Gender Norms Influence On Family Roles

Throughout the years society has had a large role in gender norms and their influences on family roles. They have impacted the ways in which families function on a daily basis. But what if a family only has one parent; do gender norms extend to them? Yes. It is common to see gender norms within single parent families in society. Gender norms expect women to stay at home and men to go out into the workplace as stated above, but these gender norms are slowly starting to shift due to the fact that society is slowly shifting from a patriarchy society to a society that is more equal when it comes to gender norms. Feminists believe that it is important to move away from a patriarchy-based society in order to achieve gender equality. For example, …show more content…
For example, a single mom has to find a job becoming the household breadwinner as well as split her responsibilities with taking care of her children and the household on a regular basis. This is seen by society as untraditional due to the fact that the gender roles are already set in stone and people of society do not like change. It always comes back to change. People of society no matter how much they deny it do not like change. Change causes fear to erupt in people leaving them to create things like gender norms. With these changes in gender roles over time “marriage rates and childbearing rates have declined sharply; and divorce and nonmarital cohabitation have become commonplace” (Wu & Baer, 1996). What this means is that in society not as many people are getting married and having kinds as much as they used to and this is causing the traditional views based on the definition of families to change. Throughout the years gender norms have shifted but they can still be found throughout the …show more content…
The media is known as ideologies or beliefs that we live by in our day-to-day lives and often do not question. This effectively dissuades people from rebelling against these beliefs and, keeps a sense of stability in society. Media texts always reflect certain values or ideologies though sometimes we may not be aware of this. An example would be action films like the Die Hard series, where it states that solving problems with force is seen as acceptable. One way that the media has an effect on gender roles is through movies and television shows. “In the years between 1947 and 1990, 85% of families were shown in a comedy format during primetime” (Olson & Douglas, 1997). What this is stating is that the families portrayed through television shows all fell back on comedy. For example, if parents had a conflict during the TV show the end of the episode would solve it in a humorous way leaving people to believe that comedy can solve everything. This also makes society believe that since the families in the sitcom were funny and solved their problems with humour they should do the same thing, which brought about the family norm that states that everyone within a family should be happy. Within society people have based what men and women should look and act like based off of media. For example, women should be fragile and submissive looking and should show emotions whereas men should be dominant and strong and should not show emotions what so