Roles of man & woman

In a previous blog I mentioned a study that stated that woman were less happy now that their expectations for life were higher. That got me thinking about gender roles. I was raised in a very progressive family. (My grandmother wore a white pant suit to her wedding.) Yet I was still taught that it was the womans role to cook, clean and care for the children having an outside job and wanting to be equal to a man didn't mean that you did less in the home (you were still the woman after all!), just that there were now higher expectations. Yet, according to Kim Iverson women are trying to change gender roles and some men don't know what their place is now that the way they were taught things should be are being drastically changed. Thus I started to wonder how gender roles play a large part on the effects of society.

In the 1950s the woman was expected to cook and clean whereas the man was supposed to be the breadwinner. Neither party was supposed to ask for help from the other. Anything outside of these strict places was looked down upon for either gender. If a man had to stay home with the children while the wife went to work, this would be seen as a negative circumstance. However, today, this is more accepted. This isn't to say that there still isn't a stereotypical "housewife", but it is nowhere near as common as it used to be. Actually quite the reverse! There is a series of stay-at-home dads and house-husbands cropping up everywhere.