chaning role of fathers
...family structure is obviously open to much discussion and interpretation, however it sets out a basic idea of gender roles as observed by Parsons. While the gender roles may seem asymmetrical, this is not always the case, in that gender roles, especially gender roles today, can be shared between the marital partners, although there is still a large inequity in the division of labour in the family home. A father’s role within the home has changed along with societies expectations of a father’s role within the home. No longer does the father work all day to provide an income for his family, while the mother stays at home and fulfils the role of housewife – cook, cleaner, child carer etc. – until father comes home, and expects tea to be ready or cooked while he spends ‘quality time’ with the children. Today’s society accepts and encourages women to join the workforce (sometimes through financial necessity) and double income families are more common. With this shared workload of income, it is expected, and men have come to the party in the main part, that the workload at home too must be shared. It is more common today then twenty years ago to see a father cooking tea while mother puts her feet up after a long day at work. The general cleaning and household chores are more often shared now than two decades ago, however women still do the bulk of housework at home. Studies still show that women do 70 per cent of unpaid work within the home, and that gender roles, that is men’s jobs and women’s jobs, were still very distinguishable and followed in the home. (Jureidini and Poole, 2003, pp267-8) Although we have only seen a marginal increase in fathers expanding and completing household tasks, today’s society is seeing the introduction of ‘stay-at-home’ dads, where mother’s essentially work while the father stays at home and looks after the child(ren). This is another creation of a father’s role because of the major increase of women in the work force. Women still seem to do less hours of paid employment than men, regardless of income earned. The majority of part-time employment opportunities are women orientated and men would argue that they have more time at home to complete the housework and associated tasks. It is also interesting to note that as the mother’s paid workload increases, the unpaid at home work decreases, but the father generally does not pick up the slack. It would usually be assumed that with mothers doing less around the home, fathers would do more, however this is not the case at all. As a mother’s paid workload increases and decreases, her unpaid work at home mirrors these fluctuations. However, regardless of the amount of paid employment work fathers do, they seem to never differ in the amount of unpaid work they do at home that is unpaid. (Jureidini and Poole, 2003, pp267-8) Overwhelmingly it is still an expectation of men that women complete the housework, and an expectation of society that men help out. But to what extent do they actually help out? There would be some homes where the father may do a majority of the housework, and some homes where the father does nothing to help the mother around the house. There is obviously a large range between where men do less, but still do help out with the housework. This range is much larger and the median would be closer to the to ‘majority of help’ end than that of twenty years ago. So one would need to ask themselves, how do men seem to be able to stay in a healthy relationship by only participating in about ...