Work, Family and Gender in Reaction Paper

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Women are still expected to do it all, however with more women getting more and more independent, the typical depiction of the supermom is changing. Today in our society, I think that that these traits of a working woman suggests that she is ' active ' and ' capable ' because these are her individual personalities, not because she has been pushed to adjust to an excessively challenging agenda. I also concur with the third main point Hochschild discloses, because it explains that unless our culture starts to back male contribution in the household and childcare tasks, the transformation for women will move forward without society and support from the spouse. We can relate to this in today's society in some homes but there are a growing number of households where the roles are being reversed. Men are staying at home more and taking on the duties of child bearing; much like the women did 20 or 30 years ago.

I think that depicting the life of Nancy and Evan Holt in chapter four, really stuck out to me. Evan has an old fashion gender belief and Nancy is more moderate. In my opinion, Hochschild did a wonderful job with describing the struggle that was a result from their dissimilarities and also how the couple works it out. Hochschild dug in deep with this family. I got the impression especially when she writes about "Joey's Difficulty ." Joey is their son and he is 4 years old and has a tremendous connection to Nancy and she also does for him. Nancy adores her son and cannot get enough of him, while Evan has a substantial emotional coldness from Joey. I disagree with the story that Joey's parents give concerning his issue because they agree that he has the normal oedipal affection of a son to his mother.
I agree with Hochschild, because she investigates and finds this clarification unacceptable and begins to look at the problem as a symptom of the strain between Evan and Nancy and the struggle of their gender beliefs. In today's society, there are many kids like Joey that fall in the same situation. Also, many women today share Nancy's view. As some women today, Nancy believed life should be a good balance between family and work. I believe Nancy, along with women of today; still have the customary marriage because like Nancy they may have she grew up witnessing their mother's depression and position of subservience as a housewife. I feel that like Nancy, even women in this era as mentioned by Hochschild have this fear of being a slave. In Nancy situation, I believe she felt that if Evan chose not to help with housework, he would eventually want her to serve him as her father required her mother to do.

In conclusion, I feel that this insightful, humble investigation of family life observed by the talented Arlie Hochschild as a fly-on-the-wall shows viewpoint on a dilemma people should ponder about before they decide to marry. She exploited things like how to deal with economic and personal essentials with having children. I believe she pressed this concern because this issue influences men and women, fathers and mothers. Although, I feel that this study is a little biased toward middle class families, in spite of it being written almost a decade ago, these chapters in this book are very much relevant for today......

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