The Breadwinner System

According to the textbook, Cherlin refers to the 1950s as the “breadwinner-homemaker family” (Cherlin, 76) time period. Marriage occurred at younger ages and the birthrate increased. During the 1950s, men could support their families on a single wage referred to as the “family wage” (Cherlin, 67). With the family wage women and kids did not have to enter the labor force. It also created a separation of spheres between men and women. Women stayed at home to raise their children and had limited domestic roles, while men were out in the world working. Today, people are marrying at later ages and the birthrate is not as high as it used to be in the 1950s. The idea of the family wage faded away during the time of the post-nuclear family. Today it is more acceptable for women to have jobs as well as their partner to help support their family. Today many families have variations of how they support their family and who the caretaker is. Women are no longer designated to the domestic sphere nor are men the only ones in the labor force.

On the other hand, when both partners share the breadwinner role men are more likely to increase their core housework tasks in companion to men in the ‘new traditional’ and male-breadwinner families. Consequently, many studies found that gender attitudes are still primary indicators of who does housework, thus women still do two-thirds of housework where men do two-thirds of paid work. It is noticed that there have been significant changes for women over the last 6 decades to participate in the labour force, yet there was hardly any change to the division of core household work between men and women.

Women for years have been automatically given the role of the domestic housewife, where their only job is to cook, clean, and take care of the children. Men have usually taken the primary responsibility for economic support and contact with the rest of society, while women have traditionally taken the role of providing love, nurturing, emotional support, and maintenance of the home. However, in today’s society women over the age of sixteen work outside of the home, and there are more single parent households that are headed by women than at any other time in the history of the United States (Thompson 301.)

Throughout the 1920s, marriage was thought of to be a symbol of love and happiness between a married couple. Along with that came the expectation of starting a family and a new chapter in the couple’s lives. Most marriages that took place were based on romance instead of just marrying just to get money, which was rarely seen. Gender roles had an impact when getting married and starting a family. Living in the 1920’s brought more positive, as well as negative, impacts when it came to restarting the economy. Gender roles in marriage decided who stayed at home to take care of the children along with house duties and who went to work to provide for the family. Throughout these times, gender roles either imposed by society or created within the home, have altered dynamics within the home and society.

Changes in the economy contributed to changed ideas about class, gender, and family. The ideas of “republican motherhood” that had been prevalent following the American Revolution, gave way to the “cult of domesticity”. Women were expected to remain in the household and were relegated to second-class citizens. Additionally, children in urban households were much more likely to leave the family in search of work than they had been in the rural world. This was because of the shift of income-earning work out of the home.

As the baby boom added to the reasons for women to stay or to return to domesticity, there were other factors at work. Not only were there more children to increase their home-based responsibilities, but there were geographical reasons that separated women from men. The suburban explosion in the late 1940s and 1950s was

Beginning in the late 1800’s, the daily life of a woman was very crucial and consistent. Starting from early morning until dusk, the women would care for children, clean the house, and provide any other services they could. Throughout the late 1800’s, women were treated unfairly due to the women assisting their families, caring for children, and being an American housewife.

Subsequently after the war female employment dropped, but during the 1950’s when Birth Control was introduced to the market female employment reached an all-time high (“people”). This was due to the views that employers held on women, they were seen as less reliable because of motherhood and their possible absence due to child birth. Furthermore, during the Baby Boom era “young women who had reared one to four children had the fear of another ten to twenty years of fertility” (“people”). Often times these young couples lived in cramped apartments due to the rising house prices (Byrant). In the long term, WWII began a long string of events that all contributed to the social advancement of

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

Foremost, the familial image has undertaken significant changes in regards to the ‘breadwinner’ and ‘homemaker’ roles within the family. In the latter of the 20th century, women’s participation in the labour force had been very little to non-existent, primarily because time allocations had been perceived as gender specific, that is, men were seen as the ‘breadwinner’, while women were viewed as the ‘homemaker’ (Seltzer, Bachrach, Bianchi, Bledsoe, Casper, Chase-Lansdale, Diprete, Hotz, Morgan, Sanders, & Thomas, 2005, pp.20). The ‘breadwinner’ role was to secure financial stability, while the

“Snip ! “ i hear the scissors cut my hair, and watch it fall on the ground. I can feel my hair fall off my head it feels cold . It was cold for a minutes but i got used to it. As soon as i opened my eyes for that long period of time i seen myself in a different light as a new me. perseverance is defined by steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success. “ The breadwinner “ by Deborah Ellis is about how hard children have to work for their families to keep people alive. in the book the breadwinner the author shows sacrifice when parvana cuts her hair so she can get a job to provide for her family. (She cut her hair cause she need to do that)

In urban America, as men continuously lost their jobs, women had to try to find work to feed themselves and their families. During the Great Depression, “women made up 25% of the work force, but their jobs were more unstable, temporary or seasonal than men, and the unemployment rate was much greater” (McMahon). But even though it was very difficult to acquire jobs, less was expected of them than for rural women. Before the Great Depression, women already had trouble obtaining jobs, but “during the 1930s, a woman's chances for employment were often even slimmer. In the eyes of society, unless a woman was single and self-supporting, she was supposed to be a homemaker, helping her family through the national crisis by being thrifty and resourceful” (Press 19). This pressure for women to know how to save money for the family instead of looking for a job

In 1870, nearly two million women and girls worked outside the home. Domestic work was an important source of income. Some girls even dropped out of school to help make money. One in fifteen American homes employed live-in servants that were mostly immigrants or African American. Working from dawn to dusk, these women cooked, cleaned, washed, ironed, and cared for children. A lot of them supported their own families who lived elsewhere. Most of the women that were working were single because then they did not think that married life and careers for women mixed. Many of the single women workers were between the ages of 16 and 24. Employers thought that they would leave when they got married so they rarely gave them supervisory jobs or advanced training. They also paid women an average of $3 to $5 a week, 30 to 60 percent less than men. Self-supporting women were discouraged from entering the fields that would put them in competition with men. There were many educated young women that wanted or needed work became nurses or teachers where they wouldn?t be competing with men.

During the Industrial Revolution, the discrepancy in gender wages decreased from a 70 percent deficit in the agricultural economy to approximately 50 percent in the manufacturing economy. During the period from around 1890 to 1930, the gender wage gap decreased from 46 to 56 percent of male earnings. Clerical and sales professions began their ascendancy during this period. However, women’s participation in the workforce did not increase significantly in either of these periods. Additionally, the gender earnings gap remained almost constant at around 60 percent from 1950 - 1980 when women’s participation in the workforce increased substantially (Blau and Kahn 2000). Changes in household structure have also made equal pay more of a family issue. There are an increasing number of dual income households and one-third of women who work are the breadwinner of their family.

Conventionally, females played a very insignificant role in the paid work force of a society as many times they were expected to be home taking care of their family. Their roles at home can often include grocery shopping, meeting all the needs of her children and husband. As time moved on, our society became more accepted of sharing housework between the couples, but even so, the traditionally more feminine housework such as cooking, caring for sick children, and shopping for the entire family are mostly done by the females of the house. It is argued in a research journal Work and Occupations (Witkowski & Leicht, 1995) that in an average North American family, females take on roughly three-quarters of the housework. Even though we are in a democratic society, parenting roles in the household are assigned based on gender rather than in a democratic fashion (Winslow-Bowe, 2009). Because of the many responsibilities and obligations that are associated with the female gender, their career paths are eventually affected for the worse. According to Statistics Canada (2001), for every dollar a man earns, a single woman earns 93 cents and a married woman earns 69 cents. These statistics