Gender Roles In The 20th Century

Women’s Lives through the 20th century have seen some biggest shifts in the way our society has viewed the role of women. Each new generation of women has had different expectation than the last. I have interviewed three different women, each from a different generational gap starting from around the 1940’s. Though this is a small sample, I was still able to find a common trend of women 's progressions throughout the 20th century. After talking to each women about their roles in parenting and society, I also saw that these lined up really well with data that economist have collected throughout these periods and my initials thoughts. I will go into three trends that I have identified that I feel have led to the changes in expectations and roles …show more content…
The biggest shift I saw in terms of gender roles was the expectation of their husbands when it came to providing and taking care of the children. Delores felt that during her time that women should not be in the workforce after they were married since this was taking away jobs and hurting the income of families where the husbands was looking for work. In some cases she considered it greedy for a two parents to have jobs working when one source of income was enough. In the long run she thinks it is still hurting us today since two incomes it is almost needed. Going forward I saw that both older generation both had similarly strict expectation that their husbands would work to provide for their families, while not having much responsibility for housework such as cooking and cleaning. Also their husbands did not have a huge role in taking care of the kids other than some discipline and final decisions that they would make. This was according to them very normal during this time. For Lonna’s generations the expectation made a dramatic shift towards men being expected to be much more involved at home than the previous gaps. Women began demanding more participation from fathers. Now that it was common for both parents to be working full-time women also wanted equal participation in caring for children and other household chores. Lonna also said that …show more content…
Just in the past twenty-five years. there have been great changes in the structure of the American family and the roles of both mothers and fathers. When the economy and culture of the country change, we can expect family roles to also change. The days when fathers were regarded only as the family breadwinner are probably over. Most couples today believe that both parents must work to support a family. More than two-thirds of all women with children are working in the labor force. More women are beginning to question why they are expected to work and take responsibility for almost all the child care and domestic