Balancing Work & Family (Blog #4)

When it comes to thinking about your family life, every single one of us are going to define what we think the good characteristics around going to be. Obviously there are going to be the generic ones that no matter what your thoughts, background, faith, or morals are going to agree with. Those characteristics I would say are having a roof over your head, food on the table, your family together, as well as happy and healthy. If you have those few components usually nothing can defeat the family bond. However, that is not always the case. As your values and morals change from one another we may give or take in one area to what we personally feel our definition of a good life is. For example, I am not a very spiritual person. With that said, I am not a huge fan of getting up on Sunday and going to church. So for example, if I had the opportunity to skip church with the family to make some money, you can bet that I am probably going to do that. But why so people will ask. Well I personally feel that I can call to the higher power when needed, but when I have the opportunity to make an extra buck you sometimes can’t pass it up.

As you can tell, making money is an important thing to me. I’m definitely not the only one. With that comes a career, however, you can’t have your career run your life, sometimes people do. To balance your career and family life will take a lot of work. If you’re someone that works until the job is done that can be bad for your health. Why? Well carrying the constant stress of your job is never good for anyone. Plus you need to make sure you leave the career at work when you come home. When you get home you have to make sure you focus on your family life. This personally is something that I have a hard time doing. I have a laptop for work, and there are many nights that I am back on it doing work once I’m done with school work. Yet, I think I balance it well, the only bad thing is that my home is no longer my safe haven completely away from work.

Trying to balance the two can become difficult, especially when you have undetermined factors that unexpectedly come up. What do I mean by that? Well when you have a family and your child becomes sick. Now you have to determine how you are going to take care of your child while still making a living doing your job. How about when you have more work then what can actually be done in a single work week? How do you make that decision on what is going to get done and what is not? Lastly, what about when you get sick? Unexpected things come up all the time. They are just something we have to handle as they are handed down to us.

With all the changes in current gender roles it has become more and more difficult to deal and cope with unexpected issues as the pop up. For example back in the 1960’s more than 70% of homes had a single breadwinner of the family while the wife stayed home. This made things a lot easier. Reason being was that men would be able to focus on work, while the women would deal with all of the family items. If your child became sick, the women would be able to tend and care to him. Now that both sides of the family are working making this compromise on who is going to tend to the unexpected items that come up in life has become more difficult over time.

Since more and more households are dealing with both parents working this has caused employers to adjust the way they work with their employees. Now days we are seeing more and more employers allowing their employees work flex schedules, more time being given for vacations, sick time, and personal. Lastly one of the fastest growing trends is we are seeing more and more employees working from home. This in a way really is a win for both the employer and employee. The employer is still getting the completed work from the compensated employee. However, the employee is being allowed to reconnect with the family life. When a child is sick it’s not so hard to go and pick them up, etc. Now when you have the support of other family members, friends and neighbors you can help with sharing the responsibility. For example if your neighbor works only two days a week they may be able to assist with picking up a sick child. Allowing for more than one set of parents share the work and having multiple families share the work between a few sets of parents it’s a win situation for everyone. You all know each other, trust each other, and usually are not very far so you do not feel as bad as you would when you leave them with someone you do not know very well.

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Home & Work /Public & Private (Blog #3)

Care work is something that I have very familiar with in my family. Coming from an Italian family it’s something that we when you have a family member that has become ill, or is aging and can no longer care of themselves alone. In November of 1999 my grandmother became terminally ill with Lou Gehrig’s disease. This is a very uncommon disease that strikes people after they have burned out their motor neurons. It’s very fast moving and something that will take over the functioning of your body and limbs; However, something that does not affect their mind and brain. As I grew older and entered into the workforce it became more and more difficult to deal and assist my grandmother. Yet, she means the world to me. I really had to determine what type of care I could offer her, yet still be able to manage my work and school schedule as I was going to have to deal with all three of these items. For close to six years, I was able to help take her to appointments, dr visits, and all other sorts of recreational actives due to the flexibility I had at work. This was very nice to have this luxury as I enjoyed spending time with her, however, needed to make money to live and survive so I really did not have to choose to many times when I needed to be in two places around the same time.

The efforts made in the UK are very nice to see. I would say slowly but surely the United States is starting to adapt that model. What I mean by that is we are currently seeing more and more companies enter into the flex work program, work from home, and other options allowing for their employees to work more around a busy life schedule while still fulfilling their job duties. Because of this program, it is allowing many more women to enter into the working field; however, it’s still allowing them to manage their home lives. As the video refers to many women are working on average 12-15 more hours a week then men when you include their home duties. The reason behind this some researches refer as it being that men do not want to give up their machoism. While on the flip side a lot of women do not want to turn over the duties of ‘their’ home either.

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Major Concepts & Theories on Gender Inequality(Blog #2)

Sex segregation is something that as much as we do not want to admit is still definitely prevalent in today’s society. What sex segregation is referring to is the separation of jobs and gender roles. What this means is that you will see jobs that are more respected and applicable being worked by males, while the lower end jobs or ‘easier’ jobs are being worked more by women. Does this still apply, absolutely! As much as we wish it did not, it definitely does. For example just take a look at ASU. One great example that comes to mind is the cleaning and grounds keeping crews. Usually at ASU we see more women doing the cleaning, while we see more men doing the grounds keeping (cleaning the laws, trimming the grass and trees, etc.) Why is that though, what says a women is not allowed or does not have the capabilities of using a lawn mower?

While growing up it was a little different in my home. Coming from a home that was raised my a single mother and not having a father figure around I don’t think that I was raised as most boys were my age. Now don’t get me wrong I still played sports, went outside and got in trouble, and did all the typical things that growing up boys would do. However, since it was just me and my mom I think she was more prone to showing me how to up keep a house, cook, clean, do my laundry, etc. Because of this, I don’t think I have less male tendencies. In fact I think it just makes me more rounded of an individual. However, I did not have that father figure around all the time to discipline and show the segregation of male roles to female roles that we so commonly refer to these days.

Lastly, when it comes to women working jobs in the current recession due to more men being laid off then women we are still seeing heavy sex segregation. Currently on average women are making .77 cents to every dollar that men make. However, what’s one of the reasons that this is occurring well a lot of jobs women are taking are not unionized jobs. Because of this, women at times just become more thankful for a job then they are concerned with the pay.

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