Marriage and the Family- Psychology - Essay Example

of Lecturer 20 April Marriage and the Family- Psychology The days when women were restricted to the house chores alone and men were made to cater for the responsibilities of the family through their earnings are fast gone. These days, the modern family is gradually becoming a dual-earner family. The situation is quite different from old times as the husband and wives work day and night in order to meet up with the challenges at home and take care of the responsibilities of their family. The deviation from the family’s traditional division of responsibilities shall be explained in this short paper.

It should be noted that the challenges of the family in these modern days are quite different from the ones in the olden days. The family is an institution that ensures that some basic amenities are provided to its entire member; the husband is the head of the marriage institution and is expected to fulfill his responsibility by adequately providing for the social needs of the whole family, but these days wives now lend a helping hand in meeting up with these challenges. Poverty is also responsible for the break in the traditional responsibilities in the family as Lewis puts it, “the culture of poverty cuts across regional, rural-urban, and even national boundaries the remarkable similarities in family structure, the nature of kinship ties, the quality of husband-wife and parent-child relations…….” (2). The husband is expected to yield to the necessary demands of the wife and their children and when the man of the house does not meet up with his responsibility of catering for the needs of his family, there becomes a problem.

Several families witnessed these problems in the past and these have made married women to stand in the gap and assist their husbands in meeting the responsibilities of the family. It should also be noted that the days were gone when laws were made that men must earn more than their female counterparts. There are several cases that women earn more than their male counterparts and it is not unusual for the married ones amongst them to put these earnings in the family and support their husbands in meeting up with the challenges at home.

Faludi states that “the average actress makes 50 to 100 per cent more money than her male counterpart” (535). This has been happening in other fields aside acting and with the empowerment of women and this is one of the reasons that the contemporary family has deviated from the traditional division of responsibilities. Works Cited Faludi, Susan. Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. New York: William Morrow, 1999. Print Lewis, Oscar. Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty.

New York: Basic Books, 1959. Print