Role Conflicts And Role Conflict

In “Nurses, fathers, teachers, mothers. Why do we devalue someone the minute they care for others?” Lily Cunningham interviews a university professor who examines the importance of those in caregiving roles. Anne-Marie Slaughter is an author whose book entitled “Unfinished Business” discusses the issues surrounding working parents, particularly women. The book discussed provides an outlook on struggles women encounter in the professional world. “If you are a woman who doesn’t have caregiving obligations, you’re earning somewhere between 92 and 96 percent on every male dollar. If you are a woman with caregiving obligations, you’re earning closer to 70 to 72 percent on the male dollar.” Slaughter believes that the problem isn 't work-life balance,

In particular, the discussion about the difficulties working parents with children face made me consider role conflict and role strain. When I read this article, it made me think about role conflict because this concept “arises among roles linked to separate statuses”, which is often the issue faced by professional women who are also in caregiving positions. A role conflict is when a person is expected to fulfill the duties of two contradictory positions. Role conflict seems unavoidable in modern day society with how many roles people now have to take on to thrive. Whereas role conflict requires two roles, role strain refers to “tension among the roles connected to a single status”. Many people may have trouble separating their work life from their home life, as often occurs with those who work from home. For those with children, it can often be difficult to completely separate their two roles. When one cannot meet all the demands of a position, "role strain" exists. For working parents, this means the introduction of a new position in their life (of parent), suddenly requiring them to juggle work and parenthood. Despite this dramatic life change, no adjustment is made in the expectations for performance at work, resulting in greater role strain. The concepts of role conflict and role strain can be used to help expand on the issues discussed through analyzing the sociological impact

Despite the fact that the number of roles available to women has improved, Slaughter believes that they still have a long way to go. In the interview, the author states “women are equal to men only as long as they are doing the work that men have traditionally done.” Therefore, in spite of everything that woman have fought for, men still hold the sociological advantage. A contributing factor to this phenomenon may be because employers want unencumbered workers, not workers who need to get home to care for children. Men are often perceived as unencumbered workers because they have wives who will pick up this second shift. Even if the professional woman has children, it is more common for them to take leave in order to care for the child. If their jobs pay less, then families lose less if women quit working. For women, this may mean putting their entire career in jeopardy, “… if you’re at the top and take time out to take care of others, you’re knocked off your leadership track.” Or it could mean giving up their position completely. “…if you are a woman in the middle class or a low-income woman and you take even a day or two off to care for others, you could lose your