Working Mothers Vs Working Moms

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.)

For years, society has encouraged women to engage in labor force participation and to create a career outside of the household. The feminist movement discouraged women to continue their roles as caregiver because it was considered a low status position in society. To be considered successful in life, one needed to achieve a high paying career and as everyone knows the job of mom is free of charge. The movement also portrayed the traditional family structure as a way to keep women confined to their homes, rather than a structure built with the main idea of women having complete focus on the most valuable job of their lives “Motherhood.” The feminist movement was to fight for women’s rights but at the same time the movement forced mothers to make a difficult decision of either entering the workforce and leaving children in daycare or continuing the homemaker’s lifestyle. After many years of liberation for women in the workforce there has been a decline in the number of women who continue a career after childbirth. Contrary to the feminist belief, mothers are finding a greater sense of fulfillment staying at home to raise children rather than focusing on a career. Data taken from the U.S Census Bureau in 2005 shows the amount of stay at home mothers is about 5.6 million (Zamora). More women are replacing the 1950s “housewife” stigmas and renouncing their roles in society with a new high status of “domestic engineers.” Although mothers who chose to stay at home might have a harder time reentering the workforce and many think it will make families struggle financially, more mothers of young children should stay at home instead of returning to the workforce. This will allow mothers to have more efficacious time to spend with children. Along with the unaffordable cost of quality child care causing

Linda Hirshman’s book, Get to Work… And Get a Life Before It’s Too Late, opens up to debate the role that women should have in society. She theorizes her ideas based on the experiences of women in American society and what she believes they should be established with. She puts in a plan on how women should approach higher education and marriage in which they can keep their success. Hirshman wants to emphasize that in American society women have been facing gender stereotypes in their homes and in public.

In her article, “A Mother’s Day Kiss-Off”, Leslie Bennetts describes the problem of how our culture depicts the typical mother as a stay-at-home mom and how mothers respond to that problem. She begins her argument by commenting on how Mother’s Day will come but pass leaving mothers to go back to their excessive responsibilities. She critiques the weight our culture imposes on mothers because raising children is still viewed as the mother’s job. Bennetts draws attention to the flaws in our society that prevent women from following their dreams because of motherhood.

“He Motherhood Penalty vs. the Fatherhood Bonus” by Clair C. Miller explains how women who work and become mothers lose respect and money. While on the other hand men are praised when they become fathers and get a raise (Miller, 2014.) Using existing data helps see the wide gap between male and female coworkers after becoming parents. The stereotype about men being the breadwinners and women being the caregivers is still how employers see things (Miller, 2014.) Old fashioned notions still follow men around when it comes to having a family. Miller constructed familiarity between the cause of mothers being paid less and the consequence of that issue playing out in low income single-parent households. She used the piggybacking strategy, “which is when a new problem is constructed as a different instance of an already existing problem” (, Loseke,61

For the second short writing assignment, I had to read both the Second Shift by Arlie Hochschild with Anne Machung and Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert. While reading both books, I quickly found that I understand the argument made in the Second shift by Arlie Hochschild and I feel like I have been in Hochschilds shoes. I am a nanny so I see parents come home on a day to day basis after a long day of working. In this study, Arlie Hochschild observes dozens of families with children under the age of six. The parents are career driven and have dual-incomes to support the family they created. A lot of households have a stay at home mother, but in today’s society more women are either working full time or part time to help support the family.

Going back into America’s history, the expectations of a woman from the late 1800’s and early 1900s, were to be a good homemaker and wife. Now into the late 1900’s and 2000’s, this role has added on much more responsibility and expectations of today’s woman, such as returning to school and working a full time job, while continuing to take care of home. Though the type of work a woman can execute has changed, it also brings along societal issues. Issues such as: unequal pay wages differentiations between men and women and between different races amongst women, the concern of maternity leave and of course, the struggle of balancing work and a family.

Our PowerPoint lecture defines Values Feminists as people who think that there is no universal choice that would be the best for all women, which means that certain options are better than others. In the 1950s to 1960’s, America’s role of women are as homemakers. Women marry early, and their perceived purpose in life is to get married, serve his husband well, and bear his kids. This concept was considered as every woman’s dream, and if it wasn’t- women would consider that something must be wrong with them. With Betty Friedman’s observations, she noticed that more and more women experienced dissatisfaction and questioned their lives’ worth by being stay-at-home moms. She stated that problems like these were not openly talked about, as it does not fall into the category of femininity. She then stated that “We can no longer ignore that voice

The intensive mothering ideology is very demanding and in most cases unattainable, the few ways that mothers can receive feedback on if they are fulfilling their role of being a good mother is through purchasing products that will make their children happier and healthier. We will see how mothers equate the love they have for the children with providing them with the means to be happy and successful. It will also be discussed how intensive mothering is still the dominant ideology in contemporary society despite the growing number of mothers in the workforce. Mothers are faced with the dilemma of juggling their responsibilities as child-centered mothers and career-focused women. In most cases, mothers participate in consumerism to provide their children with what they desire to fill the inadequacies of their mothers not being home with them 24/7. These mothers feel that their job most benefits them in that they are able to give their children opportunities they would not otherwise have had if both parents were not working.We will also see how regardless of socioeconomic status mothers feel the need to fulfill the role of being the ‘good mother’ as is required by intensive mothering. Women of lower socio-economic means will find ways to ensure that their children do not miss out on opportunities due to their own financial misfortunes. Sometimes this includes extending their budget

Similar to the last question, Acker outlines the fact that women who are stay-at-home moms are thought of as people who don’t work, when in reality, they just aren’t paid for the work they do. On the other hand, men are encouraged to have paying jobs, which, again, proves the thought that men ought to be of higher power/dominance in a family.

Compared to contemporary society, the cliché stay at home mother is no longer the societal norm, as both genders are now assuming the maternal-home role.

In the 1980’s women in the workforce became much more the “norm” than the exception. With the choice to enter the workforce, mothers also made the conscience choice to allow their children less parental attention, but also proving that their parenting skills were just as effective. The now independent woman, has begun to helicopter the children. Validation by the “stay at home mothers” to prove that the benefits to the children of a full time stay at home mother, out-weighed the need for self-fulfillment, with both parenting styles, and the helicopter parent was born. The description of an overprotective parent as a “Helicopter Parent” appeared in the best-selling book “Between Parent & Teenager” by Dr. Haim Ginott, staying

Many studies examine the influences of the child-care practices of employed moms on kids, however, disregard how employed moms' experience of motherhood influence their own lives and their childrearing limits. Susan Lewis in her article “Motherhood and Employment: The Impact of Social and organizational Values (1991)” examines the social development of parenthood and occupation and their effect on moms. “Cultural directives prescribe that women should become mothers and subsequently reduce their involvement in paid work, or, more recently that women can fulfill all the demands of full-time exclusive mothering and full-time paid work, without modifying the demands of either” (Lewis 195). She points out the connection between “employment” and

Why are feminism and housewife considered to be mutually exclusive terms? The ongoing debate about the role of housewives in modern society seems to go against the fight for feminism. Does a difference actually exist? Does such a thing as a feminist stay at home mother exist? For my paper I plan to explore where the line is drawn between the two controversies and propose a contemporary middle for the two to meet. The face of feminism needs to reevaluate their stance on the role of the housewife and create a culture in which the stay at home mother is not frowned upon by feminists. In my paper I will examine how feminists through time have examined the role of the housewife in society. I will then expand on the role gender equality plays in defining the modern housewife. Finally I will propose ways in which we can reform feminism to show that it is possible to be both a feminist and a housewife.

They argue that this media driven debate pins working mothers against stay-at-home mothers in order to “divert the dialogue away from the real issues such as affordable health care, quality childcare, gender and racial equality, fathers’ roles in parenting, media effects, fair wages and benefits, and family-friendly work arrangements” (204). They state that in this culture of mother-blame, mothers have been blamed for causing problems in regards to childhood development such as, “epilepsy, colitis, asthma, ulcers, arthritis, anorexia nervosa, and a multitude of more severe problems in children” (207). However, they argue that it is now “accepted that these disorders are in fact not caused by poor mothering…” (208). Another issue with the Mommy Wars debate is that it portrays a universal kind of woman – white, affluent, and heterosexual – ignoring the fact that there are many different kinds of mothers of all backgrounds, sexualities, and economic statuses – which can make those who are not reflected as the “average” mother, feel inadequate. The authors further argue that these messages that working mothers are harming their children are what discourage women from economic participation and achievement and can have a negative impact on a mother’s perception of herself - which in turn can affect her performance as a parent. It seems that the