Changing+families

__Changing roles of families__

Traditionally, each member of a family used to play a clear role at home. The man was “the boss”, a model as husband and father, bringing money for his family and being nice but serious, and strict as well, with them. The woman should be the most caring wife, always aware of the family problems and a selfless mother. Her only goal in life was to get married and having children.

Fortunately, things have changed. Nowadays, women keep on studying and developing their own careers without any problem, as long as they want it, of course. But, reality tells us that there are many difficulties for women trying to combine job and housekeeping. Many men would say that they do the same at home as their wives, but the truth is that still women take on the biggest part of it. If children become ill, it will probably be the woman who stays at home to look after them instead of the husband.

When the couple is alone, there shouldn’t be any problems. Both can work and share the housekeeping normally. The problem arrives with the children. You must have enough money to hire a nanny while they are still babies or leave them in the nursery. Either way, this is the result of an absence at home. In the past, those problems didn’t exist. Wives always stayed at home or even the granny, who used to live with them, was a good help for the family.

But now, women want to demonstrate their values. They want to work and achieve a high position in the company and, to do this, children are a handicap. We have to choose between carrying on with our career or being “a good mother”. This is why we start seeing men who decided to stay at home, instead of women, changing their roles because they think children must have a model at home, in order to grow up safely and with important values. This means that families are returning to a past way of life because the current one doesn’t seem good enough.

How can we change this? I don’t know but I guess society should think about it and the Government should introduce improvements, such as assistance for the families, and the companies could do their best to face this problem. Maybe, with a little help, the birth rate would increase in the future. Until then, we can’t expect very much about the families’ system.

Rocío PM