The Stereotypes Of Women In Popular Culture

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.

Roughly four-in-ten mothers say they have taken a significant amount of time off from work (39%) or reduced their work hours (42%) to care for a child or other family member. Roughly a quarter (27%) say they have quit work altogether to take care of these familial responsibilities...(Patten, 2015 [see figure 3]).

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).

As mentioned on page 508 and 509 the authors argue that, “mothers who work full time and have young children do significantly more housework and childcare than fathers but they spend ‘only’ 37 hours per week in paid labor compared with 44 hours of paid work by fathers, resulting in an overall workload that is five hours longer.” Based on this statistic, mothers don’t have as much paid work

The labor force of the United States has changed drastically over the last forty years. According to the Department of Labor, in 2012, 64% of woman with children under the age of six are in the labor force. While only 34% of mothers were working in 1970 (Gullekson, Griffeth, Vancouver, Kovner, & Cohen, 2014). Furthermore, in 1974, 80% of kids under the age 17 were cared for by a parent (Morrissey & Warne, 2011). Given this dramatic increase of mothers in the workforce, there is a considerable amount of time missed by the working parent. On average, American working parents miss nine days of work per year and that number increases to thirteen as the child moves through daycare and into elementary school. Breakdowns in childcare cost businesses three billion dollars annually (Shellenback, 2004). Given these staggering numbers the demand for reliable and affordable childcare has never been bigger.

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

For thousands of years, established gender roles have been a part of our society. Women are commonly known as sensitive, emotional, or passive. On the contrary, men are described as rational, competitive, independent, or aggressive. Believing women are more emotional than men is stereotyping. However, the stereotype is not entirely untrue. Development of gender roles is often conditioned more by environmental or cultural factors than by hereditary or biological factors. The development of gender roles between men and women involves the inference of peer community of each gender, the communication style of male and female and the intimacy or connection level of men and women.

Being a mother is a full time job because as a mother you need to be around your child all the time. Even the father plays a similar role but nothing can ever come close to the nurturing capabilities of a mother towards her child. However, the present trends reflect that most parents are generally engaged in professional jobs where they need to devote a certain amount of time. Irrespective of the professional commitments that parents have, they must also give time to their children and take care of their responsibilities.

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.

Working parents have to deal with some problems when it comes to working and parenting. They have to both do their jobs in the workforce and care for their children at home in order to maintain their families. In other words, they cannot fully commit themselves to just working or parenting. Also, working parents have to find family time to spend with their children in order to strengthen family relationships.

As a result, many parents find themselves in a difficult choice between spending time with their newly born children and working in order to support them.

Imagine this: A couple, fresh out of graduate school, marry and for the first few years both members of this couple work full time, well paying jobs, but when they learn that the wife is pregnant they must decide if she will stay home with the child or continue her job. Now, imagine this: ten years later, this couple now has three children, and the wife is still staying home, living with the regret of leaving her professional career in the past. The decision of becoming, or remaining, a stay-at-home mom is something that all mothers must decide, if they are fortunate enough to have a choice. In “Nine Better Things I Learned About Becoming A Stay-At-Home Mom”, published in The Federalist, Denise McAllister shares her knowledge so that readers can see how being a stay-at-home mom isn’t always “horrible.” Although McAllister discusses valid ideas that she has learned from being a stay-at-home mom, she fails to provide enough relatable evidence of these ideas in order for other mothers to use her knowledge to decide whether or not it is best for them to leave the workforce.

Within Kimmel and Connelly’s (2007) analysis of such decisions, several observations were made. It was found that a greater increase in maternal childcare, home production and leisure time, stemmed from an increase in the husband’s income, and thus lowered the levels of participation of women in the workforce. Further, each extra child reduced employment time by 70 minutes per week, and the presence of another adult (e.g. the children’s grandparents) reduced employment time by 29 minutes during weekdays (Kimmel and Connelly 2007). This is worsened by the higher prices of childcare for younger children which increased the amount of time spent on maternal childcare during the week, and reducing time spent on employment. Sedo and Kossoudji (2004), expand on this by their finding that women are more likely than men to live in single-earner households with children, as the majority of single parents are women, and thus less likely to be wealthy at retirement as they spend most of their time and income on raising their children. Therefore, the decision to raise a child and the combination of the above factors have, as a whole, have brought down the amount of hours spent by mothers in the workforce, denying them the opportunity to earn significant incomes.

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.

During this last century societal views towards women have drastically changed, from being looked at as a homemaker, to a businesswoman, to a mother, and now a working mother. One thing that hasn’t changed through the years is how women are critiqued for what they do and how they do it. If a woman takes care of the house she’s lazy and doesn't use her potential. If a women works in the office more than she’s at home she doesn’t connect with her family enough. The latest judgement women are facing: are working mothers better mothers. Today, women are being put against each other to be viewed as the “better mother” just by looking at their profession.