’s keeper.” (Coontz, 42) Back in those days, the husband was the head of the household; he made all of the decisions. If there was a divorce to take place the wife would end up with nothing, all the husband’s earnings and property belonged to the husband.
As mentioned before, sociologists Coontz and Hochschild further elaborate upon Parsons and Bales’ concepts of the American family, but they mostly critique the idea of the male-breadwinner family. One of the main arguments Coontz and Hochschild present is the decline of the male-breadwinner family due to the economic changes of the United States and the arising social norms of consumerism. Because Parsons and Bales never considered how the changes throughout society would affect family, they believed the male-breadwinner family would continue to be a functional type of family for everyone. However, within her text, “What We Really Miss about the 1950s,” Coontz specifically discusses the major expense of keeping mothers at home as consumption norms...
In the article, “American Marriage in Transition”, Andrew Cherlin, a specialist in the sociology of families and public policy, writes about the changing division of labor in the latter part of the 20th century when he mentions “The distinct roles of homemaker and breadwinner were fading as more married women entered the paid labor force. Looking into the future, I thought that perhaps and equitable division of household labor might become institutionalized” (46). Cherlin puts it perfectly when he describes previous roles of a married couple and being the homemaker and the breadwinner. While women took care of their homes and made sure everything ran smoothly, men went out to earn money in order to put food on the table. These were the ways of the early 1900s. Cherlin goes on to mention how these roles were beginning to fade over time as more women left their homes to pursue jobs. As this trend has been present for nearly 100 years, Cherlin believes that it will continue on until the workforce is split as close to 50/50 as it can get. Cherlin goes on the speak about how designated roles are no longer relevant as when he states “Men do somewhat more housework than they used to do, but there is wide variation, and each couple must work out their own arrangement without clear guidelines” (46). In the early 20th century, men were expected to work and women were expected to take care of the home. These expectations were the basic guidelines that society had set for married couple. As Cherlin observes, these guidelines have slowly began to fade as men and women are no longer thought to have designated roles. Families have become more diverse in the sense that they can arrange their family roles without societal expectations and pressures getting in the way. This giant shift that took place throughout the
Before the 1890s, females had no other options but to live with their parents before marriage and with their husband after marriage. They couldn’t work and if they did their wage was way lower than men. Today many women chose their own lifestyle and have more freedom. They can chose if they want to get married and have kids or not. Coontz said “what 's new is not that women make half their families living but that for the first time they have substantial control over their own income, along with the social freedom to remain single or to leave an unsatisfactory marriage” (98). When women couldn’t work, they had no options but to stay with their husband for financial support. Working is a new way of freedom because they can choose to stay or leave their husband and make their own decisions. It’s not like women couldn’t work before, they could but they didn’t have too much social freedom like to get divorce or not have children. Their voice wasn’t as important as men. Most of the time men had to decide everything in the family and had control over the family. Coontz believe that today women have more control over their own life and they can choose however they want to live their life. Kuttner also agree that “most Americans, after all, believe women should not be consigned to the nursery and the kitchen” (122). Women used to be the mother who
The social perception of women has drastically changed since the 1950’s. The social role of women during the 1950’s was restrictive and repressed in many ways. Society during that time placed high importance on expectations of behavior in the way women conducted themselves in home life as well as in public. At home the wife was tasked with the role of being an obedient wife, caring mother, and homemaker. Women publicly were expected to form groups and bond over tea with a slice of cake. All the while government was pushing this idealize roll for women in a society “dominated” by men. However, during this time a percentage of women were finding their way into the work force of men. “Women were searching their places in a society led by men;
Family relationships in general are affected by historical events in an obvious way. Gender roles were not in dispute leading up to the 1960s, for wives and husbands were coworkers in the family activity. Children were welcomed as coworkers, and as a source of security in illness and old age. Family relationship changed in the 1920s due to people leaving the farms to work in urban centers. The Industrial Revolution is the reason (cause) the “Joint family” (Encyclopedia) unit broke down when workers moved to cities for jobs. The joint family included Grandparents, Aunts, Uncle, Cousins, etc.. At this time Progressives notice changes (effects) such as: courtship now dating, women smoking cigarettes, Jazz music, perfume, and dress styles, to name a few symptoms of coming change. These changes were not fads. When the ideas of the late 19th and early 20th century found support in business and government law and courts many people departed from the nuclear family ideal in the 1960s because a family relationship if close and loving became
In his novel Our Kids, Robert Putnam speaks on about how the 1970’s brought a change in family structures. The family structure of two strong parents and stigma against wedlock births and pre-marital sex quickly began to fade. Birth control and the feminist revolution contributed to these rapid changes. Women began to work and were “in part, freed from patriarchal norms” (Putnam 62). Rather than conforming the female gender role and staying home, having children, and putting food on the table, women actually started to become a part of the economy. They were not as focused on the idea of marriage and finding an economically stable husband to provide for them. The decrease in family structure quickly began to affect opportunity inequality among individuals. Those children with “neo-traditional” marriages are more like to receive a college degree rather than those without. Having a lower-income family reduces educational opportunities children have. While a child from a two-income family may attend a private school with resources that assist them in getting into ivy league schools, a kid from a single parent family may have to attend a public school where there is not even access to a computer lab or extracurricular activities. The lack of education these kids have contributes to their lack of opportunity to receive a college degree. Normally, a college degree allows individuals to receive a higher income than those who just have a high-school diploma. They simply are not exposed to the resources to succeed. This contributes to the inequality of opportunity, and ultimately, the inequality of income. Not only does the structure of family affect the outcome of children, but also the style of
A functionalist perspective suggests that our society is made up of interdependent parts and that gender roles support its social stability, balance and equilibrium. According to “The Sociology of Gender: Theoretical Perspectives and Feminist Frameworks” by Linda L Lindsey, “In preindustrial societies social equilibrium was maintained by assigning different tasks to men and women. Given the hunting and gathering and subsistence farming activities of most preindustrial societies, role specialization according to gender was considered a functional necessity.” During this time survival was a more difficult task and so men and women had to rely on each other to live. In today’s society, these roles have begun to shift and it is more common to find females providing while males stay at home, but for the majority, our original gender roles are still intact. The functionalist theory even in a contemporary society finds that the survival of the family unit relies on conservative gender roles. This theory is not realistic in today’s society because women are more motivated to be educated and career based, instead of devoting their life to motherhood. Lindsey claims, “ Such a divide is artificial and dysfunctional when families need to cope with the growing
Over the years, the roles of women have drastically changed. They have been trapped, dominated, and enslaved by their marriage. Women have slowly evolved into individuals that have rights and can stand on their own. They myth that women are only meant to be housewives has been changed. However, this change did not happen overnight, it took years to happen. The patriarchal society ruled in every household in earlier times and I believe had a major effect on the wives of the families. “The Story of an Hour”, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and Trifles all show how women felt obligated to stay with their husbands despite the fact they were unhappy with them
Throughout history, the roles of men and women in the home suggested that the husband would provide for his family, usually in a professional field, and be the head of his household, while the submissive wife remained at home. This wife’s only jobs included childcare, housekeeping, and placing dinner on the table in front of her family. The roles women and men played in earlier generations exemplify the way society limited men and women by placing them into gender specific molds; biology has never claimed that men were the sole survivors of American families, and that women were the only ones capable of making a pot roast. This depiction of the typical family has evolved. For example, in her observation of American families, author Judy Root Aulette noted that more families practice Egalitarian ideologies and are in favor of gender equality. “Women are more likely to participate in the workforce, while men are more likely to share in housework and childcare (apa…).” Today’s American families have broken the Ward and June Cleaver mold, and continue to become stronger and more sufficient. Single parent families currently become increasingly popular in America, with single men and women taking on the roles of both mother and father. This bend in the gender rules would have, previously, been unheard of, but in the evolution of gender in the family, it’s now socially acceptable, and very common.
During World War II, a lot of America women became Rosy the Riveter. When the war ended and the men returned home, they wanted to return to the traditional ways but many women did not want to give up their jobs and the supply of money they were making. This created a huge shift in the role of women in society that is still taking effect today (Griffiths et al., 2015). The traditional gender roles are still believed to work by some functionalists (Shepard, 1993). Famed sociologists Talcott Parsons and Robert Bales believed that “Families… require one adult in an ‘instrumental’ role and another adult in an ‘expressive’ role. The husband-father, who usually assumes the instrumental role, is responsible for family in the occupational, political, and economic situations. In preforming the expressive role, the wife-mother is concerned with maintaining relationships within the family, taking care of children, and providing emotional security for all family members”(pg. 300). Even though this may have worked at one time, many sociologists do not believe with Parsons and Bales; they think that modern society treats people not based on their role, but their abilities. Many sociologists believe that the functionalist perspective is outdated and only explains how gender roles came to be, not what they
I have three siblings along with three nephews. I have a younger sister, older sister, and one older brother. My older sister is the one that had my nephews. We all lived under the same roof until I moved out for college. My mother was more like my father in the house because my father was away working for us, and even though my siblings are her children, it seems that they 're her siblings too. It felt that I was the parent of my nephews and little sister because of the way I had to care for them because everyone else was working. I connect with my immediate family firmly. We always look out for each other because we mean so much to one another. I
When I am asked what is my role in my family, I am lost in thought. Firstly, because of a paradoxical relationship between my family which means that my parents only want to do their own things but they still live together, I hold the opinion that I am the protector of my family. Secondly, I have two younger male cousins which are younger twelve-year-old than me. I watch and accompany them when they grow up and I want to be a good example in my family.