The Nuclear Family

In society today, it is expected of men to work 40 hours a week and provide their families and wives with a steady income to live on. The typical family consists of a working father, a stay at home mom who watches over the kids and does house work, and the kids. This is the family society expects of people. On the contrast, the "nuclear" family is quite the opposite. In fact, the gender roles are flipped. The wife has the job with long hours to provide the family with an income to live on, while the father stays at home to watch the kids and do the housework. This defies typical gender roles that society lays out for us where the men work in the office and the women do the housework. Modern families follow more of the stereotypical families in which the father works and the mother stays home with the kids. However, a nuclear family can occur in any house sometimes because a father can lose his job and have a tough time finding a new job. In this case, a mother needs to help out by getting a job to help bring in some money for the family.

 

Because gender roles imply that men should be the ones working and bringing in money for the family, some men don't handle it to well when they don't have a job or when their wife is making more money than them. Men often go through a fragile emotional state because they feel like they have lost their masculinity. When men go through this they refuse to do housework chores because they think they need to compensate for their loss of masculinity by asserting masculine privilege in other ways, like refusing to take orders from their wife. Statistics show that unemployed women will do six hours a day of childcare and housework. On the other hand, unemployed men will only do three hours a day of childcare and housework, and instead watch four or more hours of TV in the day. Many men refuse to do this because they want their masculinity of being the man in the house to stay intact. Men believe it's a woman's job to take care of the kids and do housework. Men go through a shattered self-image and low self-esteem when they are placed in this position because they lost their job.

 

After reading this, I think the way men react to this is silly. Although it may be ego crushing to not have a job, they need to realize that their family is the most important things in their lives. That being said, they need to do whatever they can to help raise the family and keep the household in the best condition to raise kids and for a daily functional life. Sometimes parents get depressed from the switch in gender roles, some argue, and some even become disengaged from their children because of the situation. This has a negative impact on child development. Family should be the most important thing to everyone, and instead of being negative in the situation, families need to stay positive. They need to encourage their kids that everything is okay, they need to reassure the kids that it's not their fault that the family is in the situation they are in, and it could even help to ask the kids for help. Kids can help mow the lawn or things of that nature to help the family save money. At the end of the day, family is the most important thing. No matter how it runs or who has what job, as long as the family is happy and healthy, the family is in a good position to live a happy and healthy life.