American Masculinity

2513 Words11 Pages
Growing up in Ireland during my childhood, I watched as my parents both left for work, each wishing the other a nice day as they went their separate ways to work. It was highly unusual for either my mother or my father not to go to work five days a week, unless they were ill. After moving to the United States in 2004, my parents remained employed with steady careers, working as vigorously as they did in Ireland; however, as I got older, my father began going to work less frequently. Eventually, as the recession hit in the United States in 2007, he had lost his job completely, leaving him with nothing to do but hope that this crisis would soon be averted so that he could get back to doing the only thing he has ever known how to do- work. Seeing…show more content…
That is not what defines people anymore. Men do not need to go to work and earn the income even though “the idea of being a provider is the bedrock experience of American masculinity . . . but the fact that most of these men are in two-career couples will mute some of the depressing elements of their unemployment”. (Holahan 158). Most men want to work for the satisfaction of being the men of the house. Many feel weaker if their wive’s are earning their income. It’s untraditional for a woman to take care of the family, but these are stereotypes that are being crushed by the feet of women in the workforce in today’s society. Authors Marybeth Mattingly and Kristin Smith of Change in Wives’ Employment When Husbands Stop Working: A Recession-Prosperity Comparison, elaborate on the job loss the U.S has been faced with seeing as though “between December 2007 and January 2010, 8.4 million jobs were lost” (344). Mattingly and Smith conducted a study to see if it were true that women who were “faced with long-term job loss among husbands who are typically the primary breadwinner, [had] families increasingly turning to wives to pick up the slack by either entering the labor force or increasing their hours in market work”…show more content…
The effect that this recession had on society is monstrous. It essentially paved the way for female run industries, and shed a new light on what it means to be a man nowadays. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a man wanting to provide for his family, it would almost come as second nature to most people. Statistical information previously stated is evidence in itself to prove the facts that men did have a higher unemployment rate than women, but it is effect on society that became argumentative. Without a doubt, both men and women are equally just as hard working- they aim to achieve the same goals of providing for their family and living a comfortable financially stable life. Women see clearly the paths of men in the workforce and understand what is necessary in order to successfully accomplish what the men do, but some men fail to see just how important and beneficial it is for a man to stay at home. I don’t believe that our society has fully come to the understanding that men are not the more powerful sex, but neither are women. Thinking traditionally, what is a man without the TLC a woman provides, and what is a woman without the financial stability of a job that a man has? That method of thinking in this society is rendered
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