Post #4

The characteristics of good family life are variable. It depends on the family, and knowing this one cannot make empirical observations in characterizing what good family life is for all.

For me, good family life would be living in a supportive environment. If a family has goals, and enforces good values in all its members, in my opinion, everyone is better off. I think good family life can also be characterized by cooperation. Yes, not all people in every family get along, but if they are all working together to accomplish goals, it is all the better. I think that cooperation in raising children and supporting them is what works best. When care in a family is weighted to one side of the parental unit, it creates tension and stress. Making sure everyone is happy and content is a hard thing to do, but striving for that speaks volumes.

I think it is very important for parents to balance life and divide their careers and family lives. However, it is a very difficult task to undertake.

“Juggling Work” addressed many issues families face when trying to balance work and childcare. The female lawyers showed how difficult the balance is between these two things. Many female lawyers are not able to work full time because of children. They are forced to give up their career goals and the possibilities of making partner for their children. In my personal opinion, this is unjust. Just because a woman has the goals of both having a family and a career should not mean that she must choose one over the other.

Why is it only women who must make this choice while men are able to keep their fulltime jobs?

I honestly believe that it is because our society has become so accustomed to gender stereotypes, the social constructs that we adhere to, that this injustice is engrained into the structural components of our society. Women are forced to stay at home with children because society has deemed them the primary caregiver. Men are told they must provide for their family, so they become the breadwinner. We teach this to our children in everyday life. What kinds of toys do little girls play with? Babies and dolls. Girls play house, have tea parties and pretend to be caregivers. They are told to be nurses and teachers, not engineers, politicians and policemen.

There are many problems with our society. One is that the idea of the man being the provider for a family is outdated. There are more women in the workforce than ever before and they provide just as much to families as their husbands. But, they are still forced into the care-giving role as well, forced to work that second shift preparing dinner and rushing children everywhere after their nine hours at work.

Another problem is that employers have not made the effort to adapt to this fact and become flexible with women, and also men.

I think what it boils down to is that in order to make it so that women are not forced to choose between work and family, employers need to be more flexible.

Like we saw in the video from the UK, many companies are adopting programs that allow employees who need to care for family members the ability to do so. An employer would gain so much in allowing someone to work from home when a child is sick. This doesn’t just have to do with raising children, it concerns care for elderly family members as well. It can kind of be explained with the good old Golden Rule—do unto other as they would do unto you. If an employer shows flexibility, an employee will work harder to show their gratitude for said flexibility.

I know that when I was young, my mom would work days while my father worked nights to make sure that I never had to be left in daycare. Once I grew older and my sister was born and grew, my mother turned to family such as my grandmother for childcare. She would also leave us in the care of neighbors. My mother’s employer has grown to become much more flexible now that my mother has seniority with the company and has a mother to care for.

The point is that it is not only women who can care for family. What happens to the single father who can’t make it to his child’s educational planning meeting because his employer doesn’t think he deserves time off? He suffers and his child suffers. What happens when a single mother cannot take off work to care for her children when they are not in school and cannot afford childcare? She suffers and her children suffer.

Society tells women that they need to take maternity leave when they give birth, but do men get paternity leave? No. I think that because the roles of men and women in society have changed, but the socially constructed stereotypes associated with each sex have not, it has made the situation much more complex than it should.