The Changing Male Roles in Society
People in modern societies today have many changing roles. For example, ten years ago it was highly unacceptable to marry a person of the same gender, today it is more accepted. Other social changes in the American Society include employment change, cultural change, and even changes in gender roles. While there have been many changes in female roles in American society, the male roles in domestic American society have changed dramatically. The role of males in their families, in marriages, and in occupations have changed over the past few decades.
During the 1950s, for example, male roles consisted of dominance, work, and security. After World War II, during the 1950s, men returned home from the war to resume the way life used to be, whereas women had begun to learn how things could be. Male roles at that time consisted of dominance and hard work which they translated as security for their family. It is remembered that where happiness and security was sought it was within the security of a family and the unit was headed by the male. Father’s in the 1950s not only were the primary breadwinners but ultimately presided over the family unit itself. The gender roles between men and women drove popular culture and even entertainment. The father was the key role in the everyday family life.
The male would leave for work usually around or before sunrise and work until sunset, while the female would stay home and do all the chores and take care of the children. The male’s role with the children was usually very small. Even when the father came home after a long day at work the children were not his main concern. In fact, the children might even have been fast asleep their own bed and he would not think twice about wake them. The father was comfortable in his role as the breadwinner and the protector of the home.
Modern-day fathers have changed greatly compared to what they were in the past few decades. They are not the traditional breadwinner, protector, and disciplinarian they used to be. Today fathers can be single or married, employed or a stay at home dads, gay or straight, and more caring to their children emotionally then they were in the past few decades. There are many reasons for this major change in male roles as fathers. Two big roles include economic trends and changes in care giving role.
About a century ago fathers played the role of being a breadwinner and religious educator. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), “with the advent of industrialization and urbanization and as factories emerged as major sources of employment, fathers became distanced from the household and their families. Growing rates of abandonment and illegitimacy led to the development of welfare programs to assist widowed or unmarried women in supporting their children.” In addition, most present decades, the changing economic role of women has deeply impacted the male role. The APA says, “between 1948 and 2001, the percentage of working age women employed or looking for work nearly doubled–from less than 33 percent to more than 60 percent.” As women have become a greater part of the work force, men have had to become more involved in child rearing and domestic chores that were traditionally to women.
The care giving roles have also changed drastically. The APA researched the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and found an experiment that they conducted saying that fathers tended to be more involved in caregiving when:
• they worked fewer hours than other fathers
• they had positive psychological adjustment characteristics (e.g., high self-esteem, lower
levels of depression and hostility, and coping well with the major tasks of adulthood)
• mothers worked more hours than other mothers
• mothers reported greater marital intimacy
The modern-day father attempts to work fewer hours than his father and grandfather and is more even tempered. He supports his wife in her career goals and often feels a greater level of marital intimacy.
Other research from the APA has shown that a father’s love for his child or children has increased greatly. This research came to the conclusion that the father’s love for his children has a great influence on the child’s life. “It helps them socially, emotionally, makes them feel like they have a place in the world, and helps their cognitive development.” (APA) There is a notable outcome to the modern-day father’s impact on children.
Since the men were not around the house it hindered the relationship with their spouses as well. Husbands would use their women to do most of their chores around the house and in some circumstances, did not treat them with much respect, which would cause the wife to feel underappreciated and cause stress on both their relationship and their whole family. The couple’s intimacy would also be limited because both of them would be tired from either doing chores or from working the whole day, so sexual encounters because rare as their relationship would mature. No matter how corrupted their relationship would become, the couple would almost always stay together because divorce in this time period was very uncommon.
The role of the wife has also changed through the years. First, the wife would do all the chores and daily tasks, such a cleaning and taking the kids to school. Then as the years went on the wife would start to do less and less for the family and start doing more for herself. Typically, women wouldn’t go to college they would just have the husband get an education and provide for the family. Now, women want more independence and achieve that by not being a stay at home mom, but instead go to school and focus on a career for themselves.
Marriage has also changed in a very similar way. The woman is now also working with the man so there is a higher income in the family which allows the families to do more activities and spend their money more loosely. Since the families aren’t worrying about money as much anymore they can focus on enjoying themselves then what they are doing. The woman is now more focused on herself so she can provide for her family and herself in her own way and not just the man. This has made a big change in how families now function. In my life especially, women have made huge progress. For example, my sister Jaqueline is a lawyer in one of the biggest law firms in Colorado. With this immense and difficult occupation Jaqueline has not been able to spend as much time with her daughter Josephine as she would like too. With the role of the mother being gone because of her work, the father has to step in and take care of Josephine and assume his new role as a stay at home dad.
This has brought a new topic, discussing men’s roles in their occupation today. Men have started to work less and less throughout the years. They started working from sunrise to sunset. Today men have cut back on how long they work. They average time males ussualy got to work is from 9-5 jobs. The modern-day women have gain more respect in the workplace, which threatened the men who needed jobs to support their families. This threatened the “mans” role in the family.
While men have been evolving through the past few decades, the role of the male has changed drastically. Author Jack Myers explains how the traditional male is dying out. Myers says, “the future men will be increasingly defined, dominated, and controlled by women.” Women today are out educating and performing men in many ways. Jack Myers explains, “The jobs that are being created now in the workplace are requiring a college education. Only 40 percent of college degrees are going to men versus 60 percent going to women, which is a flip of where we were in the 1970s … Economically, under 30, single, unmarried women are out-earning single, unmarried, childless men under 30 by almost 20 percent.”