Seperating Gender and Work

I had began to start this paper by talking about a dad with supermom qualities until I realized that according to Microsoft Word’s spellchecker the word “superdad” is not in its dictionary; though, of course, supermom was. This mere fact signifies the role that men play or rather doesn’t play within the household. As Arlie Hochschild mentions in The Second Shift, the supermom is the mother that can balance work, home, and childcare; the superdad doesn’t exist. The assumption that the cultural climate in the United States is less hospitable to parents who put children first and has created a job culture that has expanded at the expense of family culture is valid because these families must “violate” historical attitudes and practices of the labor force, gender stereotypes within the labor force, and the ever changing “rules” of the job market.

Historically speaking men have always, and in some sense still, had the upper hand in society. The fusion of biological sex and gender (a social construction) has led to the identification with the categories man/woman and boy/girl. Since gender interacts with biological sex, meanings and roles have been attached to each gender. Marriage has helped reinforced this idea of a gender dichotomy and delegated which gender was responsible for specific duties. Just like gender, the division of labor has biological roots stemming from a woman’s capability to bear children and to breast feed them. Before the creation of milk bottles, women were the only ones able to “care” for children, particularly infants. The use of the word care here implies the following: (1) women provided one of the basic needs of survival (food) and (2) by providing this type of care women were giving the children nu...

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...mily life for her income is a much needed contribution to the household.

Even though it’s apparent that family dynamics are changing it’s even more noticeable that job culture isn’t. As the balance between public and private spheres becomes unstable, the responsibility is shifted to the supermom. The idea that the bulk of the weight is the duty of the mother or woman reinforces gender roles and further alleviates men from doing domestic work. This in turn makes it harder for men to put children first as they try to live out the breadwinner role and view their household contributions through monetary eyes. The modern job culture has managed to reprimand those who put children first by causing them to go against the historical attitudes and practices of the labor force, gender stereotypes within the labor force, and the ever changing “rules” of the job market.