Breadwinners and Homemakers

The family usually divides the work between them, wives and husbands. Two terms must be defined that describe the couple’s roles. The first term is the breadwinner system, it describes the husband who works and earns income to support the entire nuclear family. The other term is the homemaker, it describes the wife who stays at home and does the domestic duties.

The Traditional Breadwinner and Homemaker

The traditional family consists of the breadwinner husband and the homemaker wife. In this patriarchal society, the husband is the head of the family and holds the power, because he has the ability to provide money or food for his wife and children. The traditional breadwinner husband seems to have the cultural respect. On the other hand, the homemaker wife usually lacks of control over one’s work, because she has to spend her day at home taking care of the house and the children.  

Breadwinner Wife and Homemaker Husband

In this system, the husbands and wives switch their roles, as the wife becomes the breadwinner by going out to the work, while the husband stays at home taking care of the children and do the domestic duties.

Since this system is out of expectation, husbands who are laid off or do not work tend to do less homework. This is because husband is expected to be the breadwinner not a homemaker, as he feels his masculinity is being under threatened. In this particular situation, some households may have some tension because of switching of the roles between the husband and the wife. The fact of nobody wants to feel useless, unappreciated and overloaded. Everyone wants a consequential work, so this lead to both of the couples be in the working field.

Families of the 21^st Century

In the last generation, it is noticed that many women are moving to the working field. Many women don’t want to continue what their mothers did, being homemakers. They are bored from cleaning, washing and doing all other house duties plus taking care of the children. Today’s women have other priorities other than marriage. Most of the women want to study in universities and have different degrees. Moreover, men in those days want to get married to those who are with graduated from universities, so that they have the opportunity to work. Husbands support their wives to work now a days to help their husbands from the income perspectives and to get the best for their kids. This situation may not matter to husbands with high income, but still women want to show themselves outside the house area.

The secondary shift

In sociology, the secondary shift known as the jobs that working wives do to run the household after they finish the workday. In Cinematic Sociology book, it indicates three types of couples. The first type is the traditional couple, in which both of the couples work outside the house for wages, but it is expected from wives to complete their domestic duties once they come back home. Besides, it is expected from husbands to their traditional duties such as handling the car problems. The second type is transitional; in which the husbands help their wives in the domestic duties. The third type is egalitarian; in which the couples divide the domestic duties between them. However, most of the times the wives have the majority of work, because they have the ability to organize and make all the work is done. The secondary shift helps both of the couples to drop their stress and both of them are benefiting from this arrangement to have a successful happily marriage life.

Family Roles in Doha

 During my last Cinema & Society class, we had a conversation on family and family roles, and we had the chance to express our thoughts and opinions. For this blog, I will discuss that matter and go into detail as to how it applies to our culture in Doha and the Arabian Gulf in general.

Traditionally and since we can ever remember, men’s job was to provide financial support for the family, hence their name “breadwinners”. Women, on the other hand, were responsible for taking care of the house, the kids, and ensuring it all went well. This is how women earned the name “homemakers”. All this goes back to our existing views and ideas about gender and who we believe is supposed to do what. 

          
The way all this applies to Doha is that during the last century and for the most part, men and women both assumed their traditional family roles, with men being the “breadwinners” and women being the “homemakers”. However, contrary to popular belief, men and women have mostly been breadwinners and homemakers simply because we decided to arrange things in such a way, not because it is the right and only way to go.

 Nowadays in Doha and in the Gulf, the number of working women has increased. Sometimes, this is the case because the “bread” earned by the father isn’t enough to cover for all the expenses and financial needs of the family. At other times, this is because of another relatively recent phenomenon, which is that nowadays more and more women are taking more interest in completing an undergraduate study after completing high school. By going to work and earning their own money, they feel more powerful and worth more than if they just stayed at home and took care of the kids. Although I am a personal believer in that some things women do at home, such as taking care of their children, are of great importance, the reason they and most of society do not see it this way is because, as David Grazian said in his book Mix It Up, “non-economic activity is devalued in today’s modern capitalist society”. Perhaps another reason that would cause a woman to go to work in this part of the world is if her children have all grown up, and so she basically has nothing to do at home and decides to go work to spend her time doing something useful.   

Before ending this blog, I decided to conclude with a few useful tips for those of you who are already married or do plan to get married someday. First, Grazian mentions a study that observed that women’s stress levels go down when their husbands help them with the housework. Grazian also stated that another study concluded that women who work are happier than those who are homemakers, which might make you re-think letting your wife go to work. That’s all for today. 

 

House Wives embrace change in their norms

In society today House Wives have been incorporating a relatively long list of characteristics of deviance. Their social status was defined as time came closer to the 21st century. This could be an uprising crisis because not only are women leading the media world, but they might end up being the head of the house. The video below will clearly show how Women could be close to the Social Media and the end of Gender. It is a Ted Talk that brightened my perspective on what women are capable of doing in the future.

Now that we saw how media is almost taken over by women, there is a connection I made with women who were house wives in history and were forced into a lot of labor because those were the norms set by people, and how the house wives of today, who are also working members are driving the social media.
Before Looking at the change in the norms of modern House wives, the history of the norms identified for the house wives are also important. Housework in America during the nineteenth century  was a range of harsh physical labor. To prepare a mean was difficult because it was time and energy consuming, since cooking was performed on a wood or coal burning stove.There were no thermostats to regulate the stove's temperature, which made the women keep a close eye on the fire all day an change the fuel accordingly. She would have to know how to cook unprocessed food like cleaning and killing a live bird/ chicken, green coffee had to be roasted before pounding, and cleaning all the mess the coal and smoke created from the cooking and light was tedious. Only, well-to-do families could afford cleaners, and cooks by paying them a few dollars. 

Although, time has brought us to a new standstill, House wives do not bother collecting coal or wood for fire in order to cook, they have the availability to electric or gas stoves, which works with just a click of a switch. 

Based on some research done on the Feminists' history of housewives, I found out that "Dr Bourke analysed the attitudes of about 5,000 women from 1860 to 1930 when, for the first time in Britain, it became the norm for women to be housewives. Previously most women had worked in factories, shops and farms". This is astounding but there is a reason why women accepted this norm.The change in the occupation, which was to move into the house was imposed on them against their will. As the wages got higher and men could afford it, the wives and daughters were forced to leave their jobs so that the men could make the family depend on him economically. This change came at a time when job opportunities were growing for women and the wages for women were rising faster than men.

Many posters were passed around to make more women embrace the idea of being a house wife, rather than an employed worker, as you can see below.

 Even quotes identify that the male figure and female figure grew very different from each other. This could even define the sociological perspective of such a rapid change.

“Any change in the nature of male and female roles thus automatically affects the home, the economy, the school, and perhaps above all, the definition of who we are as human beings.”
……William Chafe, A History of Our Time (224)

Government and business leaders created campaigns that convinced women that they should give their men their jobs because the men need it more than them since the war is over.  "Television and radio ads told women that they would be much happier if they went back home and had children and gave men their jobs back" were words taken from Chafe's point of view. 

Nevertheless, media has played its role in making a brand new perspective on what norms housewives today should look upon and almost abide by. The media that I am reffering to is the daily English series called Desperate Housewives. 

 
Desperate Housewives is an American television comedy-drama mystery series created by Marc Cherry. In brief it basically depicts six housewives who have been introduced to secrets that could corrupt their current relationships because it deals with affairs with other men, and it shows how some of the wives commit to their duties, and others are engrossed in their husbands money or generally in money, shopping, beauty, and the least care for their children. It shows acts where housewives engage in deviant behaviors that either hidden or exposed to the society in embarrassing ways. it creates a warning sign for people to be aware of their neighbors and keeping their enemies closer than their friends. This is one reason why House wives tend to be more lazy in their house work in the 21st century because they are inspired by television series. Even Indian television serials show two types of Housewives, one that is loyal and the other is a heavy headed house wife who tries to prove that she is better than the other. The name of the show is called Saath Nibhana Saathiya.

These shows effects the way housewives think and act. Technology is another cause to their introduction to more deviant behaviors. Some of the deviant behaviors could be shopping all day, instead of doing house work, lazing around and watching T.V most of their time or taking up a well paid job because women have realized that they are equal to men and can work as much, and doing tasks that do not relate to their norms in their social status. The norms are set by media and partly history. The organism that usually controls or judges the behavior of the house wives norms are the family members and for the most part their Mother in Laws and Husbands.
As this is a deviance, there are certain consequences to it, such as Sanctions defined by sociology. A sanction is an authoritative permission or approval for an action that is separated into four distinct categories. A formal Positive way, where the house wife is rewarded for being a good wife, though less used in cases for an house wife because a formal positive way looks at giving medals, or diplomas  or certificates. In this case, people do not usually give wives medals for being great wives. There is the formal negative way, where a person could receive a death sentence or punishments based on laws, in which case it would not be the case of a house wife to receive such sanctions unless they committed murder or other drastic crimes. Wives could get an informal positive sanction like a smile, hug, kiss or some extra love from her family members. Or, they could get informal negative sanctions where they are withdrawn from affection, isolated or even worst, physically abused which is a domestic violence.

In my experience, I see this as a relatively high crisis in my current life style. Having a maid in the house to do most of the work like cleaning, cooking, washing clothes, etc are so vital to keep a family going on with no stress or tiredness. In the culture I am living in today, a well-to-do family have several maids to run the behind-the-scenes work at home. There is one driver or more, three or more maids in one house and a separate gardener, and maybe a special Nani for each of the children in the house. It is not a huge culture shock for me because I have lived in Qatar my entire life and I proceed with some how a similar lifestyle. if people can afford to have a maid or cleaner, they certainly embrace the opportunity to make their work load less tiresome, giving them more time to relax more and have the chance to be a working member in the family.

Don’t Wash Your Dirty Laundry In Public

Once again, Sociology has encouraged me to look at things differently. Even at movies! Since my previous reading was on family and gender, I decided to analyze my elder sister who is living by the traditional role and the Mona Lisa Smile movie that represent the notion.



The “ideal family" consists of the breadwinner husband, homemaker wife, and their children. This ideology may not represent how we are now, but it definitely has influenced economic policies, social roles, movies, expectations about family life and even our own individual choices we make today.

Sociologist Denzin once said, “Movies ‘screen’ and frame social reality, and they reflect ideological images of interaction relationship, and the community.”



I watched the movie Mona Lisa Smile with my elder sister, in addition to the sociological readings I had about the movie. Ironically enough, she related to the movie the same way the girl’s ultimate goal was to get married and fulfill the traditional role. She is now a housewife and mother, while being a pharmacists.

The movie is about a freethinking, feminist, independent liberal art professor who teaches conservative 50’s Wellesley girls to question their traditional societal roles they have been spoon-fed.



At one point of the movie, one of the staff members get mad at Giselle, one of the free-spirited students, and yells, “This is not a joke. A few years from now, your sole responsibility will be to taking care of your husband and children.” This quote becomes symbolic and becomes further evident as the theme of the movie evolves around the notion and on how the pupils see their education as a way to pass their time until they are married.

The traditional-societal norm at Wellesley provokes Katherine to encourage her students to reject the social norm by continuing their education. For instance, Joan is torn between attending law school and marriage; Katherine literally fills out her applications ford Yale, Joan’s dream school. However, Katherine gets disappointed when she finds out that Joan chose to get married and move to Philadelphia.

At one point of the movie, Betty’s mom says, “Good wife lets her husband think that everything’s his idea, even when its not.” This clearly shows the 1950’s conservative expected female role as a wife, and how the husband has the final say in everything.



One of the outstanding moments of the movie was when Betty returns to class and gets into an argument with Katherine. This part of the movie stood out the most to me, as it showed the struggle to break social norms of women in the society, while facing the elite.

Betty: Don’t disregard our traditions, just because you’re subversive.
Katherine: Don’t disrespect this class just because you’re married.
Betty: Don’t disrespect me just because your not
Katherine: Come to class. Do your work. Or ill fail you.
Betty: If you fail me, there will be consequences

“Don’t wash your dirty laundry in public,” Betty’s mom said. This emphasizes on the importance of appearance, and not what happens within the family itself. This tends to be symbolic as not all married women had a happy marriage and family, but had to put up an appearance.