Stay-At-Home Dad Stereotypes

In today’s society, most families consist of both parents working and with that comes the conflict of shared childcare, nurturing and shared household responsibility. Since the day of old, it was and always has been the mothers’ responsibility to care for the child and the home. To cook, clean, feed the children and attend to the husband's needs. Of course, this concept also depending on the culture of which the couple was brought up on (Kaakinen, Coehlo, Steele, Tabacco, & Harmon Hanson, 2015).

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.

Throughout history, women have been groomed to be the best they can domestically. To place them in the man’s position of being the sole provider of the family seems irrational at best. Although the natural gender roles may be overpowering during the start of having a family, through time duties between husband and wife, regarding domestic life, tend to balance out once financial security is established. Like many major changes, it starts out bumpy but eventually a solution is found and both husband and wife find their “happy-medium.”

The differences between gender roles are not so apparent anymore. Men are not always the typical breadwinners and many women are not stay-at-home mothers. An article by Beaupré, Dryburgh, and Wendy (2010) described the transition that many men are going through. According to Beaupré, et al., (2010), fathers were once considered the forgotten parent. “Until recently studies on the family focused mainly on the mothers” (Beaupré, et al., 2010). Fortunately, both parents are now being focused on. Fathers today are much more involved in the pregnancy and birth of their child and their child’s life in general (Beaupré, et al., 2010). Beaupré, et al., (2010) explained that women’s involvement in the labour force could be a factor to this change. Women are more educated than they were in previous years. And while women want to work more, men want to be more involved in their children’s lives (Beaupré, et al., 2010). Fatherhood is occurring later in adulthood. Research stated that the majority of men are very satisfied with their involvement in their children’s lives. (Beaupré, et al., 2010).

The modern day woman works outside of the home, but then returns and continues to take care of housework and the children. Sociologists refer to this part of the woman’s day as the, “Second shift.” Two studies conducted found that if a man is more economically dependent on his wife, he is less likely to do housework. However, no evidence suggests that becoming economically independent makes marriage any less desirable for a woman. The family is the initial agent of socialization in their child’s life, however, even though the mother of the family may have the job with longer hours and better pay, the parents will still reinforce traditional gender roles in their household (Thompson 301-302.) This behavior can cause a child to embrace the stereotype that the woman’s only role is to cook, clean, and take care of the children. Even if a woman is the primary

Women feel more obligated to stay at home or work part time if they have children. Even if they share household chores with their spouses, many women still prefer to work less in order to sustain the home. However, women who are single mothers do not have the luxury to stay at home, and working part time may be the only option they have. For single mothers working is imperative in order to keep the family afloat financially, but with all of the commitments they have, they cannot balance everything. Childcare is essential, because while single mothers are working they need a reliable place to send their young children; the same with single fathers as well. Most women in the work force have children to take care of, and families to provide for, which many take as a decrease of masculinity, and the increase of femininity. On the contrary, many studies show that although the labor force is divided, the household is not and do a lot to maintain the household as well. According to Hertz and Marshall (2001), “Men who participate in more companionate activities with their children (such as play, leisure activities, and TV watching) are no more likely to take on other household chores than less-involved fathers. It is only men who participate in nurturing, are more nearly partners in family work. Men are also more likely to

Critics of Coontz also pointed out that there is a larger trend towards open-mindedness amongst many generations that now accept various types of relationships. However, while there is more acceptance of choice, Coontz remains accurate in her assertion that there is a problem in Millennial men preferring stay-at-home wives. Millennial men have reverted to the “traditional” arrangement less as a matter of choice than out of an idealized fantasy of being the dominant member of the household. By younger men encouraging women to give up ambitions outside of the home they are reverting into an old ideology which holds that a happy family is sustained by the dominance of a man. So, while there is nothing wrong in choosing to be a stay at home parent, having someone eliminate the option to make that choice is the same as taking away a personal freedom. A continued discrimination in genders has persisted through young people, and by not discussing how there is still sexism, or by denying its’ existence there will never be any solutions to

In our society, we carry an ideological assumption that a “normal” family consists of the man working to provide for the family and the women takes on the role of stay-at-home mom (Dow 1992).

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

In the reading, “From the Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home”, Hochschild explains her experience conducting a case study with a series of different women to get their perceptions of their lives as mothers, but also working women. Moreover, she provides good information to start her study. She reports that in 1950, 30 percent of American women were in the labor force, 28 percent of married women with children worked out of home. Today, those numbers have dramatically increased. During her findings, she saw that women felt a responsibility to be able to balance work and life at home, focused more on children, and expressing how overworked or tired they felt. Whereas men in this study expressed that women did most of the work around the house and childcare. In addition, what stood out to me in this reading was that some men felt pleased that their wives received more income than them. For instance, in an interview a man expressed, “was more pleased than threatened by her

During the 1920’s, the ideal family would be the dad would be the breadwinner and provide for the family, and the mother would be the housewife who would cook, clean, and watch the kids. There seems to be a similar pattern in today’s society. Men are less frequent to take a paternity leave than women, which results in a gender imbalance in employment (Pesonen). This defaults to sex stereotypes in the balance work and family demands between men and

Well, my parents went to work every day to provide for my brother and I and we had everything we ever needed. We lived in a nice house, had a dog, and I never went without. I was able to dream about the future and the possibilities that were out there for me to seize. With that being said the first topic I would like to discuss with you is the issue of childrearing. If you look at the US over the last 50-100 years within the scope of childrearing you will find a common theme. The “normal” house consists of a father who leaves every day to go to work and provide for the family and a mother who stays home to take care of the children and the house. This has been a standard of living in the US for a very long time. A recent article published by the Pew Research Center states: “While most stay-at-home parents are mothers, fathers represent a growing share of all at-home parents – 16% in 2012, up from 10% in 1989. Roughly a quarter of these stay-at-home fathers (23%) report that they are home mainly because they cannot find a job. Nearly as many (21%) say the main reason they are home is to care for their home or family. This represents a fourfold increase from 1989, when only 5% of stay-at-home fathers said they were home primarily to care for family” (Livingston 2014). This is interesting in many ways. Less than thirty years ago the number of stay at home dads was drastically lower. One might say that the only reason that these dads are staying home is because they cannot find work outside the home. The statistics disprove this theory. While it is true that some have suffered from a shaky economy, many are home because they choose to be. 23 percent say that they are home due to the fact that they cannot find work. 21 percent are home by their own choosing. This is hard to understand for most people. Globally it is accepted that the place of the man should be

The survey found that it was still very rare for fathers to take primary responsibility for childcare in dual-earner families, no-earner families or families where only the woman worked, showing again inequality in conjugal roles. Therefore Ferri and Smiths findings disagree with the statement, showing inequality in conjugal roles. Many women agree with Ferri and Smith that it is they rather than their

With or without the existence of this challenge, women have been gaining a steady foothold in the workplace. In fact, in America it has become a natural cultural trend for there to be dual incomes within the family and many families could not live the lifestyle that they do without the female’s contributing income to the family. This is the new norm in our local society. The new roadblock that we face now is when it comes to a single-income family in which the breadwinner is the female. So now the question becomes, why? Why is this idea so difficult for us to accept? Stay at home dads, aka; Mr. Mom’s, are becoming more and more a trend of today. Some of the factors that go into a decision like this are things like benefits, childcare, and which earner has the

Mothers are very passionate about their choice to work or stay at home with their children. This is a heated debate about what is best for children and who is the better mother. Just in the last generation more mothers are choosing to work, which is also sparking some conflict in families where grandparents felt it was important to stay at home with their children. This paper compares and contrasts both sides of working and being a stay at home mother. While there is no right or wrong answer to the work and family dilemma, it’s important to understand both sides.