Compare And Contrast My Great Grandmother

My great grandmother had two kids, my grandma Jenny and my great uncle Teddy. The family lived on a single income from the farm. Ma was a stay at home mom, and her husband besides the farm work, was a stay at home dad. Even though it was in the 1950’s, Ma and Pa shared equal house work, equal child care, and equal farm work. My grandma on the other hand, married my grandpa and had three kids, two of which were hers and one was her step child. Grandpa and Mamaw had very different gender ideologies which sometimes took effect on their marriage. They were a double income household, meaning my mamaw was a working mother and didn’t get to stay home. I found some similarities and some differences between the two of them? There was much to compare …show more content…
I reckon they were okay with us getting married. Their expectations were for him to be a loving man. I remember daddy telling me I found a loving man and he approved.” Mamaw told me about hers saying, “Just that he would treat me right, pay the bills, and help me when I needed it.” Both of them claimed to have close relationships with their parents. Similarly, both were daddy’s girls. Did their parent’s expectations match their own? When I asked ma, she had a confident answer. Ma said, “Yes. Thomas was loving, so loving. He was an exceptional man and you don’t find men like that anymore.” When mamaw responded to my question, she said, “for the most part, I wanted him to treat me right and pay the bills but, he was raised differently than I was. My dad helped my mom with everything and Jeff was raised to know that the women did everything. It was totally different coming from the house hold I was raised in, to a completely different outlook on how home life should be.” In the article, Breadwinner or Involved Father, M. L. Bosoni writes, “In the last few decades of the twentieth century, gender roles have undergone some important changes. In traditional societies the woman mainly dedicated to childcare and domestic tasks and the man in paid work, fulfilling the role of the provider” (2014.) Bosoni continues on the topic by adding, “The term “involved” or “new father” has now emerged to describe a man who is more involved in family life and the care of children, as opposed to the authoritarian patriarch and financial provider” (2014.) Referring to my great grandma and mamaw, it is so strange that my ma, who’s marriage was prime breadwinner/homemaker time period, the 1950’s, had a more supportive husband as far as child care and equal house work than my mamaw who twenty years later lived in a more traditional gender ideology household. D. de Vaus (2009) states, “The traditional gender-based family