Imagine this scene; a mother, and homemaker, is busily making a three course dinner, waiting the arrival of her husband. She has spent her day cleaning the home, doing the laundry, feeding the children, sewing tears in clothing, sending the children to school and picking them up once again. After dinner she will be required to clean the kitchen and dining room, bath her children and put them to bed, and after all this still be excepted to please her husband in any way he desires. She is a 1950’s American woman who does what she is expected of her by society; be a mother to her children, be a wife to her husband, and be a stay at home woman. She is not expected, however, to have a higher education, have a job or career of any kind outside the home, or in any way choose what she wants to do with her life. In today’s society, on the other hand, women have more options in terms of education and careers, but still end up doing the majority of the housework and childcare.
In our grandparent’s generation, few women had the opportunity to gain a higher education. The idea of women in college was thought down upon by the majority of the population. Society did not see it a need for a women to have a college education. In today’s society, however, women are not only expected to have a college degree, they are greatly encouraged to earn one. Recent studies have showed that there is a larger percent of women enrolled in college than there are men. This clearly shows that women no longer feel like they have to follow the past generations ideas about women’s education status.
Similarly, today women can have just about any career that they desire. Today, women can be anything from a doctor to a lawyer, from an astronaut to a racecar driver, and even from a professional sports player to a news anchor, yet this was not so in our grandparents generation. Women who did chose to have a career had only four options: waitress, teacher, nurse, or secretary. Even if a woman did chose to have a career, and be a businesswoman, society would look down on her and make her feel like an outcast. Today some women, who have careers, opt not to have a husband or children, wanting to concentrate solely on their careers. There are also certain career women chose to be single parents, not wanting a husband, yet still wanting a child.
Through all of these advancements women have made for themselves, they still carry the responsibility for taking care of the home, and the housework that comes along with it. In our grandparents generation, women were required to do all of the housework, which included doing the laundry, sweeping the floors, making the beds, cleaning the bathroom, along with many other chores. As recently stated by Sue Shellenbarger, “ They found wives not only underestimate their husbands’ contributions, but overestimate their own, saying they carry 67% of the load, rather than the 61% indicated by the study.” It is very true that today women no longer carry the entire load of housework, women are still required to do a greater amount of household chores, compared to their spouses.
Not only are women still required to take care of the housework, they are also still left to care for the children the majority of the time. In the previous generations women were solely responsible for the children’s lives; taking the children to school, making sure the children did their homework, taking the children to their sports activities, keeping up with all the children’s appointments, preparing the children’s lunches, making sure the children have presentable clothing to wear, and so on. Now, however, women share some of there responsibilities with their spouse. The father might be the one to take the child to school, or to take him to a sports activity, however the mother is still left to do the majority of the things that come along with taking care of a child.
Today’s women have come a very long way from the time of their grandmothers, however women still have a very long way to go to be considered complete equals with men. The amount of work that women have to do is a great deal less, and things for women in society have also improved considerably. We now need to keep moving forward with all of this progress and not ever let things rewind to the past.