Gender Roles In The Movie: Mr. Mom

In the film Mr. Mom a husband and wife are forced to temporarily swap gender roles at work and at home. The film demonstrates gendered division of labor at home and at work. In the film the husband and father, Jack, gets laid off of his job as an engineer at an automobile industry. In return Jack makes it a competition between him and his wife, Carlyon, to see who can get a job fist, Carlyon wins the competition by finding a job as an executive for an advertising agency. The roles in the house swap when Carlyon goes to work; she becomes the breadwinner, while Jack becomes the caretaker. This movie analyzes the different problems and rewards in the swap and reinforces the idea to viewer’s traditional gender roles. In the film, due to the role swap, Jack is now the one to stay home, take care of the kids, and take on the Expressive Role. The expressive role, usually carried out by the woman, is the role in which a member of the family is the caretaker, such as taking care of the kids, cook, cleaning, and staying at home (2013, P. 195). By Jack taking on this role he is taking on …show more content…
Mom reinforces the traditional gender roles for views that men are supposed to be the breadwinners and women are supposed to be the caregivers. It also portrays that the instrumental roles are rewarded more than the expressive roles inside a family, such as Jack being very disappointed and feeling lonely taking on the caretaker role and Carlyon feeling very successful taking on the breadwinner role. This can give viewers a false ideology of what type of work someone is good at or should do based on their gender. This film also analysis the differences between the different types of work for men and winner and how they differ by gender by showing how women are “better” at caregiving than men. Altogether, by showing how both Jack and Carlyon responded to the role swap helped demonstrate gender division in labor at home and at work as the were both work in the others usual