Family and work are the two main concerns of all married women all over the world. The struggle gets even tougher when one has kids and more so when one is a single parent. On completing the chart 'Who completes which task in your family', I realized my mom does majority of the household work and some chores that I never even thought of before! The rise in women labor force has brought a change in the roles and expectations of the gender, both at workplace and family. Even though men have started sharing a lot of daily chores; not in a lot of families will you see the husband cooking, doing the laundry, or cleaning up the house. The men in the families would take up occasional tasks like lawn mowing, washing the car or much fun chores like giving the kids a bath etc.
The fact is household and child care responsibilities are still applicaple to women even if she has to get to work at 9:00am and doesnt return home until 5:00pm. I believe it is the society's expectations and social assumptions of gender roles. The social agents such as one's own family, schools, books, media etc. all assume and preach that women are the nurturing and the care taking sex. Women who are not able to keep up to the expectations feel gulity of not being able to do so.
Yes, I agree women still shoulder a lot of the household duties and then suffer through feelings of guilt if they are not able to do everything, like taking off from work to stay home with a sick child.
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