I Want A Wife

The textbook defines and explains the sociological perspective on family. Society has changed the family dynamic, and has created a different definition than in previous years. I was surprised to learn that not everyone in society believes they should support their children, and the parents are not responsible for providing support. This concept is a hard one to understand because I was raised to accept help from the man of the family, and to let the man provide for all the needs for the family. The chapter also discusses mate selection, authority, and inheritance. I was also surprised to learn that there is not a historical record of women dominating men in society. Roles in the family are an important part in society because they provide basic guidelines for how members in the family function and their roles. One of the most interesting topics was the section on courtship. Some people in society do not believe that love will exist until after a marriage occurs. This concept is shocking, and is confusing because in western society, people idolize love and the ideas behind being in love with someone, and sharing a life with someone. Many people believe that love happens at the right place and right time, but people in other parts of the world do not see marriage in the same light. Another interesting fact stated in the textbook is interracial marriages. Some changes in society are harmful, but others do not affect society as much as people think. Also, the dynamic of family is changing according to how many children are born to each family. People now are wanting smaller families, and before things changed it was important for men to breed bigger families to carry on the last name. I think this chapter has opened my eyes to how much society has changed from the time I was in high school until now. Living in a small town makes me feel oblivious to the

In Judy Brady’s essay, “I Want a Wife,” she examines why she would like to have a wife. Brady believes that a wife performs all house chores and the husband does nothing, but to expect the wife to do everything for him. Brady tries to persuade the reader to look at a husband viewpoint of what a wife should be. The essay was written during the early 1960’s, during the second wave of the feminist movement in America. Brady is pushed by certain reasons to write, “I Want a Wife” to show the humanist humor.

In the United States of America, family life has been greatly important to the structure and function of society. A large part of this family life is the institution of marriage itself. Over the past few decades, the role and presence of marriage has been transformed. What once was a standard assumption in the home life of Americans has become increasingly less consistent. The Changing Landscape of Love and Marriage by authors Kathleen E. Hull, Ann Meier, and Timothy Ortyl discusses how and why these changes may have taken place on the basis of two primary conclusions. The first of these is the idea that marriage has lost it’s taken-for-granted status, and the second being the fact that both adults and children are experiencing more upheaval in their personal lives than in the past.

Throughout this article Brady uses ethos, logos, and pathos to illustrate her opinion that the wife does too much in a family. Brady connects with her audience by relating to what was expected of them back in the 1970’s. She states reasons to why she wants a wife and lists what she says a wife would do for her. Lastly, Brady connects emotionally to her audience by

“I want a Wife” is an essay written by Judy Brady in the 1970s for a magazine. The aim for the essay written was to show how oppressed women were during that time period and how badly they were treated by men. The essay was written during the early development of feminism. The article written aimed to raise the attention of readers during the time, introducing them to feminism. In writing the article for a Women’s magazine, Brady seemed to be sharing a similar frustration with other women who were in the same position as herself.

Throughout the years, women have been seen as someone to have children, someone to cook, someone to clean, and someone who does not deserve rights. In the essay "I Want A Wife," Judy Brady points out the different roles of a "wife" according to society at that time. I believe that Brady is sarcastically describing the ideal wife every man dreams of. Even though, women have been fighting for their rights for a long time now, even today women are still not equal to men in many ways. In today's society women are more respected and are acceptable for many jobs as men are, but still they are not treated equally all the times. Brady is a wife herself, and in her essay she wishes she had a wife that she described. Brady brings out all the

Gender roles once played an important role in marriage in the 1950’s. There was expectations for what a man should do compared to a woman. Women were supposed to stay home and take care of their husband and kids, while men were supposed to go out and make money for their families. Women were expected to want to be stay at home mom’s, and if they did work they had to work and still take care of their families. The husbands were not expected to help out.

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 Judy Brady’s essay, “I Want a Wife”, she explains the roles that wives performed in the mid 1900’s. Brady has an incredibly sarcastic tone to her essay and finds it hysterical that husbands want their wives to fulfill their commands. In the past, women were expected to stay at home and take care of their children. Their lives consisted of cooking, cleaning, and making sure they greet their husbands when they came home from work. But times have changed; the roles of women have evolved. Now, we see women doing all types of things. They have more opportunities to do what men can do. Since the 1950s, women have experienced a huge change in their status as wives, which can be seen through their ever changing independency, work status, and appearance.

The picture of the perfect 1950s marriage as depicted through television sitcoms of that era display a happy family with a loving dutiful wife, a handsome businessman husband, and two or three children. What marriage then or now does this idealistic version truly portray? In the past few decades and especially in recent years that version of a marriage has greatly changed. The dynamic of how a marriage works has been significantly altered in the years since the 1950s. At that time the woman was expected to stay home, have babies, and care for the home while the husband was out in the work force. There is no typical American marriage anymore, every couple functions in a different way and is not expected to conform to any standards dictated

In Judy Brady’s article “I Want A Wife”, she uses repetition greatly in her essay to make her point, why wouldn’t anyone want a wife. Judy Brady was born in 1937 in San Francisco and got a B.A at the University of Iowa in 1962. Brady’s article first appeared in the feminist magazine Ms., which was in Arlington County, Virginia in 1972. The author’s main idea was to show the amount of work that a wife is expected to do. She does this by strategically listing out what she looks for in a wife. She constantly says, “I want a wife”, to signify that she wants someone to do these things for her as she has done for her husband. In today’s society, the wife is seen as the caretaker and doer of all businesses, while still catering to a

Although we have worked hard to try to eliminate the gender divide, it is still present and still affects the structure of a family. The identification of the change, but society’s return to gender division within the home illustrates how eventually society begins to repeat itself. Although the gender divide now is not the same as it was, it is remerging as women and men continue to have differing views on the roles of spouses in a relationship or family. The expectations men and women possess have also changed, which can put a strain on a relationship and family. I like how Gerson collected information to show how some families are compromising with one another, but others are stuck in an unhappy situation due to their lack of education or ability to provide for their family. I also found it interesting that it was still easier for men to leave their families than women, and that men still believe that they should be the breadwinner even if their spouse is also working. These observations raise several questions. What inherent societal thing continues to make males feel like they should be the bread winner? Why do women continue to settle for a successful husband and compromise their happiness? In connection to Lareau’s article, how does ones upbringing affect their decision to settle or pursue a mutually successful relationship? Does their class upbringing affect their decision? Are individuals more likely to follow in their parents footsteps or make their own future? Did seeing an unhappy parent affect the way someone’s family dynamic in the future? Do they make a change? Is it easy to make a change and leave a parasitic or unhappy relationship because of money or personal

Throughout the past generations, including my parent's the family was defined as a traditional (patriarchal) relationship, where the male was the breadwinner and the female was the caretaker of the home and family. My generation has seen the materialization of what Pepper Schwartz describes a "peer marriage." Peer marriage is different from the traditional marriage in four key ways: men and women regard each other as full social equals, they both have careers, the partners share equal rights in decision making regarding finances, and compared to the past "traditional relationship" the male plays a greater role in the responsibility of raising the children (299).

Brady is pretty much describing the dream wife in her essay. One of the reasons she wants a wife is so she can be independent: “...I would like to go back to school so that I can become economically independent,...”(Brady 229). She is wanting a wife to look after the kids while she goes back to school. Another reason she wants a wife is for her physical needs: “... I want a wife who will take care of my

In her book The Unfinished Revolution, Kathleen Gerson argues that today, family pathways are more important than family structure. In this context, family structure refers to the organization of a family, and the way that it has been changing as a result of the gender revolution. For example, some nontraditional family structures that are explored in the book include double parent families with both parents earning, single parent families (mostly single mothers), and families with same-sex parents. Gerson argues that while family structures are not negligible, it is family pathways that are more important for the children of the gender revolution. That is to say, the children value the dynamics of their family more than the structure. They are more concerned about how well their parents are able to provide them with the necessary emotional and financial support than they are about how well their families follow a norm. For them, it is more about feeling like they’re part of a family rather than just physically being in one. Gerson emphasizes this when she explains that the people she interviewed “focused on the long-term consequences of parental choices, not on the specific form or type of home these choices produced at any one moment in time.” One important implication of this argument is the way in which the children of the gender revolution imagine their own romantic relationships unfolding. Even there, they prioritize a feeling rather than a format. For example, one