fatherhood

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, father roles in child care were very well defined. It was the father’s responsibility to be the moral guidepost through their development. According to Pleck, the father was supposed to impress upon the child what God and the world around them expected of them. This entailed educating their children in the ways of religion and guiding them to their occupation, or “true calling.” (352) This role changed form in the 20th century to a more traditional view. Pleck describes this father as the “distant breadwinner.” This placed more of a burden on the mother, and also in turn changed the very face of education. Following the work of Horace Mann, females were introduced as elementary school teachers. (354) While fathers still set the tone for moral guiding, it was done at a distance. As a result, Alexis de Tocqueville described fathers in this time period as losing much of their “authority”. Moving forward to post WWII, fathers retained the distant breadwinner image, but also became a sex role model. Pleck attributed this to the unease of the time period surrounding mothers and the Feminine Mystique, which described rampant homosexuality as a result of mother-son relationships.(356) The distant breadwinner view of fathers is still very prevalent in today’s American society. Fathers are expected to be distant and passive. However, it is my personal observation that this will not last. As more and more women are educated (in greater numbers than men), the social constraints surrounding women and childcare will dissolve. This will force more and more men to take a more hand on, dare I say, feminine approach to fatherhood.

This flows nicely into Francine Deutsch’s discussion of division of labor. The first point she delves into is the idea of alternating shifts among blue collar couples with children. This system involves the two partners taking alternate paid working shifts so the “off” time can be spent doing unpaid childcare and housework. This saves an immense amount of money in childcare costs and gives time for bother parents to be with children. IN this situation, which is more common among lower class couples due to the inherent is fast that shift work (construction, bell boy etc) is more prevalent among this class, the housework can be more evenly divided among the partners. This runs contrary to the dominant culture that despite progress in women’s rights, still assigns most, if not all of the housework to the women in a relationship. Although I appreciate the better work balance in these alternating shifts, I do not believe I could ever do this with a family (should I choose to have one). Perhaps it is how I grew up, but I enjoyed the time when both parents (who worked) were home at the end of the day. I don’t know how I would have felt about splitting my time with them.

Finally, Dorothy Roberts describes the situation with black american families, which are for the majority, led by women and not men. She describes this as the absent black father. There are many societal forces that she describes that may have an impact in the relative absence (or more appropriately, the discouragement of black father’s participation more than absence) of black fathers in black families. Some believe that female headed black families are resisting the traditional patriarchy that dominates our society. High rates of poverty among black populations can lead to higher rates of incarceration. Institutionalized racism limits blacks and can cause higher unemployment and lead to increased absence from the home.
What is unfair about this generalization that black fathers are absent is how “absent” is defined. According to Roberts, to be deemed fatherless, a child must only have parents who are unmarried. This places a lot of emphasis on marriage statistics, while ignoring much of the participation that black fathers may engage in. In addition, our white dominated society “pretend that black children are born into poverty because their fathers are not around, not because their fathers are jobless.” (158)

motherhood

In the middle ages, Hays describes an idea of child rearing that was extremely hands off. Babies were not heaped with love, toys, and other luxuries. In fact, they were often ignored. This, Hays claims is due to the fear of babies “demonic properties”, which were socially constructed.(24) it was not until age 6-7 that children, now considered mature, would be more affiliated with parents. Moving on through the 17th-18th centuries showed a change. Childhood changed from a demonic period in a child’s life to a valuable period. They began to feel that children were innocent as compared to demonic. IN this period, children were afforded special clothes and toys. (25) This occurred in Europe, but not in New England, where the old ways still flourished, along with additional strict puritanical discipline. Moving into the 19th century, mothers of affluent families would often use servants to raise their children. This is similar to medieval wet nurses,, yet very different in the fact that wet nurses often did not even differentiate between children, while servants would often take very good care of children. That is, it was thought that a good nursemaid was hard to find and given priority.(36) Toward the end of the 19th century, the focus on the mother’s ability to manage their own children changed. It was believed that they must be scientifically trained by doctors, or others who “knew best.” (39) This lead to child labor laws and mandatory education. Finally, contemporary child rearing has shifted more into the “permissive era”. Instead of focusing on teaching children “scientifically”, it was though that teaching inherent goodness was more important. (45). This has moved us into the more common practices that seem second nature to us today.

Intensive mothering came about after world war II. It was a drastic change from “Rosie the Riveter”, who during the war helped the war effort in the fact that it forced mother back into the home. It encouraged women not to work, but to keep a solid household and shower children with live and affection. This seems foreign to me, not in the love and affection part, but in mothers always being around. My family, and those of my friends, had full time working mothers. So the ideals of “the feminine mystique” do not seem to apply in my case. However, the unconditional love from both mothers and fathers was never an issue as far as I knew in my own or my friends families.

Crittendon describes motherhood as getting all the lip-service in the world, but no actual respect, and I believe she does it rather convincingly. She describes the duties of maintaining a household and asserts that it is often associated with “doing nothing” Even childless women have been known to criticize mothers for not working. Crittendon herself claims she originally wrote an article defending motherhood, but it was more out of compassionate contempt. The social views of the populace claim to admire mothers, but as it is stated in the article by one mother; ”I cannot mention my 13 years of experience caring for a chronically ill child on my resume.” Just looking at pay rates for child care is enough to show how little value is placed on child rearing.(6)

According to Collins, the two types of mothering that black women tend to take are 1.) The common image, that of the controlling mother, the matriarch, and the welfare mother. As Collins points out, these are all forms of oppression and designed to keep the status quo i.e. oppression. (176) Mothers in this group encourage their children not to be creative, but the be able to work, get a job and support themselves. And 2.) The second is a style in which mothers encourage creativity, self respect, strong character and furthering education. They view this a chance for themselves to become a sort of social activist. (176 I believe that this can ALSO lead their children to become social activists, for the black community as well. I believe that it can be related to the system of power in the passage on 175 in which the black PHD (on seeing a struggling black mother) exclaims, “That is one strong sister.” He believes that this women, who is barely getting by, is a powerful mother even though the images fall into the first category of oppression. I wish her story could have been elaborated on further to see if her parenting styles also fit that mold, or moved more toward the second category.


The attitude of many mothers in Edin and Kefala’s article is one of gratitude toward their children. Many of the mother claimed that having their children saved them in the sense that it gave them a new perspective and purpose in life. In Jen’s story she says that having a child gives her a reason to go home at night and not to buy drugs or otherwise get into trouble. She also claims that staying unmarried gives her a certain economic insurance. That is, if they did get a divorce (which she deemed likely) she would be in much more trouble than if she never was married. In order to help mothers like Jen get out of poverty, they will need access to jobs that ALLOW them to do so. (22) In addition, just advocating for marriage will not help if further support is not given. As Jen pointed out, it’s a good possibility that not marrying had made her life a great deal better.

adoption, welfare, etc...

The main reason that many women would choose a home birth over a hospital birth is the issue of choice and privacy. This is directly weighed against the governments interest in public health, specifically in the mother and the child. The data however, would suggest that contrary to popular belief, a home birth can be just as safe, if not safer than a hospital birth. This may have something to do with a hospital’s tendency to intervene in childbirth, sometimes doing more harm than good. It is my opinion that a woman has the right to choose where she would have her baby. If she feels more comfortable in her own home, it is truly her prerogative. In the same token, if a woman feels more comfortable with a doctor and all the specialized treatments and equipment that a hospital has to offer, it is also her choice. As to those who cite safety concerns, one must only look at the statistics cited in the article about other western nations. These are higher rates of midwife aided births with a lower mortality rate.
I have never given much thought to adoption, though my conception of it was that it would be very similar to how it is now, based on care. This was an incorrect assumption however. Originally, adoption was designed to help maintain bloodlines. (Which are not important in the US, but were in England and still are in France). Childless couples could adopt in order to maintain their family name and grantee an heir. The article mentions that occasionally illegitimate children who were acknowledged by a father could be adopted.
IN the US, Massachusetts specifically, there was, and still is not any emphasis on bloodlines. In the past, adopting a child might be compared to “buying or selling a cornfield”, as Friedman puts it. Missouri law actually compared adopting a child to the acquisition of real estate. Luckily in more recent times, the courts systems have not only been charged with overseeing the “contract” of the adoption, but also the welfare of a child…which has taken on a much higher importance.
Welfare reform is a big issue in my studies as I plan on eventually going on the gat my MSW…however it is still astonishing how much I do not understand about it. At first glance I am sickened by the conservative view of welfare, that people who are on it are lazy, and “freeloading”. They believe that those on welfare lack a certain morality. This flies directly in the face of my views, which are far more liberal. That is that those on welfare generally are not people who lack morals or drive, but economic hardship has driven them to these points and they should be helped. (Of course, working in a social services office for a summer and watching the case workers dented my idealistic view a bit, but did not break it)
According to Hays, 90% of those on welfare are single mothers. The welfare reforms have made it increasingly hard to stay on welfare, as new limits on who qualifies and for how long have been enacted. Conservative family values seem stunted when single mothers are forced to get jobs in order to stay on welfare, and as a result must leave their children. This country’s emphasis on self sufficiency and a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality is all fine, but almost impossible to realize with today’s cycle of poverty. Children in poverty will either go without money, because a mother stays home, or without a mother, because the welfare system requires that at all times she be training, looking, or holding down a job.
Countries like the Netherlands consider poverty to be caused by economic and structural factors, rather than “bad behavior” according to Block, Korteweg and Woodward.. The bad behavior approach is more common in the US, where policy makers assume that it is because of laziness, drug use and promiscuity that poverty is maintained. (This very much echoes Hays ideas.) As I mentioned earlier, mothers who are forced to work to remain on welfare cannot take care of their kids, who then may get into trouble without supervision. IN addition, these women must sometimes “cheat’ the system because the requirements have become so ridiculously stringent. In order to improve, there must be a consistent effort to improve the range of people social services reach AND their quality. Other initiatives like raising the minimum wage to a reasonable level (at least high enough to raise families above the poverty line) must be taken on.
According to Clawson and Gerstel, in order to improve the child care system in the US, we must stop thinking about it as child care, and more as early education. IN the French education system, children begin school at the age of three. Even though much if it is thought it be fun, much of the day is used educationally. Clawson and Gerstel also point out that it is only a small bit more expensive for the French public version ($4500 per child) than it is for US version of private child care. However, in France, the standards are easy figure out. IN the United States, the standards and quality of child care is far more hit or miss.

violence against women

The gender perspective is based on the predication that we live in a sexist society. As a result, violence against women is often not reported to police. When it is, it is often not prosecuted and the offending male escapes punishment. This also looks at violence against women as just that...men committing violence against women. The violence perspective does not assume we live in a sexist society, just a violent one. It looks directly at statistics saying that men are more likely to commit a violent crime, and most often against other men. When they commit crimes against women, it is because they are a criminal, not a sexist.
It is my position that in order to get a full picture, you must take both perspectives together. Looking at violence as the sole fault of criminals or "bad guys" completely ignores the fact that we DO live in a sexist society. To deny it would be to move backwards from our progress during the ongoing women's movement.
Jones claims that the answer to the question “why doesn’t she leave?” (as pertains to battered women) is that they most certainly do leave. The story about Karen Straw, where she tried to separate for two years, tried to have him prosecuted for 2 years, and then ended up being beaten, raped and held hostage, tell a powerful story. The most telling factor was probably that Karen was the one who ended up being prosecuted when she finally defended herself. This story would support the gender perspective as described by Felson. It shows that it is difficult, if not impossible to fight back against a battering husband, let alone just simply leave, even though one might try.
One of the most common excuses men used, according to Ptacek, was the denial of responsibility. They would claim that they had lost control of themselves, therefore minimizing their actual responsibility in the battering. Some even cited drugs or alcohol in their loss of control. Ptacek even claimed that many of the men thought physical violence was an appropriate response to a wife’s verbal abuse. Another common excuse is that women are exaggerating their injuries. That is, the men do not beat their wives “that bad”.
The contradictions within these excuses are everywhere. Ptacek describes that most men wanted to keep their dominance. Loss of control is no excuse if your behavior patterns say otherwise. Writing threatening letters to their wives, or driving them back to their mothers so they can show them how to be a wife are a few behaviors described in the article. If battering was a “loss of control”, then these men would not be exhibiting these other sexist behaviors. It is this attempt by men to maintain dominance over women by any means necessary that supports the gender perspective. The fact that it is so accepted that men would behave like this shows the depths of our society’s misogyny.

The egalitarian myth is described in this article through the lens of Nancy, a full time social worker and mother of one. She describes herself as a feminist, and in theory believes in a 50-50 split of housework. However, due to problems with her husband sharing it, has to give up more and more to stay happy, or to at least keep from becoming resentful. She describes her husband as cleaning the downstairs and she does the upstairs...which sounds even. However, when you look at the amount of work that goes into each task...she is clearly getting the shaft. Emotion work, or a mans emotional commitment to a marriage, is very important. The closer a couple is to a 50-50 split of house work, the more likely they will be in a happy marriage.

The Holts situation is not atypical. My own family was very similar in that my mother, who earned less, would do the majority of the housework. My father would cook a lot, but when it came down to cleaning...it was mostly the kids or my mother. However, general car and house maintenance were always handled by my father, (and there was a lot of it) so there was almost a 50-50 split of house work.
The ideology of domesticity, or the dynamics of a household (more specifically a biological unit, places 3 major constraints on the division of work in our society. There are that:
1. An employer has the "right" to expect the ideal worker.
2. A husband must live up to this expectation.
3. A wife is delegated extra work because the husband must live up to this expectation.

SO did this exist in previous times? I woud say no. IN class, we discussed how the family unit was one based on survival. There was security in a household. It was even suggested that homosexuality didn't exist in the capacity it does now BECAUSE of the immense importance placed on marriage and the family. The expectation of an ideal worker has nothing to do with survival.

The sex discrimination arguments are interesting, specifically when “free choice” is brought up. Free choice assumes that males and females have these gender roles simply because they choose them. According to the article, many have claimed that women do not have as high of an interest in “traditional male positions,” and therefore do not pursue them.. The same can probably be said about men in female positions. I know being one of only a handful of males in the elementary ed program at BC that there these just isn’t the same interest.

The division of labor in lesbian and gay couples is remarkable similar to that of heterosexual couples. Both have underlying, though often invisible, ties with domesticity. As Carrington puts it, monitoring the cleanliness of a house, the supplies in the storeroom or even the birthdays of a calendar are big signs of domesticity. Yet they often go unnoticed. The biggest difference though between homo and hetero couples is the construction of gender and gender roles within the family. In fact, Carrington points out that the development of gender identity is of major concern for homosexual families. In the situation of Andrew, a school teacher, he even said he developed a “summer wife stint”, because he had summer off.(93)… It is rather interesting to me that Carrington would use this example and relate it to gender identity, especially after the previous article had described “free choice”.

According to Risman and Schwartz, the most common claim about teenagers engaging in sexual behavior is on the decline. They assert however that these claims can be exaggerated a bit. IN their research, the incidence of teen pregnancies and STD transmission has gone down. This has lead many to believe that abstinence only sex ed is actually working. In a way, this may be correct. The number of teens that report having engaged in sexual activity has in fact fallen. However, the incidence of pregnancy and STD's has fallen at a significantly higher rate. This would suggest that although fewer teens are having sex, those who are being safer when they do.
England and Thomas looked at college students and the increasing prevalence of the "hook up" as opposed to traditional dating. They found that both boys and girls in college date FAR less than in the past, though hooking up (defined throughout the article as some kind of sexual contact) is on the rise. They also noted that this doesn't seem to have affected how many college students are in exclusive relationships, just how they get there. Instead of dates, multiple hookups may lead to relationships.
Both articles compare males to females. Risman and Schwartz, in looking at teenage sexual relations, found that the decrease in boys having sexual encounters is falling faster than girls. They contributed this to the sexual revolution in part, with girls having much more say in what goes on. England and Thomas pointed out differences in actual sexual experiences between genders. They went into great detail of reported “orgasms” and the discrepancies between the genders of who actually gets to experience them. (In a not so shocking analysis, boys may think they bring girls to orgasm far more times than they actually do.)
It is difficult to compare much of what was addressed in these articles to my own life. The emphasis on the heterosexual relationship disconnects me from much of it. As for the college hookup culture, it seems like it stretches across lines of sexuality. Though since most of my college life was spent in a relationship that was maintained from high school, it might be harder for me to judge.

In D'Emilio's article about sexual deviancy, he describes much of how people dealt with it in uncomfortable detail. The basic idea of their control was that of punishment. Those who violated rules were generally forgiven if they accepted their punishment. This is not to say that some punishments were not severe. D’Emilio describes some situations where people were executed for the sexual crimes. In cases of bestiality, he even describes the executions of animals, as well as people.
Young people we often exposed to these punishments, so there views tended to be towards marriage, family, and sex only for procreation as opposed to sex for “carnal pleasure”. In addition, the article describes situations where children were often put in the position of hearing or seeing adults in sexual situations due to lack of space in farming communities. From this, to the teachings of the church, young people were exposed to sexual behaviors all the time. With so much control, society could maintain the system of marital and reproductive sexual behaviors easier.

D’Emilio’s second article is interesting in that it brings up capitalism, family, and a gay identity and ties them all together in a way that I never would have thought to do. The point that less children are needed to maintain a family economically and the need for a nuclear family to exist to function economically is something I have given thought to before. What I did not do was tie the shrinking need for more children to the rise in more people having a “gay identity”. Identity, D’emilio points out, is not to confused with desire. He is not claiming that homosexuality did not exist in the 17th and 18th centuries, only that because capitalism and the family have a contradictory relationship. When one thrives, the other falters (or changes)

The debate over the american family and how it has changed (declined?) has been a regular topic in many of the education classes that i have taken. Popenoe suggests that a definate sign that the family is in decline resides in marriage and the statistics surrounding it. Statistically, less people are marrying, those who do marry later in life, and the percentage of marriages that end in divorce is rising. He also spouts statistics regarding how parents spend less money from their income on children, that is if married adults even choose to have children (as that has dropped as well). It leads him the the conclusion that many americans are unwilling to invest time, money and energy into family life.
An important thing to point out is that while many(conservatives) consider this to be a decline in family and family values, it can also simply be seen simply as a change or shift. Specifically a shift away from the traditional nuclear family.

Stacey disagrees with Popenoe that the "decline" of marriage is not a decline, but a change or evolution. She claims that the 1950's idea of marriage is gone, and there is no reason why it should be brought back. She claims that the social agenda pushed by 1950's traditionalists is what is really doing damage to children, and not the evolution of the family itself.

It all three articles, there is an attempt to define what a family even is. Popenoe's definition is clinical, "a relitively small group of kin with at least one adult and one dependent." To me something that void of feeling is the exact opposite of what a family is. It does not encompass much of what the average american might consider family. Does that fact that children move out and are no longer dependent stop them from being a family? Does two adults living together not constiture family? It is broad generalizations like these that i disagree with.

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