Comparative Critique

Looking back at history, women’s role in the family has remained unchanged till last century. In the early times, women’s most significant profession was that of wifehood and motherhood and a “little more than a slave of her husband”(1). They were viewed as a creative

The belief that men are not capable of taking care of a child is now being challenged. Fathers are now taking on a more active role in their child’s life by allowing their wives to peruse her career goals while they stay at home with the children. Women are now left with the task of being the family’s primary breadwinners. As both step outside their expected gender roles the challenge of gender stereotypes found in families have been questioned.

When most people get married, they go into the marriage with the expectations and hopes that everything will go as planned, that they will always get along, and that the responsibilities will be evenly divided between both spouses. And for two working spouses who have children, they share the expectation that no one parent will be more of a caretaker than the other. Eric Bartels, a feature writer for the Portland Tribune in Portland, Oregon, feels as if he has personal experience as to what it is like to be on the receiving end of his wife’s irrational—or at least in his eyes—anger. Bartels informs his readers of the anger his wife projects

What makes the perfect parent? Countless magazines and websites strive to answer the question but often possess differing opinions on what techniques and parenting styles will foster the ideal child. In Chaim Potok’s novel, The Chosen, Reuven Malter and Danny Saunders grow up in polar opposite households. While both practice Judaism, their separate sects often highlight differences in their respective upbringings. Literature mimics real life and while reading, I found myself comparing the boys’ friendship to that of my closest friend and I. Despite the drastic divergence between time periods and settings, post-World War II New York and modern day Suburbia, Reuven and Danny mirror my best friend, Abby, and I. Though disputes can arise, contrasting

Comparative Analysis of Josie Appleton’s article “The Body Piercing Project” and Bonnie Berkowitz’ “Tattooing Outgrows Its Renegade Image to Thrive In The Mainstream”.

Judy Brady’s essay “I Want a Wife” is a stereotypical portrayal of a wife’s role in the 1970s, but this stereotype has evolved for wives and husbands over the past few decades. Husbands are partners with their wives in their relationship. Today, the role of financial provider and head of the household has shifted. Child rearing is not entirely the responsibility of the wife any longer. The roles of husbands and wives have changed in some areas since the 1970s, and in some ways have remained the same. Thus, we must examine what these changes are that have taken place.

In the works of Alistair MacLeod, Alden Nowlan, and Aaron Smith, each author establishes that the difficulty within parent-child relationships is a result of the differences between adult and child mentalities. Due to vast life experience, the parental figures in all three texts possess fixed, personal notions of what is morally correct, which clashes with the growth mindset of the children and incites miscommunication in the relationship.

Once women began working at the beginning of the twentieth century due to the war, gender roles drastically changed within households. The world was used to women spending time on housework versus men so it was an adjustment for everyone. In all actuality, when husbands take on a greater role in the house, it will result in lower divorce rates in the long run. Studies show that although this change

Expectations of the role that women have in marriage have changed with the years. In the past, women were expected to stay at their homes and to take care of the cooking, cleaning and all the daily activities that need to be done at homes. Besides that, they needed to take care of the children while their husbands were at work. Now things have changed and women and men share almost the same responsibilities in their marriage, but there are still some cultures around the world where women’s roles in marriage has not changed at all. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” their marriage went down after she had their child because he could not help her in the depression that she was suffering. In Trifles, John Wright did not let her wife be happy by keeping

"When, husbands take on household responsibility, they typically choose tasks that do not threaten their masculine self-images ( Weingarten ,1978; Yogev, 1981)" (Biernet & Wortman, 1991). Women have to be a jack-of-all trades, they have to go to work, clean house, drive the children to school, get them ready for bed, and get up to do it all over

For decades, a common phenomenon within society has been that women are to clean, cook, nurture and comfort while the men are to work and perform all “manly” tasks. Brady, the author emphasizes the point that the roles of a wife are unfair to the role of husband, stating that there is an obvious difference, inequality, between the roles of husband and wife. As the narrator claims he wants “a wife who will have the house clean, keep [his] clothes clean, ironed, mended, replaced when need be, and will see to it that [his] personal things are kept in their proper place so that [he] can find what [he] needs the minute [he] needs it” (Brady 443) it becomes obvious that the man will see his intended wife as one that can provide no other than his and his family’s satisfactory needs. These expectations force women to change who they are if they lack the basic qualities of a wife and shames them if they do not. Trying to change or not accepting one’s personality can lead to internal conflict and unhappiness with the situation that the person is in.

From “breaking ice to get water for washing” (Walker 311) to getting “up early” (Hayden 1) to make “banked fires blaze” (Hayden 5), it is no secret that parenting can be a physically-demanding job. By making sure their children simply survive, parents often push emotional and mental “offices” (Hayden 14) to the side. In “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden and “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, this phenomenon occurs, as the parent-child relationships are extremely traditional. Both works of fiction can teach parents that while putting food on the table is certainly a duty of caregivers, it takes a lot more than “man-working hands” (Walker 311) to raise a child. Today’s parents should learn from the mistakes of traditional parenting and opt

The nuclear family and gender roles as defined in the mid-twentieth century have become the cliches and stereotypes of contemporary society. However, they serve an even greater purpose as the guidelines for marital and familial expectations. In her article, written for her anthology, The Bitch in the House; The Myth of Co-Parenting: How It Was Supposed to Be. How It Was, Edelman confronts these expectations to justify her actions regarding her role in modern marriage. Similarly, Bartels discusses roles in modern marriage, however, his article, which was written for his anthology The Bastard on the Couch, My Problem With Her Anger explains how the nature of each gender supports the gender roles that society has created. Although both authors

In relatively recent years, gender roles have changed because women are able to take on roles that would be considered something only a man should do. These changes in gender roles are a good thing because it gives women opportunities they never had before. For example, it was believed men were the supporters of the family but it has become more and more common for women to help support a support and in some cases be the only spouse who brings in income. However, these changes are seen differently in diverse cultural images. Twenty to forty years ago it may have been extremely common for women to be stay at home mothers and not play a significant financial role or no role financially in the household. In those generations where this was common, it may be looked down upon that women are taking the lead as men used to. Within the last century the

The first extract is from a novel called “Chocolat” by Joanne Harris which was published in 1999, whereas the second extract is from a website of the “From Bean to Bar” chocolate company which was published in 2006. Both extracts concern themselves with chocolate and the way it is manufactured, although they both have different intentions. The first extract is from a novel and describes the delightful pleasure of creating chocolate, whereas the second extract is used to promote and advertise the chocolate and make it more appealing to the reader, and also focuses on the importing and the cocoa plant itself.