Family Politics and Policy

Within this week’s readings there were several issues that reminded me of my diametric perspectives on familial responsibility.  On the one hand, and similar to the cold modern approach outlined by Hochschild, I believe that females have a right to unburden themselves from their direct association as caregivers of the world.  Females, in the West, are modeled after this natural caregiver ideal, and rather than support females in these endeavors, I question whether social policies that support women in this role also limit their ability to shape themselves as anything else. 

On the other side of this debate raging in my conscious, is the reality that we, as humans, ought to care for one-another.  We ought to give care without non-gender-associated.  The fact that public society does not support private or public care is damaging to all those who were ever or will be children or elderly.  It is not that I question the importance of care work; I merely question the burden of that care being unavoidably female.  Must we support females in this work or support society in the care of its citizens?

When families do exist in this Western world, certain expectations outside of individual responsibility also exist.  Marriage, birth, death, divorce, dissolution, aging, and many other qualities impact and alter these responsibilities.  There seems to be two mutually influencing types of care highlighted in these articles: care as emotion and care as economic.  The responsibility of economic care is regulated, but it appears to be regulated without regard for the importance of emotional care.  The reality is that families need both to subsist, and even to thrive.  It would seem that when flexible gender roles allow females to pursue activities that promote independence and self-reliance (based on the mothers in Gerson’s article), they become better care-givers.  However, the inverse is also true: that independence and self-reliance in males may create a situation in which economic responsibilities become the basis of family ties.

       1.  To what degree is the responsibility of care synonymous with economic responsibility?  Is it possible to replace emotional care with economic care?

       2.  In the Gerson article, adult children viewed their mothers as having ‘financial stability and personal self-confidence’ due to the jobs that also created ‘long working hours, blocked opportunities, and family-unfriendly workplaces’ which ‘made their mothers feel overburdened and time-stressed’.  To what extent is the reality of having a working mother skewed by the framing of working women as independent, confident, and admirable?  To what extent is this acceptance also a coping mechanism, much like Hochschild’s negotiation of the benefits and costs associated with her stay-at-home mother?

       3.  Must divorce be harmful?  Various articles have suggested otherwise.  Most recently, Skinner suggests that divorced parents can work together to establish positive relationships with children, Kiernan investigates the social influence over public policy regarding recognition of cohabiting couples, and Gerson highlights the normalization of divorce as an acceptable, and even positive solution to marital strain.  Given this, is it possible to create public policies that promote emotional support following divorce?  What of the warm model of care in this effort?