Blog #4

What are some characteristics of a good family life? I think it varies between different families, but generally, there are a lot of characteristics of a good family. The most important characteristic would be love. Every family definitely needs love, because without it you are just a group of people who are stuck together because of who you were born to. It is important to feel loved in a family, or else you feel like something is missing from you. Other characteristics of a good family are appreciation, support, respect, and values; I could go on and on. Appreciation is very important in a family because in a family everybody should try and help everybody out and once you have received help you need to recognize it and appreciate what those people are doing for you. If you don’t appreciate your family, one day they could not be there for you when you need them the most. It is important to feel appreciated, or else eventually you might just give up because you don’t see the point. Children need to appreciate their parents and realize everything they have done for them while growing up. Supporting one another in a family is important because it gives people the courage to do what they want to do. Everybody needs support in their lives and who better to receive it from then your own family. Respect is obviously a big characteristic of a good family, because if you don’t have respect for one another, there is no structure. Moms and dads need to respect one another so everything is fair in the house, brothers and sisters need to respect each other, and parents need to respect their children as well as children respect their parents. If there is no respect, there is probably no peace and the family structure is probably a little off. Family values is a good characteristic because when a family has all the same values, everybody can be on the same page and cooperate together, such as sitting down to dinner together every night and spending one night a week playing a game or watching a movie, something like that. Family should always come first.
To balance a career and a family life is very tough. I don’t have a family of my own, I still live with my parents, but trying to work, go to school and spend time with my family/friends is very tough. It is all about organization and prioritizing. To be able to balance a family and a career, I think you need to have all the things listed in the characteristics of a good family life. You have to have a lot of structure and a good schedule. People who balance a career and a family need to realize when it is time to stop working and time to start being with the family and vice versa. It is very important to remember that family is first when balancing a career and a family, although I know that is not always easy, but it is also important to realize that you don’t need to be at every family function either, that it is ok to miss that dinner occasionally or that soccer game.
If you don’t have the characteristics listed in the good family characteristics, a balance between a career and a family can be very difficult to achieve. If you don’t have a support system at home, who is going to be there to help you whenever you need it, you aren’t going to want to do anything. Also, if you don’t have a supportive or understanding employer, that can also make it very difficult to achieve that balance.
Changes in traditional gender roles have made work and family issues more complex, because more men are starting to stay home and take care of the family, while women are going off to work. The expectations of women and men are changing and some people do not know how to adapt to them. With women working, adjustments need to be made in companies so when these women are pregnant and about to have their babies, they know it is ok to leave for a little bit.
Employers need to start realizing that women and men are both going to work now and a majority of these people have families and are going to need time off or a more flexible schedule sometime in their lives, so they need to start adjusting their policies. All companies should adopt workplace flexibility. Employers need to put themselves in their employees shoes and realize one day that could be them as well. They need to listen to their employees, find out their needs and wants and then compromise and come up with a plan.
Having support from family members, workers or neighbors make balancing priorities so much easier because you have this sort of team behind you that will help you wherever you need it. When you have support you know that there are people that are there for you to step in. They give you the courage to keep going and if you can’t do something, you know there is somebody there that probably can.

Blog 3

1) There has always constantly been carework in my family both between my mom and my dad, but mostly by my mom because my dad has always worked full time. Until I was about seven or eight and my brother five or six, my mom was a stay at home mom. She cooked, cleaned, took care of us when we were sick, drove us to school, drove us to lots of after school activities, participated in the PTA and was always constantly doing things at our school and in our classroom. My dad always worked, but he would also participate in after school activities and he would always take us to do things outside of the house. He would try to cook sometimes, he helps my mom clean the bathrooms and he does all of the outside chores. My mom takes care of my grandparents, they live on their own, but she takes them to doctor appointments, helps manage their bank accounts and keeps all her brothers and sisters in line, and she is only the middle child of five children. I personally help my parents with household chores and help when family members are sick or in the hospital. I am also always there for any of my friends or family who ever need anything.
2) I think what they are doing in the UK is wonderful. They recognize that almost everybody, whether male or female, is going to have to help someone who can’t help themselves because of some sort of health issue, such as sickness or disability, or age, at some point in their lives. To be able to recognize something like that is important because you are more open to helping those people out. Supporting carers’ at work is very smart. Employers realize that without supporting these people they are missing out on these clever, bright people who are unable to contribute to the workplace because they have someone they need to take care of. A majority of the time too, employers realize that they are getting even better work product from those people they are letting work from home or leave work early, then they would if they didn’t give them flexible work schedules. There idea of flexible work schedules is smart. The loyalty and commitment from employees is better as well. It is very nice to see that some employers recognize that it’s important to maintain a good staff and they can do that by giving employees flexible schedules and in the end everybody wins.

Society needs to reconstruct there notions of the home as women’s work by realizing that more women are getting jobs and the household work needs to be reevaluated and spread amongst all members of the household.

Blog #2

1) Sex segregation is the segregation of females and males in the workplace. I think of it as either women and men just holding different positions, for example women being secretaries and men being their bosses. It is also women and men being treated differently when holding the exact same position, for example women getting paid less and having different, or even none, of the same benefits as men when they have the exact same skills and experience. I am not sure how sex segregation exists in employment at ASU because I do not work there, but I have probably had a fair share of both women and men teachers and I know the head person of the Justice Studies department is a woman.
2) At home it is my mom and dad and my brother and I. My brother is younger than me by two years. We were brought up with the stereotypical socialization structures you see in the United States. My dad worked and my mom stayed at home until I was about seven or eight and then my mom went to work as well as my dad and she played the role of working mom and caretaker at home. My dad would help with cooking and cleaning though when my mom started to work; he was always good at that. Once my brother and I got older we got assigned the stereotypical gender roles with chores. I did the dishes and cleaned the bathroom and vacuumed while he did all the outside chores with my dad and took out the trash, but he has to help clean the inside of the house at times too. At school female teachers always outweighed the male teachers heavily, but the principle was a male. I work in a law firm and at work a majority of the partners are male. There are quite a few female associates thoug. All of the secretaries are female and almost all of the paralegals are female. This socialization is related to patriarchy because with patriarchy, males are the supreme authority and you see that in the work place, schools and in most families.
3) With men unemployed, women now not only have to struggle with working, they have to worry about still being the caretaker at home as well. More men are being laid off because the cuts in jobs are mostly in the manufacturing and construction businesses, where men mostly work. Stay at home moms are taking part time jobs and working moms are taking on multiple jobs. Those jobs though are still being unequal to women in areas such as pay and benefits.
Wage gaps still persists because although more women are working, women are still only making 77 cents for every dollar man makes. Women are also being left out of benefits, such as health insurance and paid vacation. A lot of women do not have life insurance either and with more women starting to work, they need to consider life insurance.