As a child, I was often looked after a nanny because of my mother’s office workload. However, after a couple of years, I noticed that my mother quit her job to look after her two children. Initially, I thought it was because of work pressure. Growing up, I realized the real reason my mother quit her job. It was not because of work pressure, it was mainly because she did not want her children to be influenced by our nanny’s cultural background. In the same way, many children are being raised by maids or nannies that have a different cultural background from their employers. Since most parents in the UAE belong to the working class, they do not have the time to look after their children. Thus, they are forced to hire maids to look after their young children. Today, a lot of Emarati women are career oriented and hence, prefer to work outside home rather than looking after their household. This in turn creates a high dependency on maids to look after these Emarati children. The high occurrence of Emarati children being looked after non-Arab maids is a matter of grave concern as it influences the social and traditional values of these children.
Women in GCC countries have come a long way in society by establishing themselves in this urban society. At times, it is impossible for these women to manage their household duties. Sometimes, women are forced to work because their male counterparts do not earn sufficient incomes to make end meet. A lot of working mothers, thus, face the difficulties of looking after their young ones. However, most working class women prefer not to work at home because being a homemaker is a herculean task that requires a lot of skill and patience. Since women feel incapable of looking after their children,...
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...iders. This can pose as a serious problem as these children grow up to be dependent adults. I think that mothers should look after their young children. Since most of the development of a child’s mind happens during the earlier years of its life, mothers should not be replaced by maids or nannies during the initial years of the child’s life. Another alternative for working mothers would be that they should compensate for the lost moments by spending more time with her child after work. This way the mother can help in the preservation of the Emarati culture and society. Although values are constantly changing, there are some customs and traditions that have to be preserved. I believe that even the younger generation should play their part in understanding the importance of protecting their traditions so that they are not eradicated for future generations to follow.
Back then, it was unacceptable for a woman to take care of a man. However, that belief no longer exists because education is now deemed important. Having a woman help in the house can help meet the bills. Moreover, when kibar families started sending their daughters to school, the community no longer considered educating women a disgrace. The kibar are families whose wealth has been passed on for generations, who live together in a large complex, and share a budget (Meneley 1996: 64-65). In other words, kibar’s financial status can be the equivalent of rich people in the United States. As a result, of the community moving forward, as well as, their views towards kibar families, Zabidi women’ roles have transformed from a passive to an active role inside and outside the household.
Over long periods of time change is often inevitable. One such instance of change throughout history is that of family members and their role in not only the family, but also in society as a whole. Although changes can be seen in the roles of every family member, it can be argued that the role of women in the family, especially that of mothers, changed the most. Between the sixteenth century and the twentieth century, the role that mothers played in the family and in society changed greatly.
An argument has been raised that women have to be in charge of their home due to a man’s unwillingness to take over parenting responsibilities. That is quite beneficial to the women’s rights movement for the reason father’s helping a lot more time with children, building a stronger family relationship. Women have been subjected to fit into a certain image to suit society eyes for a long time, one of the main images being a stay at home mom nut they a capable of so much more. Females have more of a broader range of abilities than men do regardless of widespread idea that they are incapable of doing most activities.
In Letha Scanzoni’s book Men, Women, and Change: A Sociology of Marriage and Family she observes that a wife’s duty was “to please her husband...to train the children so that they would reflect credit on her husband”(205). Alongside the wife’s duties Scanzoni provides the husband’s duty to “provide economic resources”(207).These expectations have long been changed, since then these have become common courtesies. Today, we see less and less of the providing father, homemaking wife and respectable children family structure. We are now seeing what sociologists call the senior-partner/junior-partner structure. Women and mothers are now opting for the choice to work and provide more economic resources for the family. This has changed those expected duties of both men and women in a family scene. A working mother more or less abandons the role of homemaker, to become a “breadwinning” mother, and the father stays his course with his work and provide for the family. Suzanne M. Bianchi in her book Changing Rhythms of American Family Life comments on the effect of mothers working and the time they spend in the home. “Mothers are working more and including their children in their leisure time” (Chapter 10), now that ...
In Cameron MacDonald, “Shadow Mothers: Nannies, Au Pairs, And the Micropolitics of Mothering”, explores the concept of what is a “good mother” when it comes to a working mother and a hire caregiver for a child. Many women are choosing to work, which requires them to hire a caregiver for their children that sometimes can take the place of the mother. There as been a rise with the employment of nannies. Many individuals in the world view mothers that work outside the home as neglecting the duties as a mother. Which sometimes cause the caregiver to step up and become this “Shadow Mother” figure for the child. The theme of the book is surrounded around this ideology of what motherhood is supposed to be when it pertains to the family;
Many traditional women faced those same challenges of balancing the care of their children and household obligations while successfully satisfying their working husbands. “They took pride in a clean, comfortable home and satisfaction in serving a good meal because no one had explained to them that the only work worth doing is that for which you get paid”. (Hekker 277.)
What is a family without a parent? A good parent has the image of a provider. Parent is the one that meets all the material needs of the household. The one who worries that nothing lacks to his/her children. Works double shifts and weekends. A good parent has not yet met the present needs, when others have been created; he/she wears out feverishly. But yet he/ she still have time to have the unique experience of seeing the children grow. Having children is a major life-course event no matter what country people live. Children alter how men and women live and how they can allocate their time. Money is required to support children, and there is also more to do in the households with children. Historically, women have done the extra work chil-dren create. Who engenders ch...
...hange the outlook of these parents towards child labor. They should be made to realize that it is in the best interest of their child not to work as working may endanger the health and development of their child. In general, all the efforts must be directed towards the elimination of poverty. Thus, the world would be a better place for all children when they are brought up in a loving and caring environment and do not have to work and toil right from the early stages of their lives.
For centuries, women has always been dominated and controlled by men. Society has viewed women as the weaker gender and relied on men in order to survive. As time went on, things have changed, society has became more advance and so are women. During the World War II, women have increased their role in the society by replacing the men’s in the labor market and also increased their status in the society. Today, the growth of women in the work force continually to raise and so are their status. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the National Bureau of Economic Research, statistics have shown 58.1% of women were in the labor market in 2011 (USBLS) compared to employment rate during the war was 35% of women in the labor market in 1945 (Bussing-Burks). So what factors must have interested women to move from being housewife to the work force? Explanations can be derived through observations of their relationship in the household, their relative status in the society, and their rationality in decision-making.
Furthermore, women are still expected to give up their job pursuits for children. Men, when they get married tent to earn more power. However, women lose their power or even have to give up everything that they had been working toward their whole life to bear the child who will keep the lineage for her husband’s family. “It is not false that today, almost half of infants’ mothers are employed” and the percentage of working moms has risen much over recent years. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that it is unfair for women to have to be pressured by both work and children.
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.
Gender roles are extremely important to the functioning of families. The family is one of the most important institutions. It can be nurturing, empowering, and strong. Some families are still very traditional. The woman or mother of the family stays at home to take care of the children and household duties. The man or father figure goes to work so that he can provide for his family. Many people believe that this is the way that things should be. Gender determines the expectations for the family. This review will explain those expectations and how it affects the family.
Assaad R, Et al, “The Effect of Domestic Work on Girls Schooling: Evidence from Egypt”. Feminist Economics. 2010. 16 (1) 79-128. Print.
More and more women work outside and inside the home. The double demands shouldered by these women pose a threat to their physical health. Whether you are an overworked housewife or an exhausted working mother the chances are that you are always one step behind your schedule. No matter how hard women worked, they never ended up with clean homes. Housewives in these miserable circumstances often became hysterical cleaners. They wore their lives away in an endless round of scouring, scrubbing, and polishing. The increased strain in working women comes from the reality that they carry most of the child-rearing and household responsibilities. According to social trends (1996), women always or usually do the washing in 79 percent of cases and decide the menu 59 percent of the time. Picking up the children at school or doing grocery shopping are just a few of the many typical household-tasks a woman takes on every day.
Gender is defined as the scopes of genetic, physical, mental and behaviour characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and feminity, meanwhile inequality is defined as in a situation where there is an unfair situation or treatment in which certain people have more privileges or better opportunities or chances than other people. Thus, from the definition stated gender inequality refers to unequal or unfair management, treatment, or perceptions of persons or individuals are based on their gender. In a parallel sense, gender inequality can be said as the world in which there was discrimination against anyone based on gender. In this introductory, the general understanding of gender inequalities will be discussed further into three significant factors that influence the allocation of housework between men and women. Household chores can be classified as cleaning, cooking and paying bills. Division of housework serves as an important element in the continuation of the function of a family and it requires contribution from both spouses (Tang, 2012). However, current society’s perception on housework is based on gender, so the three major factors that influence the division of household chores within the couples are education level, economic resources, and time availability (refer to Figure1 in Appendix 1).