Home Test Over Rainie & Wellman

The image of ideal families has changed and is now looked at differently compared to years ago. But does technology and devices how to do with the separation of family? In a short story in Rereading America called “Quality Time Redefined”, author Alex Williams executes many interviews to try and see how media has impacted the lives of family. According to one of his observations there was one family in particular that stood out. Ms. Vavra a cosmetic industry executive spoke about an evening with her family: “…Their son, Tom, was absorbed by a Wii game on the wide screen television. Their daughter, Eve, was fiddling with a game app called the Love Calculator on an iPod touch.” Ms. Vavra recalled, “The family was in the same room but not together" (94). She was advocating about how her and her family was all sitting together but all of them were in their own little worlds with their devices. Technology has become very popular and advanced throughout the years. This may be the cause for why families

So how do all these changes in society and family affect the division of household labor?

While the 1950’s had been very conservative, the stay-at-home housewives, the perfect families and home lives, children of the baby boom soon alternated this into a very different kind of

Nancy received her bachelor’s degree and is now working full time as a social worker, Evan is a full time furniture sales man. Hochschild argues that “most women work one shift at their office or factory and a “second shift” at home” (Hochschild 4). This is supported with what the Holt couple does when they return home from work, Nancy cooks, does housework, and cares for Joey, while Evan usually goes to the basement and works on his hobby. This is not uncommon for women to experience this “second shift” the gender system that is commonly practiced among American families is domesticity. “The ideology of domesticity held that men “naturally” belong in the market because they are competitive and aggressive; women belong in the home because of their “natural” focus on relationships, children, and an ethic of care” (Williams 1). This also relates to the gender norms placed on men and women. This leads to turmoil in the relationship causing both the man and woman

Over time, men and women have changed. A man’s “life script” would have included providing and protecting his wife and children. For a woman, her “life script” included taking care of the children, cooking, and cleaning. However, today the roles for men and women in their twenties have evolved into something different. The author shows this transition by stating that men “balked at the stuffy propriety of the bourgeois parlor,as they did later at the banal activities of the suburban living room. They turned to hobbies and adventures, like hunting and fishing. At midcentury, fathers who at first had refused to put down the money to buy those newfangled televisions changed their minds when the networks began broadcasting boxing matches and baseball games.” Also, research has shown that the age of marriage for men has inclined to thirty. Women are now taking on new roles, such as being the financial provider along with the previous care giving

Women’s role within the household has changed considerably over a period of time. In the later days in the United States women were to attend to the children and to the house and not do much more than that. Children are now being raised by stay at home dads instead of the stereotypical stay at home moms. According to Gardner, "Real-life families have changed considerably since 'Mr. Mom ' appeared, with more men sharing child-rearing and household chores." (Gardner 2010) This is occurring because women’s jobs are no longer labeled as being just for women. Men have gotten a lot of criticism for being stay at

The author, Leonard Pitts, Jr., laments over how technology is a detriment to the traditional family structure and writes an editorial regarding this issue. He powerfully achieves his purpose by using aloneness words and an oxymoron.

This reading greatly ties into our discussion on the politics of housework between parents. During the early years of being married, some couples do not feel the burden of caring for a family because they chose not to have children at that point in time. As Alix Shulman describes in her passage, she and her husband were very content during that time, often shopping, cooking, and spending long walks together on the weekends in Central Park. They wouldn’t need to worry about cleaning too often because their apartment was modest and not too large for a family of two. She notes that during that period of their life, their domestic was beautifully uncomplicated. Suddenly down the road, a couple years later, the couple found themselves distressed when they had their son and daughter. Life became more complicated and at times, “impossible” according to Alix. The reason was that both Alix and her husband automatically accepted the traditional sex roles set in place by society. Alix left her job and became a stay-at-home mom, while her husband was working all day in the office. Alix was used to interacting with people during the day and having a life outside the office as well as the home, but now she was confined to the company of her children, who were preschoolers at the time. Alix was upset because she felt as though her husband’s life changed little when the children were born while her life became 1000x more complicated. She was working more than a 9-5 day job, and she didn’t get compensated for the work either. Preparing six meals a day for different people, spending several hours cleaning a mess that would remain unclean within the next couple hours, due to her children playing, and laundry that was originally done a couple times a month, now is due on a daily basis. Alix never got a break. She once enjoyed reading, but now she can’t even have a private mental life without the constant

Immediately, the reader is introduced to a family who doesn't live at the top of the socioeconomic pyramid. A family who, although live comfortably compared to many, still maintain the ideals of which they came from. Maggie and Mama live

The families in America are steadily changing. While they remain our most valued and consistent source of strength and comfort, some families are becoming increasingly unstructured. In the past, the typical family consists of a working father, a stay at home mother and, of course, well-rounded children. Today, less than 20 percent of American families fit nicely into this cookie cutter image. American households have never been more diverse. Natalie Angier takes stock of the changing definition of family in an article for the New York Times.

A brief view of the 4 decades within the periods of 1950 to 1990 would show us a significant shift from the conventional nuclear family to the non-conventional modern family. Starting from the 1950s, the families were nuclear, where members worked together, understood their roles, and did what was expected of them; by the 1960s, there were a few sitcoms that began to undermine the television parent’s authority by privileging the independence of nearly adult or adult children; by the 1970s, the authoritative father began to disappear as they were no longer

Parents from this century are no longer involved in their children’s life like before. Their main focus is how they are going to feed their children and pay bills. They no longer have time to go out and have fun or to be involve actively with them. They are always rushing

In the United States, both parents typically work outside the home and they normally arrange for their younger children to be in a childcare or with a babysitter. In fact, they believe that they need time away from their children, so they would often arrange to for someone to take care of the children so that they can go out. In addition, families usually focus their attention on their children, so parental preferences are strongly influenced by the children’s wants and interests. As children get older, they start spending less time with their parents and more time on their computer, cellular phone, television set or iPod. (Althen & Benneett, 2011)

That’s why some choose to co-habitate. Intergenerational living builds resilience and keeps families close together. The more our society becomes tech savvy and mobile, the more possibility that the true meaning of families decline. Imagine visiting your grandparents just next to your house, right in their granny flats.

Etzioni describes the American home with a child eating Raman Noodles on the phone with their mom or dad making sure that they have done their routinely chores. The children know not to keep their parents too long because of the business people waiting on the other lines. The children know exactly when the parents are going to call and know exactly when they are going to be home. Children are learning to delay turning the TV off at the right time, doing their other chores, and finishing their homework until the second they have to. Etzioni has a hasty generalization and does not include all families in the article. Etzioni focuses on the busy parents and not on the stay-at-home moms. He tends to point all his conclusions at the busy families that have no time for their children.