Working Women

Throughout history, women were the parent in the family that would stay home with their children. They are known as the "stay-at-home moms" and they care for their children, for the house, run errands for the house, and know all the kid's activities that they have going on. The father in the family was seen as the "head of the household" and the one that provided for the family. The father would go to work every morning, and the wife would be making dinner when he got home from a long day at work. We have seen this represented on television shows such as Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyck Show who was the stay at home mom that did all the household tasks and still raised her son. This representation of mothers and fathers has greatly changed over the past decade. We now see a lot more of moms being represented by stong women who work and are also able to raise their kids as best they can, teaching their kids lessons at the end of the day when they mess up. TV moms and families are now representing the change that families are going through. Moms such as Frankie Heck from "The Middle" are trying to find themselves and are trying to find a job they enjoy, Clair Huxtable from "The Cosby Show" is a strong woman who works as a lawyer and is pretty even with her husband when it comes to running the family, and Kitty Forman on "That 70s Show" who works as a nurse on and off. This shifting of the way moms are portrayed on tv can be seen as a direct portrayal of the shifting family roles. Women are feeling more empowered and working and earning more, while the men are helping at home more.

In her Times article, "Women, Money, and Power," Liza Mundy describes and discusses the change that is occuring in families in the United States, and she says it is not a very new thing that has just happened. Liza Mundy describes a family of six, four sisters and two brothers, who were raised by their mother who stayed home and their father worked as a Ford engineer in the 1970s in suburban Detroit. The father provided for the family and that was the typical role for a father to fill while the mother stayed home and raised the kids and tended to the home. The children these two parents, Gary and Marcelle Hawkins, raised are not running their families the same way they did. Out of the six children they have, only one of the six families is supported by a male. Liza Mundy discusses how there are more families now that have the woman be the one supporting the household, while more men are staying at home to help with the kids. This has not always happened because of the economy, but because it was the couple's decision to do so. Mundy mentions one of the Hawkins sisters' situation. She says that Rhonda is the one supporting her family while her husband took a step back and, "reduced his hours in restaurant management -- a job he loved" ( Mundy, 30). He did this because her job ended up picking up and she would have to travel a lot, sometimes on "short notice." Her husband, Hank said "I didn't think that would be fair" when he was discussing why he reduced his hours at work. He wanted her to have the opportunity to do what she needed to becuase, "She's had to make a lot of sacrifices to get where she is."

Mundy not only discusses married women and families, but she also mentions the single women. She mentions "the Pill" as being one of the things people have talked about which has caused the power women are taking over their own lives. The Pill has allowed women to try and focus on their career and education, while not having to think about putting it aside because of becoming pregnant. Strong independent women is what Mundy describes a lot throughout her article. She mentions the way single women who have a good career and earn good money also have a standard for what they want in a man. These women are becoming more critical of the guys they meet and the things they don't like in a guy. We normally hear guys talking about a girl being clingy, or a girl they are getting to know as being a little too much too early on, but Mundy mentions these women who are earning good money and are stable all on their own as also talking about guys in the same way. They see "clinginess in a boyfriend as a major dealbreaker."

I understand that women are becoming more empowered and there are many more independent women who wait to settle down until they feel they are stable enough, but what I don't understand is why us women often feel bad for making more money than our partners, or having better things than them. Mundy writes about the confusion men must be feeling because women are assuming the role of the "breadwinners" which was the role the men fufilled for a long time. Having the woman be the one supporting the family financially makes guys confused and may make them feel as though they have to prove themselves as still being manly enough, as Mundy says. She later goes on to discuss some women who have a very good job and earn very good money feel sometimes scared to talk about their job or their income. One of the woman that Mundy mentions does not like her date to walk her to her car because he will see that he drives a BMW, and she "vaguely say[s] she work[s] in administration" when she is asked by a date. This woman is a university vice president. Another woman's boyfriend does not have a car, but she does. Whenever they go out together, she will ask him to drive by making up some excuse. These women feel bad and I can say somewhat giulty for what they have and their partner does not have. Why do they have to feel bad? They must have earned those things by working hard and doing a good job, so why should they want to hide these things? I think men would not want to hide these accomplishments or would not feel bad that their partner does not have a nice car.

Not only are the single women feeling bad or are trying to make their male partner feel equal when they earn more, but so are the married women. In some cases, when the man is the "stay-at-home-dad," the wife seems to need to show him how much she appreciates all that he is doing. She will show him that she appreciates the work he is doing with their kids and the work he is doing around the house. I don't believe all men do this to their wives. I think that many men just see the work that their wife puts in at home is part of the things she has to do and they don't always show their appreciation. I know personally, in my parent's case, my dad did not always show his appreciation for all my mom did on a daily basis. He would work daily while she would work, drive us around to all our activities, and also do "mom" tasks at home. When I, being the oldest, left for college, my dad definitely felt all the weight that my mom had on her shoulders daily. He realized how much it is that moms do to run around with their kids after leaving work, and he was appreciative that she had done such a hard task. For this reason, Mundy mentions that, "Up to now, feminists have argued that breadwinning -- for men -- should carry no special privilege, that male earners were wrong to think their paycheck bought them out of sorting socks" (34). Women most of the time are not getting many privileges for "bringing home the paycheck" because they are still trying to treat their partner as being on the same economic level as them and are not trying to make them feel any less. Women are being compassionate and are trying to not have their partner feel bad for earning less or having less, but why are women trying to not make their husbands feel bad, but the men in past decades tried to make sure their wives stayed below them so that they could have all the control?


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2109140,00.html