Written By: Britt Huddleson
The Industrial Revolution in the United States transferred work from home to the factory, and men were expected to go to work for pay whereas women were expected to stay at home taking care of children. This economic transition from the family based self-sufficient economy to a capitalist market economy has created a new family model, which has gradually become an influential ideal for all families to follow. The traditional male breadwinner and female caretaker model became less prominent as more women worked outside the home. In 2015, it was reported that 42% of women were the sole or primary providers in their home. Women working outside the home and splitting housework and child care with their husbands is a trend that is becoming normalized in American culture. Women at work are not inherently harmful, but for some families, the loss of distinct spheres of influence could negatively impact marital relationships.
A study conducted in 2004 by Yan Yu investigated the relationship between traditional gender roles and perceived marital stability. The study was conducted by interviewing two groups of Chinese couples. The first group consisted of 15 couples dwelling in Western Michigan, and the second group of 23 couples lived in Beijing. The 15 Chinese immigrant women who were interviewed ranged from 34 to 56, so they were likely influenced by the state programs of gender equalization and employment put in place by the communist leader Mao Zedong. Eight of the fifteen women were stay-at-home moms, and all eight had a decent job when they resided in China. Instead of pursuing higher education or a career, the women decided to stay at home and care for their children. The women who chose to work applied for jobs that would allow them to take care of their responsibilities within the home as well. All their spouses held full-time professional jobs. The ideology of the separate spheres is apparently not weakened but instead has gained its popularity within a certain political and economic context in the United States. Existing research indicates that to ease the tension at home and spend meaningful time with children, gender roles are reinforced by the metaphor of balance.
The male wage earner and female housewife ideal is not something new to China. According to a traditional Chinese saying, men dominate the outside while women dominate the inside. This classical patriarchal family system was challenged under communism, in which women were pushed by the government to work outside the home. As Mao Zedong famously said, “women hold up half the sky”. When China’s economic reform was launched in the late 1970s and early 80s, it did not weaken its patriarchal family system. On the contrary, the transition to the marketing economy reinforced it.
The western ideal of women’s employment leading to their financial autonomy and bargaining power may reduce the stability of marriage and increase the possibility of divorce, consistent with the functionalist perspective of the male worker and female caretaker deal. High divorce rates lead to the rise of the single-parent family, where both single mothers and fathers face a care deficit. In the two-parent family, spouses face a tension point in marriage if they are not able to balance their work and family responsibilities. In Beijing, women’s employment did not completely translate into their financial autonomy and bargaining power. Instead, it was viewed as ‘‘the sharing of financial burden without being tightly bound by the breadwinning responsibility’’. The incomes of both spouses were considered essential for the family’s well-being and not for the individual earner. Women’s satisfaction with their marriage was not determined by what they earned. Rather, it was determined by how much their husbands made and how successfully their husbands played their gender roles. The market economy has caused a gradual change in China’s traditional patriarchal family system but has not transformed it to any great extent. In other words, women need to work not for their autonomy, but for the family’s well-being. If women’s primary responsibility continues to lie in the domestic sphere, marital stability can be sustained by couples’ perceived marital satisfaction in this dual-earner family system where gender boundary is still intact. More than half of the Chinese immigrant wives became stay-at-home mothers after they immigrated to the United States. When asked to define a woman’s responsibility almost all the Chinese wives living in the United States stated that a woman’s responsibility was taking care of her family and children. They all emphasized that family should come first, which was contradictory to the ideology of ‘‘Do away with the thought of relying on men for support,’’ once greatly emphasized in Communist revolutionary China. One of the wives said, ‘‘It is against nature if mothers don’t take care of children and let society take over the childcare responsibilities.’’ Several wives reported that before they quit their work, family life was hectic and stressful for themselves, for their spouses, and for their children. After the wives decided to quit working outside and become stay-at-home mothers, their marital relationships seemed to be less strained and more stable.
Marriage is not a one size fits all situation. From Yu’s study, however, we can conclude that traditional gender roles can often function to bring balance into a married couple’s relationship.
References
Yu, Y. (2015). The Male Breadwinner/Female Homemaker Model and Perceived Marital Stability: A Comparison of Chinese Wives in the United States and Urban China. Journal Of Family & Economic Issues, 36(1), 34-47. doi:10.1007/s10834-014-9417-0
Moen, P., & Roehling, P. (2005). The career mystique: Cracks in the American dream. New York: Roman & Littlefield Publishers INC
Glynn, S. J. (n.d.). Breadwinning Mothers Are Increasingly the U.S. Norm. Retrieved from https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2016/12/19/295203/breadwinning-mothers-are-increasingly-the-u-s-norm/
Zuo, J. (2016). Work and family in urban China. [electronic resource] : women's changing experience since Mao. [Place of publication not identified] : Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
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