The Shifting Role of the Father, Research Paper Example

Introduction

This paper examines the shifting role of the father in the context of women and gender studies.  It considers the increasing role of women at work and how the traditional role of the father is changing in terms of shared responsibility in the raising of the children.  How the role is being accepted by the father and the concept of role reversal.  Marriage is considered a social contract, primarily because the issues that are involved extend beyond the concerns of purely the particular individuals.  The children of the married couples are the future generations of which the whole society depends.  In essence, the termination of the marriage contract is either a legal consideration or by death.  In more modern marriages parties often seek legal contract terms that protect their financial assets i.e. in the event of separation or divorce.  These are often referred to as ‘premarital or prenuptial agreements’.  This type of arrangement is it’s often more common amongst wealthy or affluent couples.

In the last 20 years we have seen a dramatic rise in divorce rates, particularly in the US and Western Europe.  Studies have indicated that this decline in marriage is largely due to the general breakdown and weakening of the traditional family structure.  It is the maintenance of the family structure that really necessitates the importance of marriage.  The children produced from the marriage are the future in terms of perpetuating human society.  Strong family values teach the children the ethics and the social responsibilities of adulthood.  The love of the parents to the children translates to the personality of the adult.  The displacement of this leads to a more random outcome and potentially more uncaring society. “New research highlights that women in the UK think that marriage is no longer necessary in today’s society (results based on a survey of 2,134 women surveyed). Almost three quarters of women think that couples today enter into marriage too quickly without thinking it through and 62 percent of childless women are concerned about their declining fertility. “(Papadopoulos, 2009) marriages.  (Sheridan, 2010).

Role Reversal

Masculine Gender role strain gained popularity from the early 1980’s.  This particularly with the work of Levant and Pollock.  In the modern marriages we are seeing a lot of role reversal taking place.  The wife is going out to work and having a career, essentially the money earner, whilst the husband is staying at home looking after the kids and dealing with domestic chores.  Unless there is good synergy, communication and understanding in the marriage.  This can lead to a significant strain.  This is compounded with the role reversal occurred because the male partner lost his job.  The loss of the masculine role and feeling of shame often leads to extramarital relationships.  In the new relationship, the mail seeks to reinsert his masculinity and reclaim the position he believed lost in his marriage.  All too often in these situations.  It is the children that suffer creating divided loyalties, confusion, and ultimately alienation. ” ‘To accomplish this (the ability to love and be loved) a man must be willing to plumb the depths of his own psyche and to revisit the struggles, losses and traumas that lie at the root of his developmental crisis of self-formation and masculine identity. This cannot be accomplished through the nostalgic drumbeat of primitive masculinity” (Rowan, 2010)

Health related concerns are often due to self-imposed stress by role reversal and loss of self-esteem. This can lead to increased activities such as smoking and drinking, equally not finding time to eat nutritionally and take regular exercise.  This in turn compounds the stress factors and can result in ill health.  ” For men, appearing physically inadequate, expressing emotions, being subordinate to women, being intellectually inferior, and failing to perform in their work and sex life, are interpreted as particularly stressful (these five factors comprise the Masculine Gender Role Stress scale (MGRS; Eisler & Skidmore, 1987)).”  (Mussap).

Reconstruction of Masculinity

The 1990’s witnessed a sort of quiet revolution in the sense that the middle-aged man, who gave his entire life to the loyalty and devotion of the Company, is suddenly pot out to grass i.e. fired, laid off, made redundant, downsized or simply cast aside.  Suddenly they find themselves at home in a state of bewilderment.  The children have grown up and moved out, the wife now is busy with her career, has a social life and hobbies with her friends. The man suddenly finds himself in a role reversal and in the “empty nest” facing what has been referred to as “the forgotten future”.  This often leads to a struggle to regain one’s self esteem and personal identity and unless the partner can recognise this and help it often leads to extra marital relationships and subsequent breakdown of the marriage… “Put a foot wrong and one risks being accused of blaming women for men’s inability to control their sexual feelings and to harness their aggression. That is what many men believe and some act upon it. Women are feared, despised and sometimes even destroyed because of what men perceive women to be doing to them.”  (Clare).

Dark Side of Masculinity

The dark side of masculinity is that where loss of self-esteem leads to an uncontrolled bout of depression and untreated potentially suicide… “With men chastised for showing or sharing their emotions with others, they become depressed. They bottle up their frustrations, until one day, the bottle develops too much pressure and bursts. Hegemonic masculinity is partly responsible for making suicide the eighth leading cause of death for men.”  (Panginda)

Concept of Babysitters

Fathers at home looking after the children, particularly where the wife has a demanding full time career job, often look for a break by consideration of hiring babysitters.  There has been an increase in the number of male baby sitters and whilst the men are more comfortable with another male looking after the child, this is less so in the case of the mother. Babysitters of the male variety unfortunately enter a dangerous territory of caution and fear from the mother.  The terrible media stories of paedophiles give every mother a potential scare in the thought of adopting male babysitters.  Where some of these fears may be irrational, nevertheless maternal instincts of the female or mother protector of the baby are hard to replace. It therefore stands to reason that the Mother would prefer to deal with a female babysitter.  It would be interesting to see statistics in this subject area.  It is very interesting to read the many blogs placed on the internet in this subject area.  This is about as close to the “grass roots” as you can get.  A lot of fathers have voiced opinions and concerns about the mothers introducing male babysitters, so this concern is not purely female oriented.  The best advice being if you are uncomfortable with this concept, then simply don’t do it.

Dealing With Role Reversal

Statistics now indicate that approximately 2/3^rd of mothers now have employment outside of the home in the USA. The concept of equal opportunities creates a challenge for the male partner to have a more participative role in helping to raise the children. Whilst men have in general terms responded well to the challenge by increasing their participatory level we still find women doing more domestic work than their husbands i.e. cleaning, household chores etc. “The number of single father households has increased 246% in the last 30 years; there are 14.9 million single parent households in the U.S. today, and over 3 million — or 20% — are single father homes, one of the fastest growing populations in the 1990 census” (May). Fathers are very important in the upbringing of children and the child benefits from both care styles i.e. the father and the mother. The concept of the Father taking a more proactive role also creates a stronger bond with the mother and this creates a happier and more secure mother. It shows that the father is committed to a lifelong relationship with both mother and child.

Psychologists historically thought that the mother was the most important factor in the upbringing of the children. Later it was considered that the Father had an important role in guiding intellectual and social development of the children. Fathers also tended to take a more active role in the play cycles with small children and children are stimulated by this response. It this interaction with the father that helps the child to express emotional development. The fathers that are involved in this way promote better interaction between brother and sister. This paternal influence can last well into adulthood. As such it is the father who helps the children builds strong social relationships during childhood and into adult life. The Fathers are also important in the promotion of the children’s school activities and encouraging them in both sports and academic learning goals. This encouragement is crucial for being successful both at school and later in life. “The role of marriage as a foundation for family life has become controversial. More and more people are cohabiting or living together before marriage or as an alternative to marriage. More couples also are having children without marrying. Some people say that marriage is ‘just a piece of paper’ and does not make any difference to the couple or their children. For some couples, this might be the case. However, studies have shown that the majority of cohabiting couples are less committed than married couples, even if they have children” (civitas)

The metamorphosis of the Father will have the added example of illustrating to the children how teamwork behind mother and father builds a successful family relationship and these lessons learned will be valuable to the children when they grow up and have families of their own.  In this sense the transformed fathers are setting down the foundations for the future generations.  Gone are the Victoria era style fathers of “hands off” disciplinarians who chided their children into sense of purposeful duties and left the more caring and affectionate side of their upbringing to Nannies and the mother.  Whilst they may have thought this character building for the children it often left psychological problems related to that of bullying, fear of the father figure and a loss of any real bond between the child and the father that often manifested itself later in adulthood.  In this sense we have moved on in terms of children having a dad as opposed to an aloof father figure.

The concept of divorce has also had a significant impact on the role of the father and his relationship with children of his former family.  This is proven to have a significant disturbing impact on the upbringing of the children “In cases of divorce, it is often difficult if not impossible for fathers to maintain the same types of parenting roles with their biological children. Indeed, children of divorce—and later, remarriage—are twice as likely to academically, behaviourally and socially struggle as children of first-marriage families” (American Psychological Association).

Conclusions

Where both the mother and father have demanding careers it is essential that they work as a team in the raising of the children. In any event there is often more demand on the mother so it is important that the father recognizes this and works with the mother to take an equal share of responsibility. If this communication fails it will promote the build of stress and can impose a burden on the marital relationship.  If the parents can work through this problem they will become a stronger family unit and reap the benefit of improved education, social awareness and better character development of their children.  This in turn will help the children to understand the proper concept of parental roles and carry the concept into adulthood and their own families.

Works Cited

American Psychological Association. The Changing Role of the Modern Day Father. n.d. 30 11 2010 <http://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/changing-father.aspx>.

civitas. How Do Fathers Fit In? 2010. 30 11 2010 <http://www.civitas.org.uk/hwu/fathers.php>.

Clare, Anthony. “On Men: Masculinity in Crisis by Anthony ClareThe Dying Phallus.” 25 9 2000. guardian.co.uk. 21 2 2010 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/sep/25/firstchapters.reviews>.

May, James. The Fathers Network. 2010. 30 11 2010 <http://www.fathersnetwork.org/661.html>.

Mussap, Alexander J. “Masculine gender role stress and the pursuit of muscularity.” 2 4 2008. International Journal of Mens Health. 21 2 2010 <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PAU/is_1_7/ai_n25378706/>.

Panginda, Giovanny. “A Knight of Bromance: How Masculinity Has Changed Over the Past Fifty Years.” 17 7 2009. Identity revealed. 21 2 2010 <http://identityrevealed.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/a-knight-of-bromance-how-masculinity-has-changed-over-the-past-fifty-years/>.

Rowan, John. A New Psychology of Men. 2 2010. 18 2 2010 <http://www.achillesheel.freeuk.com/br20_2.html>.

Sheridan, Glyn. How to Write a Marriage Contract. 2010. 8 2 2010 <http://www.ehow.com/how_5028492_write-marriage-contract.html>.