Examples Of Kinship Work And Family

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Recommended: Explain the concept of kinship

Trey Love
720054365
Exam 2
Kinship, Work and Family

When it comes to discussing gender roles within the home in the United States it is a safe assumption that majority of people would agree that the women would be considered the caregivers and the fathers would be considered the providers. While this is certainly not always the case, most people when asked would place these genders in the exact same role as mentioned earlier. It is clear that these two gender roles can be viewed as separate and exclusive; allowing each gender to perform different tasks to look after the well-being of their children. For example the idea of caregiving of children could be either considered providing income to support the child or physically nurturing the child while they are young. Most would assume that the father would fulfill the role as the provider by going to work and receiving income. The mother in turn will be seen as the caregiver in which she will provide for the immediate needs of the child and also nurture them. This idea of caregiving is pretty typical in the United States and the roles that each gender fulfills are clearly defined, but not all families share this same structure, especially families that live outside of the western world.
To go into more detail, the typical role of the father as far as childcare is concerned is usually to go to work so that he can receive the income to provide for his family. That’s not to say every family is like this but majority of people would consider this to be normal. Not only are males usually linked with providing income but they are also usually correlated with the act of discipline within the home. I think it’s safe to say that anyone who has ever heard these words “wait until your father...

... middle of paper ...

...nstead just being there for them.
The concept of what it means to be a father or mother within society is a very complex and difficult thing to identify as it changes from culture to culture. As we’ve learned, society in the United States tends to keep a very distinct and separate category for what is considered to be a mother or father. We then travel to Brazil and realize that sometimes those categories can be blurred when the women have different beliefs on how to deal with the death of an infant or even how children are to be cared for when they are away at work. Fathers on the other hand tend to stray away from actually caring or nurturing their children but instead consider childcare as providing funds for the family to survive. It is evident that each gender group has unique roles that it should fill however ones culture can have a huge impact as well.

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