Poverty, Women And Their Role In Society By Stephanie Coontz

Patricia Hyjer Dyk talks about poverty and how it complicates the family life. On the other hand, Stephanie Coontz focuses on how families have changed from the 20th century to the 21st century; focusing on the negative and positive aspects of both. Dyke doesn’t talk much about how the family system and the earning system has changed, while Coontz focuses on that; however, in both the authors’ articles, women and their role in the society are significantly covered.

According to Dyk, the family life has become complicated because of a number of stressors. These stressors include the difficulties that people face on a daily basis, in shape of physical, emotional and psychological needs. Moreover, while families have to maintain social relationships,

When Dyk is explaining poverty of the poor rural Southern Black Women, she also says that, “You will be encouraged by their strength and resiliency.” (Dyk178). This means that even though some women have to prostitute themselves and face domestic as well as community violence, they keep on trying to find different ways to earn, so that they can feed their children and give them a better life. Similarly, Coontz presents it in a different way and call it economic independence. One of the reasons why divorce rates are high now, is because women are economically independent because they are educated. They did used to earn in the past, but now they have control over their income and they don’t put up with things like men abusing them or domestic violence; this shows that women have become stronger economically and emotionally as compared to how they were in the past. Those who criticize women for working and not spending time with their children, Coontz states that, “Kids do better when their mothers are happy with their lives.” (Coontze98).

Men have changed as well; men didn’t used to think that children were their responsibility. If they didn’t want to give their child financial support, they would simply leave and they didn’t spend time with their children, if they didn’t want to. However, things have changed as now, men are required by the law to support their children financially even if they get a divorce. Moreover,

Coontz first talks about how child labor was common in the past; children were abused by their parents but no one batted an eye. The babies were given up for adoption, because they came from an unwed mother; such babies became troubled youth, who were encouraged to drop out of high school and were sold to prostitution. “In the 1950s, psychiatrists dismissed incest reports as Oedipal fantasies on the part of children” (Dyk 96). Now children are safer as compared to in the past. In the past, 11-year-old became gang members, 12-year-old were prostitutes and middle class wives abused drugs; some of it might still be true, but a lot has changed because of policies and women rights and child protection