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.
The first point that Farrell makes is that out of the number of working women that have families the majority tend to choose to work jobs that have more convenient and consistent hours. On the contrary, the majority of working men with families tend to choose to work longer and more sporadic hours. To back this up, Farrell reveals a statistic from the Rochester Institute of Technology that explains the motivation of men and women in the work force.
“How to Be a Mean Mother”. Mommy Has to Work. Global Influence. 8 May 2010. Web. 20 June 2010.
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
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.
Throughout history, the roles of men and women in the home suggested that the husband would provide for his family, usually in a professional field, and be the head of his household, while the submissive wife remained at home. This wife’s only jobs included childcare, housekeeping, and placing dinner on the table in front of her family. The roles women and men played in earlier generations exemplify the way society limited men and women by placing them into gender specific molds; biology has never claimed that men were the sole survivors of American families, and that women were the only ones capable of making a pot roast. This depiction of the typical family has evolved. For example, in her observation of American families, author Judy Root Aulette noted that more families practice Egalitarian ideologies and are in favor of gender equality. “Women are more likely to participate in the workforce, while men are more likely to share in housework and childcare (apa…).” Today’s American families have broken the Ward and June Cleaver mold, and continue to become stronger and more sufficient. Single parent families currently become increasingly popular in America, with single men and women taking on the roles of both mother and father. This bend in the gender rules would have, previously, been unheard of, but in the evolution of gender in the family, it’s now socially acceptable, and very common.
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.
The rights of women have been revolutionized over the last century and have influenced their household role, which resulted in having power balanced in marriage and couple’s relationships, a favorable attribute. The stay-at-home mother is no longer the typical situation in modern families since women can now be financially independent. What used to be a conventional motivation to take on marriage has diminished because modern women are not restricted in terms of earning a salary. Women have gained rights and therefore there is “more education among women…leading to better career prospects” (Harris). Consequently, it can be concluded that these careers allow them t...
Winik, Lyric W. "The Demise of Child-Rearing." Public Interest 141 (2000): 41. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 July 2010.
About 75 percent of the 68 million women working in the United States will become pregnant at some point in their careers. Women with children are one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. labor force. In 1975, 47% of women with children under the age of 18 were employed; by 2008, this number grew to a notable 71% (Miner et al. 60. The nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn Compared to other workers, mothers are often viewed as less competent, less productive, and less committed to their job, which is assumed to result in increased absenteeism and resignation (Byron and Roscigno 5).
mothers, “Began life with a plethora of associated disadvantages that seemed likely to thwart their development and success in later life.” (Furstenberg, 2003)
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
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
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.