Division of housework in nuclear families

Family and Marriage

Division of Housework in My Nuclear Family

Social construction of gender is apparent from an early age in all American family relationships. Macionis points out that most people want to know whether an infant is a boy or a girl, placing emphasis on sex before a child is even old enough to know the difference (225). Social constructions encourage little girls to play with dolls and kitchen play sets, often resulting in young women who associate their roles as mother and cook for a family (Macionis 226-227; Stokes 237-241). Similarly, little boys are encouraged to play competitively and to choose toys and games that involve machinery, such as trucks. In high school, boys are more common in shop and auto mechanics, where girls may take home economics, choir or other seemingly "feminine" courses (Macionis 226-227; Soroka and Bryjak 228-229; Stokes 238). They social constraints are reinforced and perpetuated by individuals' families, who were raised to believe in these common associations between gender and social roles.

My family is fairly typical of the American family. There were three children: two boys and one girl. We were planned by my parents, who decided together that they wanted to have three children. My mother and father both worked before we were born. However, my mother decided to stay home when each of us were born. Since were born two and three-year apart, respectively, it resulted in my mother staying at home for nine years after her first child was born. She got a job when my sister, the youngest, was three years old and was deemed "old enough for daycare." Even at that point, my mother did not work full time. Instead, she worked 20-30 hours a week where my father was still salaried full-time. He often worked 40-50 hours a week. My mother was still responsible for the laundry and preparing breakfast and dinner (the whole family had lunch at work or school).

Most of the home jobs were my mothers. These included: making dental and doctors appointments; taking the children to practices and after school events; cleaning the house; cooking; and shopping for food. Also, if we (the children) were ever sick, my mother was likely to take the day off if she could not find someone to stay with us. My father had a few household responsibilities. He kept the basement and garage in order and he was responsible for making sure that the cars were inspected and got work done on them. He also took care of the yard work except for my mother's garden. Additionally, he was in charge of how the children were punished if we did something wrong. These jobs and roles obviously changed when my parents got divorced when I was a teenager. My mother worked full time after that, and my father paid child support. They maintained a working parental relationship when it came to making decisions about the children. My father continues to mow the lawn at my mother's house and she occasionally (usually around the holidays) makes him baked goods. However, their home life is for the most part separate.

Section 2.

In taking a closer look at my own family I found many interesting arrangements or behaviors that implies family myths or gender role actions. Hochschild and Machung's discussion of a couple in their book reminded me of my own family in some respects; my mother, like Dorothy, worked and then came home to fix dinner for our family while my father read the mail (Dan read the paper) (21). It was generally accepted that my father worked harder and longer than my mother, even though her job plus her housework and meal preparation added up to much more. The idea that my father worked more when he did not is an example of a family myth from my family. I imagine it stemmed from the fact that my father made more money than my mother and so his job was considered to be the primary source of our family's income. Since his job was "necessary" and my mom's job was "secondary" my mom's contribution was looked at as less important (Stokes 243). Though the entire family recognized that my father's job was considered more important, my father frequently commented that my mother's job of "raising our children" was very important to him. As I understand it, my father said this a lot when he and my mother decided that she would stay home with the children while we were very young. Like the families identified in Hochschild and Machung, my mother began to feel resentful and unhappy with the family arrangement and this probably had something to do with their eventual divorce (21).

Another family myth existed in my parents' relationships with us as children. My father spent more time with my brother and I than he did with my sister. He played sports with us and took us camping. My sister was the youngest, but I really feel that she was not included in this sort of activity because she was a girl. My mother used to call it "male bonding" and I remember that there was great emphasis placed on these father-son outings. My father began paying more attention to my sister when she was a teenager because he, like my brother and I, felt like we had to protect her from predatory boys who wanted to date her. My mother thought this was "sweet" and that men should protect the women in their families. This, too, seemed to represent a family myth: that the men in our family were stronger than the women and that the women needed us to protect them from other men (Hochschild and Machung 138-140). If asked directly, we would not have said that we felt that our sister and mother were weak. However, our actions always portrayed that sort of behavior.

Most of the tasks in the household were broken up naturally, though there were some exceptions.

Just like one of Hochschild and Machung's examples, my mother often made excuses for why she did many things (21). It may be true that she enjoyed the grocery shopping, but she also pointed out that my father was slow at the grocery store and was a horrible cook and meal planner. In this way, she maintained her role as the shopper and cook. My father was not opposed to picking up a few items on the way home from work or when she was sick but in general she just naturally went to the store when we needed things.

Like cooking, other things in the home seemed to make my mom feel like she was a good nurturer and wife (Soroka and Bryjak 229). The cleaning was also something my mother seemed to do naturally, and I got the feeling that this was because she did not take much stock in my father's idea of what was clean. They had met in college and I know that my father's apartment at that time was messy. My mother did delegate chores to the children and often asked my father to do individual cleaning but it still remained her overall responsibility. Some of these things seem to be indicative of society. However, I agree with Wood, Wood, and Boyd that some of the nurturing qualities in my mother are likely the result of psychological and physical makeup in women (414-415). I think that her desire to stay home with the children and her desire for a good home life were a result of both a physical / psychological investment and the social constraints that were placed on her while growing up and by my father. Macionis describes this as sociobiology (54-55).

One decision that was clearly discussed and made by both of my parents together was to have three children and to have my mother stay home while we were young. My parents discussed this because it affected both of them financially and physically, since they both had to live with us and deal with us once we were born. Even when my mother returned to work, both of my parents agreed that is would be better for her to work part time. My father seemed to feel this was better for him since it meant my mother could still run errands and drive us where we needed to go after school. My mother, however, seemed to be characteristically concerned that she would always be there for her children (Wood, Wood, and Boyd 414-415). She did not want us to be "latch-key" kids or ever come home from school to an empty house. This displays a difference in their motives, which are both psychological and social. My mother wanted to make sure we were nurtured and that she was being a "good mother" (Macionis 226-228). My father, meanwhile, was protecting his family life by "allowing" my mother to make time for children and errands that would overall make the entire family and household more comfortable to life with.

It appears that the work each of my parents did in their roles aligned with their attitudes of what they felt they should be doing. In the beginning of their relationship up until two or three years before their divorce, my mother clearly wanted to do the things associated with mother and wife. My father was also very comfortable as the typical, somewhat distant, working father who designated specific times for fathering and family (Soroka and Bryjak 300-301). In the years leading up to their divorce I think that their comfort with their roles changed. Since we (the children) were getting older, my mother did not need to be tied to the home as much as she had been previously. She wanted to do more activities, like take classes. However, this made my father uncomfortable since he did not see any reason why things would change. He was uncomfortable that my mother wanted to go back to school of work full time, possibly because it might be uncomfortable for him. Additionally, he seemed unwilling to change the status quo (Soroka and Bryjak 301).

If the state had any role in my parents' roles and the way that they changed, it was probably in the form of taxes and child support. My parents would not have divorced if my mother had not have expected to get child support from my father. She did not make enough on her own to support herself and three children. Since my father was not abusive, I imagine that she would have stayed with my father if they had lived in a place that did not require my father to support his own children financially. For example, fifty years ago perhaps it would not have been an option for a woman in my mother's position (Soroka and Bryjak 297-298). Additionally, I feel that my mother would not have left my father if there was any chance that she would not have been granted custody of her children. Since some countries are more restrictive to women in terms of custody, the state affected what options my mother had (Stokes 308-315).