Dual Career FamiliesJoin now to read essay Dual Career FamiliesDual Career FamiliesThe societies in the United States and other societies abroad are enduring many changes at a rather rapid rate. The changes that I am specifically referencing are those involved with altering the norms and cultural traditions among marriages. There is a vast amount of growth among both the husband and wife fulfilling full-time careers. In the past, more traditional marriages existed. The husband would endure a full-time career while the wife stayed at home and completed the majority of the domestic work. The traditional marriage has definitely changed, as it has become more of a norm for both the husband and wife to maintain separate careers.
This essay uses information from an article in the New York Times about a change of life at a young age in marriages of many families to change traditional values regarding the “traditional.” It is titled “A Generation of Women May Seek to Change and Change Their Society” or: “A Generation of Women. Are They Changing Their Society?” The article states that “the traditional marriage that preceded it has undergone a drastic transformation, the traditional marriage has changed, and it has also become the norm in American culture to be ‘traditional.'” The article’s primary author is Dr. Susan Shiller. (The article reads in part: “A Generation of Women May Seek to Change and Change Their Society.” The article is available through the Ideals of Change (www.itschrism.org) and Change the World (www.changetheworld.org). I believe it is important to address how the “traditional” was originally designed by a woman of her time, and she can now say, with certainty, that it is nothing but a product of her times, and that her actions in adopting these “traditional” attitudes had an impact on many generations of women. This change in attitudes and practices (if I am correct) may affect many of my own children and spouses, and to add insult to injury, other generations as well. As I said before, my family values are as firm and enduring as mine, and they often have the highest impacts on my daughter’s career development. How they are impacted is not entirely up to me, but more importantly, how it affects my father’s career potential and happiness. The article concludes on another point, regarding “our cultural traditions that are very much at the center of our society’s social and economic structure.” While it may not mean that many of our past lives are different in tone, it may be that many people in our current society have a lot more in common, and a lot greater understanding about the values and values on which we live. And many of those shared values are very different than what is currently being communicated to most Americans. I ask that everyone in my community take the above as an opportunity to make clear that they are not alone in the experience of changing our lives. I also want to reiterate that I am proud to be a part of such a movement. There were two important things that compelled me to make this change. One was understanding that I was not alone in changing our culture. On my own, I started this change in my early teens after I met someone who was going through a divorce proceeding. She was trying to rebuild her life under a new set of circumstances. In this case, the divorce was the result of a relationship or breakup. My first reaction to the divorce was that this is a very different culture. This meant that most non-white people were also looking in the mirror and was shocked by what we were seeing. I decided to follow the steps I felt were right for my family. I became aware
This essay uses information from an article in the New York Times about a change of life at a young age in marriages of many families to change traditional values regarding the “traditional.” It is titled “A Generation of Women May Seek to Change and Change Their Society” or: “A Generation of Women. Are They Changing Their Society?” The article states that “the traditional marriage that preceded it has undergone a drastic transformation, the traditional marriage has changed, and it has also become the norm in American culture to be ‘traditional.’” The article’s primary author is Dr. Susan Shiller. (The article reads in part: “A Generation of Women May Seek to Change and Change Their Society.” The article is available through the Ideals of Change (www.itschrism.org) and Change the World (www.changetheworld.org). I believe it is important to address how the “traditional” was originally designed by a woman of her time, and she can now say, with certainty, that it is nothing but a product of her times, and that her actions in adopting these “traditional” attitudes had an impact on many generations of women. This change in attitudes and practices (if I am correct) may affect many of my own children and spouses, and to add insult to injury, other generations as well. As I said before, my family values are as firm and enduring as mine, and they often have the highest impacts on my daughter’s career development. How they are impacted is not entirely up to me, but more importantly, how it affects my father’s career potential and happiness. The article concludes on another point, regarding “our cultural traditions that are very much at the center of our society’s social and economic structure.” While it may not mean that many of our past lives are different in tone, it may be that many people in our current society have a lot more in common, and a lot greater understanding about the values and values on which we live. And many of those shared values are very different than what is currently being communicated to most Americans. I ask that everyone in my community take the above as an opportunity to make clear that they are not alone in the experience of changing our lives. I also want to reiterate that I am proud to be a part of such a movement. There were two important things that compelled me to make this change. One was understanding that I was not alone in changing our culture. On my own, I started this change in my early teens after I met someone who was going through a divorce proceeding. She was trying to rebuild her life under a new set of circumstances. In this case, the divorce was the result of a relationship or breakup. My first reaction to the divorce was that this is a very different culture. This meant that most non-white people were also looking in the mirror and was shocked by what we were seeing. I decided to follow the steps I felt were right for my family. I became aware
Research has identified numerous variables that affect the stability of a marriage. The factors that have been identified as affecting marriages and in turn influencing divorce rates include: financial stressors, domestic workload, job stressors, identity strains, and marital interaction time. The results that will be later identified may be of particular interest to couples that are in the early stages of marriage. The research has conveyed that the majority of the negative impacts that affect a marriage and in turn lead to divorce are most common to occur within the first few years of the marriage.
The first of the traditional norms that has taken on dramatic changes in dual career families is the amount of domestic work that each spouse completes. Some would expect that as women acquire their career they would have to take on less of the domestic workload. It might be expected that women’s growing earnings will gradually increase their domestic bargaining power, and this in turn will ultimately compel men to share equally in child care and housework (Bittman, England, Sayer, Folbre, and Matheson, 2003). However, research does not concur with this statement. All the available studies identify the dual-burden phenomenon: even full-time employed women still bear a disproportionate responsibility for house work and child care (Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, and Robinson, 2000).
Various options exist in regards to the resolution of the women’s amount of domestic work load. The options available include: tolerating things as they are, leaving their career, leaving their husband, or choosing to renegotiate the division of domestic labor. The first of these creates an unresolved tension toward change. The other alternatives directly reduce the dual burden in various ways: the second by removing the paid work, the third (divorce) removes the couple from dual-burden statistics altogether, and the fourth (renegotiation), as we shall see, leads to some redistribution (Bittman, Brice, Gershuny, 2005).
The research has identified a pattern of lagged adaptation among marriages in regards to the redistribution of the domestic workload. The research has also conveyed that the majority of domestic responsibility expectations are a result of the observed domestic work load interactions among the couple’s parents. Those brought up when employed mothers were exceptional rather than normal are liable to have more gender-segregated views of domestic responsibilities: girls grew up to do housework like their mothers, boys to avoid it like their fathers (Brice, Bittman, Gershuny, 2005). It is evident that regardless of the division of the domestic work load or employment status, women still carry the majority of the work, as their mothers did in the past as well. Employed wives in the United States are responsible for .66 of the domestic work load, whereas non-employed wives are responsible for .80 of the domestic work load. The studies do show that husbands increase their domestic work load when leaving employment and decrease their share upon reentering the labor force.
Overall, women make a larger domestic labor adjustment immediately following their entry to their career. As the years proceed, the women’s adjustment of daily domestic hours worked grows smaller. The men adapt at a much slower rate, their rate of adaptation is almost directly opposite of the women. The men perform their largest share of domestic work in the later years oppose to the initial years of their wives entering the labor market.
In addition to the proper distribution of the domestic work load, job stressors are also factors that affect the stability and health of marriages (i.e. crossover of occupational stress). The research has shown that one partner comes to share the feelings of the other, and to experience strains as if they were his or her own (Westman and Etzion, 1995). The sharing of the stressors and strains may be attributed to the stressors that are experienced in a marital couple’s personal environment, such as financial problems etc.
The research that was based on the Demands-Supports-Constraints model found that crossover was primarily related to lack of support and problematic