This undermines their motivation and self-esteem therefore they give up on trying to do well in education and have a fatalistic attitude towards it. Another reason why girls achieve better could be because of the changes in the family. There is now an increase of the number lone-parent female headed families and these changes are affecting girls attitudes towards education. This could be because an increased number of female headed lone-parent families means that
They are also not having babies or having them later so that they can pursue single lifestyle which means that by the time they have done this they have less time to have babies which means if they do decide to have children they will have less due to the time they have spent being single. A lot of women now have become a lot more independent and are concentrating on their career. Contraception has also improved a lot since the 1900’s this now means that women can choose whether they want to have children or not and still have a sexual relationship whereas before if you wanted to have sex you would most probably become pregnant. In the 1900’s children were less likely to survive due to the health conditions and lack of health care, now there is the NHS free health care for people so babies have a lot more chance of surviving so mothers don’t need to have as many children because the chance of them surviving is a lot higher than it used to be. Women are choosing to have babies later which is also causing the birth rate to drop this is because there is less stigma on having babies t an older age so women are waiting and not worrying what people might think.
In the article “Just whom is this Divorce good for? By Marquart she explains, “We found that children of so- called “good” divorces often do worse even than children of unhappy low- conflict marriages. They say more often, that family life was stressful and they had to grow up to soon. They are themselves more likely to divorce and children of divorce feel like divided selves”. I would have to agree with that because I am actually going through my parents getting a divorce and when I found out I didn’t want to believe it at all I didn’t want to see my parents split up it just wasn’t right to me.
Week 7 Assignment 2 Through history women and the GLBT, community has been looked down upon as inferior to men. As time has proven to be a good thing for women especially the last decade because it has been a time of great advancement for women in the workforce and the outlook that society has on them. I think that people in the United States are also becoming more comfortable with the GLBT community. More people are able to express themselves for who they really are and people are becoming more open to the idea of love without limits. I think it is important to look back from where we have come and see the progress that is being made from where we started to where we are today.
Ernest Dichter saw women’s equality as inevitable, promoted not only by career opportunities but also by contraception” (62). This accelerated a change in the role of a woman without change of a man’s attitude toward her role. Within a short period of time employers started opening doors to women as workers and the number of working women jumped 10%. For the first time women were being hired as clerks on the NY Stock Exchange and one Midwest Publisher hiring women admitted, “ We never would have done this before the Pill” (Gibbs 7). Due to the fact that women could control when they had children, they could now finish college and have more consistent jobs.
“In the 1970’s, woman entered the work force,” according to David’s article. This new era then began to transition the way marriage was viewed. People began to see that maybe they had married the wrong individual and set out to seek divorce. Divorce changed from rare to a routine. During the 1970’s, divorce rates had double (and the number of divorces tripled from 400,000 in 1962 to 1.2 million in 1981) (Ministries).
Refugees have also been made available for women by the government, which have allowed women to escape domestic violence. However, some feminists argue social policies reinforce patriarchal ideas of men and women. For example, tax/benefit policies assume husbands are the main wage earners and this means women can find it difficult to claim benefits in their own right, which reinforces women’s dependency on men. Therefore, some women may less likely to get divorced so may be left in an empty shell
Secondly, feminism is another reason that some people believe that nuclear families are no longer the norm. Within the 1940’s women were seen simple as housewives and mother, and education within their life wasn’t even thought about. Essentially they were expected to conform to the nuclear family model. Now women are just as likely to be in paid employment like men and therefore this gives them much more status and independence, which makes the nuclear family less likely. Yet others would argue that even the media still supports nuclear families and is socializing the next generation into thinking that it is right for example ‘The Simpsons’, so despite the increase in divorce and feminism the nuclear family will remain popular in British society.
One of these policies is the divorce act 1969; which has made it easier for couples to get divorced. Due to this, marriage has become less sacred which has made the family unit weaker. Couples may get a divorce instead of trying hard in the relationship to make it better. Another law affecting the family is the new deal 1998; which makes it easier for lone mothers to get back into paid work. This was introduced by the Labour party, who Lewis argues have taken on the idea of ‘social investment in children’ seriously and have realised family forms are changing.
Couples can share a life of dreams, excitement and happiness. Many believe that marriage put women in higher risk factors for abuse and violence. Marriage has become only a statement now because of the widespread social change. Many have stated that being marriage is not important any longer and choose to live together instead. But this is not the same as sharing an intimate and fulfilling life.