Work-Family Balance

Gender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex. Gender roles are never comprehensive, even within a single country, and they are always historically and culturally unpredictable. Gender roles in the United States for one cultural group likely is not true for another cultural group. Similarly, gender roles in the United States have changed drastically over the time period. Gender roles has been the historical evolution from a single family income in which only the male spouse works and generates income, to dual family income or a family in which both spouses generate family income. The shifting gender roles in the past years has been huge. It happened so quickly

. Societal views and expectations regarding gender in America can also be attributed to why women continue to encounter discrimination in the workplace. Throughout history, American society has considered women's roles to revolve around childbearing and raising a family. In the article "Breadwinner Moms," Wang, Parker and Taylor from the Pew Research Center of Social and Demographic Trends describe how over time, women have shown an increased presence in the workplace (U.S Department of Labor), and have also taken a stronger role in the family home by becoming the main provider for the family (Wang et al., YEAR).

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 are generally responsible for caregiving (children and elders), volunteer activities, domestic duties, and social reproduction at an average rate of 2:1 (50 hours per week) compared with men (25 hours per week), regardless of how much paid work they are committed to (Milan, Keown, & Urquijo, 2015). Men are freer to pursue paid opportunities (and investments in human capital) and women are restricted by unpaid obligations, which perpetuates inequity. Some solutions to gain equity include social welfare reform programs, universal/affordable dependents’ care programs, and the shift of unpaid duties to men, as sociologist Nancy Fraser (1997) theorizes in After the Family Wage: A Postindustrial Thought

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

Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson and Melissa Milkie’s Changing Rhythms of American Family Life were able to document that “mothers are spending as much time with the children as forty years ago, fathers were doing more at home and there is more gender equality” (Bianchi et al 2006, 169). In their data it showed the trend of workloads for both fathers and mothers to have increased “from 55 to 64 estimated weekly hours between 1965 and 2000 households with married parents” (Bianchi et al 2006, 171). This could attributed to that there was a big change that occurred that allowed more women and mothers to enter the workforce. Corresponding to the female participants in my sample that want to continue to work and further their career. Furthermore,

Family is one of the oldest institutions in human history with a universal and basic role in all societies, and studying the structure of family in different cultures will help us further understand its functions and effects on society. During the 20th century, the common family type in America was the “nuclear family”, two married heterosexual people living with their children (Coontz, 2006). Due to many influential changes, the concept of family has been redefined and it now includes a variety of living arrangements. Feminism has been one of the successful social movements, and has promoted alternative types of the American family. The movement has different priorities in each society, and in the United States one of the issues is the “gender pay gap”. Gender pay gap is defined as the average difference between men’s and women’s aggregate hourly earnings (European Commission, 2014). According to the U.S. Department of Labor, in 2014 the median weekly earnings for workers with at least a bachelor’s degree was $336 lower in women than men, and for workers with advanced degrees was $445 lower in women than men (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2015). This average difference of $17,000 to $24,000 a year is one of the contributors to the “gender pay gap” issue. The importance of financial security is a well-known fact that women in America began embracing it after World War II; many women decided to postpone marriage in order to focus on their education and career

Some people may not get to see their family as often as they want to because of the struggle to balance both family and work. These articles, “Double Daddy” by Penny Parkers, “Diary of a Mad Blender: A Week of Managing Every Spare Minute” by Sue Shellenbarger, and “The Child’s view of Working Parents” by Cora Daniels and Ellen Galinksy, are all based on facts about balancing work and family. Balancing responsibilities, goals, and a personal life is a struggle for many people, but the most important priorities in life, such as family, should not be neglected. Work time can get in the way of family time. In Penny Parkers article, “Double Daddy”, she writes, “These men are saying, ‘I’m working my tail off to get ahead, for the most

Barbara J. Risman’s book Families as They Really Are offers valuable insight into the nature of families and rebuts several myths that have been used to complicate the understanding of families or to simplify harder concepts. In the fourteenth chapter of the book, Risman delves into dual-earner couples and looks at the experience such families had during and after the Great Recession. The chapter deals with among other thing the influences that the economic downturn had on families, how parents felt the effects of this at the family level and the differences between single-earner families and the dual-earner families at this time. The thesis of this document is that dual-earner families are more resilient economically compared to single-earner

Edelman and Bennetts both would agree that society’s view of women is wrong, but Bennetts wants more equality in the workplace while Edelman wants equality in her home. Bennetts states that “Most husbands still view childcare and household chores as women’s work, even when those women are working full-time”(42). She is inferring that gender roles are still programmed into people’s minds today and that it is completely wrong. It is viewed by society that a woman is to stay home and care for the children while a man goes out and makes the money. Of course, this is an issue for Edelman as well when Edelman states that all of the housework had fallen back on her, making it her priority, not her husbands. She contends “A lot of slack was starting to pile up around our house. And because I was the only parent spending any real time there, the primary de-slacker was me”(51). Edelman illustrates that she just wants her husband to pick up his part of the job at the house, but since he was the man, he did not. Both of the articles show that gender roles are still present today because of society’s view of women. Bennetts begins to explain the pay difference between a man and

“Gender Roles Attitudes since 1872 In social Trends..”, Campbell discusses the gender roles and their representations within numerous fields. In addition, Campbell mentions that the politics, in particular, have seen an increase in women involved within the government. Campbell mentions that during the 20th century, many women were not in the workforce. After WWII, they began seeing an increase of women entering the labor force. In 2000, 60%of wives with children younger than six entered into the workforce, as were 80% single women”(Campbell, 83). GSS measured numerous items about women in 1972 and got numerous responses.

Stephanie Coontz, author of “Why Gender Inequality Stalled,” emphasizes on how women are still challenged in today’s society about inequality of women wanting to have a career and raising a family instead of staying at home to care for her family. Women making the choice to have a baby and have a career is often frowned upon. According to Coontz, “when they become mothers, they face more scrutiny and prejudice on the job than fathers do” (7). In a two family household, mothers often have to take off work to care for their children in case of emergencies than fathers do. In single household families, mothers are full time parents and have a full time job.

Robert Dorment’s summary from his article talked about that women always complained about men did wrong but men who worked so hard for their family and work-life balance. Richard used that word “castigate” for men that means women scold men, but they did not realize men worked so hard. Other quote about the castigation of men, “…person whose husband, by her own admission, sacrificed much in his own academic career to do other heavy lifting with their children, all so she could pursue her dream job and then complain about it, bitterly, in the pages of a national magazine” (Dorment 708). Anne-Marie Slaughter explained that women who get promotion from other positions that they realized they do not have spent time with their family and some women who leave their jobs because of their family reasons. The quote said, “It is unthinkable that an official would actually step down to spend time with his or her family that this must be a cover for something else” (Slaughter 682). Third article called Women, work and work/life balance: Research roundup talked about the wage inequality and unequal responsibilities between men and women. Women have more family responsibilities than men do because some women are staying at home while taking care of their kids. Last article, Work-Life Balance – An integrated Approach: The case for joint and several responsibility talked about the

The generation now has made it easier to equalize men and women but there is still a substantial amount of places where gender inequality is still happening in the workplace and where females still face discrimination. Women are often discriminated in the workplace and are usually not promoted as quickly as men are and they also receive less pay. History shows that women have not always been defined as property and thought of as second class citizens. But in the 21st century many have seen a drastic change in the so called “traditional” family ways where women are suppose to stay home and take care of the household chores, food, and children and men are suppose to work to support their family and provide financial stability. Many assume that in the workplace women are more vulnerable and less competent than men because women 's instincts are to put their family before work or anything else. Whereas men are the ones who will usually stay the late hours to work. People on both sides of the political spectrum and everywhere in between seem to be fearful of what is to come and more fearful of others than they are often willing to admit.