The sweet smell of candied sweet potatoes and honey ham fill the house. You are just finishing up dinner when your husband walks in the door, “Honey, I'm home!" You greet him with a warm smile, a clean home, and an after-work drink of scotch. You call the children from playing with neighbors in the backyard and they begin to get cleaned up for dinner. You then all proceed to sit around the dinner table enjoying each other’s company and you exchange stories of your day ; Jimmy got an A on his math test ; Mary has met a boy and will be going on a date tomorrow night to the Hop; there is going to be a church bazaar this Saturday. Warm apple pie finishes the evening and the kids are sent up to bed while the two of you watch the evening news. This is a typical All-American evening from the 1950s. This was when children didn’t talk back and there were no “latch key kids.” So much has changed since then, children are glued to television screens and the latest video game system, dinner comes from McDonald's, and quality time with the family has become non-existent. Why? This is a domino effect of one thing, mothers working outside of the home. Seems like a radical assumption? Think again. Marriage I will start at the basis of the family, marriage. Divorce rates have a direct correlation with women who work for at least 35 hours per week. "Women working full-time are 29% more likely to get divorced than those who stay at home and raise children, according to new research" (Bentley). However, the same can not be said for men. "Women's work hours consistently increase divorce, whereas increases in men's work hours often have no statistical effect."(Noer, and Corcoran) . Marrying a career woman strains a marriage in more obvious w... ... middle of paper ... ...leo.org. N.p., 19 07 2010. Web. 12 Nov 2010. . Belkin, Lisa. "Calling Mr.Mom?." New York Times 21 010 2010, Print. Carvel, John. "Working mothers 'bad for children'." Guardian (2003): n. pag. Web. 12 Nov 2010. Carvel, John. "Working mothers have unhealthiest children, study finds." Guardian (2009): n. pag. Web. 12 Nov 2010. .  Hoffman, Lois. Child Development. 1. 32. Blackwell Publishing, 1961. 187. Print. (Mertens, Steven B.; Flowers, Nancy (May 2003). "Should Middle Grades Students Be Left Alone After School?" (PDF). Middle School Journal 34 (5): 57–61.
In older times, many women had to leave their job due to newly motherhood and having to care for their child, but that number has dropped significantly.
I read the article The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home by Arlie Hochschild. In this article, she talks about how women put more hours into the day by working and coming home and taking care of children and housework. She starts the article out by showing working mothers a picture of a successful women wearing a suit. In the picture, the women was holding a briefcase in one hand and a child in the other. She looks perfect in the picture. The working mothers that she showed the picture laughed and explained that is not how a working mother looks. She then interview different people to see what their outlook was on “how is it right for a mother of young children to work a full-time job, or how much a 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 “Don’t Marry Career Women,” Michael Noer claims that marrying educated career women is a recipe for disaster, while in “Career Women Do Not Make Bad Wives,” Stephanie Coontz claims that educated and professional women make better wives. Both authors make excellent arguments, but after reading each article it appears that the answer to whether or not wives should become educated and hold careers depends on the needs of each specific married couple.
Sharpe, D. L., Hermsen, J. M., & Billings, J. (2002). Gender differences in use of alternative full-time work arrangements of married workers. Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal, 31, 78-111.
Wang, Wendy, Kim Parker, and Paul Taylor. "Breadwinner Moms." Pew Research Centers Social Demographic Trends Project RSS. Pew Research. Social & Demographic Trends, 29 May 2009. Web. 18 Apr. 2014. .
The question of whether or not to stay home to raise children is one of the most debated issues of motherhood. Endless studies and tests have been perfomed, thousands of surveys have been distributed, and if one were looking for a personal opinion, they would have to look no further than the nearest mother to give them a biased look at raising children. But while the traditional views of mothers as housewives remain alive and well in some areas, the modern working mother has made a successful place for herself in our society, and continues to prove herself to be both a powerful mother and business professional. Although stay-at-home mothers are rewarded with the benefit of helping their child grow, the economic advantages of an extra income, the trivial accomplishments of stay-at-home moms, and the satisfactory and balanced lives of working mothers prove the point that being a working mother is a more beneficial option than staying at home.
In a society with the muajority of mothers joining or returning to the workforce, there is a growing body of research documenting the demands placed on these women and what can be done to help their transition into this new role. According to the United States’ Department of Labor, in the year 2012, 70.5% of mothers with children under the age of 18 were a part of the workforce; of these women 73.7% were employed full-time, working over 35 hours a week, and 26.3% were employed part-time, working less than 35 hours a week (United States Department of Labor, 2012). Given this information, it is becoming more important to further research how this new role as an employee affects the role of parenting and what can be done to help this transition. The intent of this paper is to compare the experiences of a working mother to the current research on the topic of working mothers. Moreover, this paper addresses the demands placed on working mothers as well as the factors that ameliorate their transition into this new role.
In a report by two Ivy League professors, it was found that from 1979 to 2012, the median family income rose by .4 percent, but the income among specifically married families rose at triple this rate (Lerman, Wilcox 11). In addition to their research into income growth the pair researched the difference in marriage premiums. Marriage premiums are the income difference between a married person and their single equivalent. According to the study, married men, compared to single men, made an average of $15,900 per year more, and more astonishingly, married couples who were both raised in traditional families made an average of $42,000 more than those who were unmarried and raised in non-traditional families (Lerman, Wilcox 3). This difference in income was also linked to the opportunities of higher education. In the same study, it was found that children raised in a nuclear family are more likely to receive higher education (Lerman, Wilcox 3). Children who are raised by a mother and a father living together are given more opportunities than children with single
Nonetheless, these situations entirely change nowadays. The equality between men and women in roles is very clear at the moment, thus women can work outside to earn money, while men share the household tasks such as cooking, cleaning, washing as well as caring for children. It can be clearly seen that women are independent from money, as they can earn money by themselves to support their living costs. Accordingly, the divorce rates have recently risen. Another reason to believe the recent increase in divorce rates is stress in modern living.
Winik, Lyric W. "The Demise of Child-Rearing." Public Interest 141 (2000): 41. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 July 2010.
mothers, “Began life with a plethora of associated disadvantages that seemed likely to thwart their development and success in later life.” (Furstenberg, 2003)
Today, in a vast majority of families, both the wife and husband have a job. Many working parents are under stress as they have to try to balance the demands of their work, children and relationship. Over the past 25 years, women's and men's roles have changed dramatically. In fact, the world of work and home are not separate, research indicates a profound impact on work and home life.
The women that lives in the home must prioritize and get up early and/or stay up late to make sure chores are done. There are 24 hours in a day and we must know how important it is for us to distribute all of the hours in a day toward our activities of daily living. The way we balance and how well we balance our responsibilities when it comes to work and family directly affects an individual’s quality of life. Balancing work and family helps people to manage stress more
Men and women are working harder than ever to survive in today's tough economy. It's a big challenge for low and middle class families to survive. To meet growing demands, it's getting difficult for families to depend on one income. To contribute to family income, mothers are coming forward and joining the workforce. Working mothers are the one who takes care of the family and work outside the home. They may be a single mothers or married mothers. Working mothers usually work to support their family financially. Some of the mothers work, just because they are more career-oriented. Working mothers may work part time or full time. Women are now the primary or only income source for 40% of US households with kids, according to a new Pew survey (Wang, Parker and Taylor, ch. 1). They play a major role in raising their family and doing household chores. There are many reasons that why mothers should work.