Men's Rights Agency -
Feminism
Sydney Morning Herald 3/12/97
Women won't go back to '50s
Kathleen Swinbourne
Women want men to share the family load, otherwise they can find it easier to be a single parent.
A bad marriage is better than no marriage at all is becoming a catch phrase.
Single mothers feel that they are being made scapegoats for many of society's problems. Everything from rising crime rates to youth suicide and low academic performance has been blamed on them. It wouldn't be surprising to learn that the El Nino effect is the result of a rise in the divorce rate.
Unfortunately, there are some serious flaws in much of the interpretation of recent research data.
A report by the Centre for Independent Studies about the state of the nation made a link between rising crime rates since the 1960s and the increase in numbers of single-parent families. What its authors forgot to mention was that crime rates started rising first. If there was a causal link between them you would expect the crime rate to start rising 10-15 years later, when the kids of single mothers became teenagers, not the other way round.
It's like saying that the increase in numbers of women working in munitions factories in the late 1930s was the cause of World War II. But never let a few facts get in the way of a good story.
One of the most comprehensive studies into single-parent families was conducted by researchers at Macquarie University. It was conducted over a 10 year period on adolescents from both divorced and intact families looking at things such as self-image, depression and anxiety. They found that it was the quality of parenting rather than the family, that had the biggest impact on the child.
This is supported by a more recent study which also found that child neglect, not single parenting, was the biggest factor. Because of all the factors that can be involved in a divorce, it is extremely difficult to measure its impact. However, one thing that does come out strongly in all the research is that a major determining factor for children's well-being is poverty.
And it is true that single mothers are more likely than any other group to live in poverty. Even more likely than single fathers. Many single mothers have themselves stated that their problem is lack of money, and that a lack of child-care assistance means that they cannot always go out to work to earn enough to support the family. Often the only jobs they can get to fit in with family responsibilities are part-time, low-skilled and low-paid.
So why don't they stay with their partners? The reasons relationships break up are many and varied, and can be extremely complex. It's not, however, a decision that is taken lightly. While women are usually the ones to make the final decision to end a relationship, they spend, on average two years thinking about it first. This is not a frivolous action. On the contrary, it would indicate that they put a lot of effort into trying to keep the relationship together. So what is happening?
As a society we expect a lot of parents. Somehow, when people become parents they are supposed to become more responsible,, caring, selfless and patient. They are also supposed to suddenly know everything there is to know about raising kids - without any kind of training. And most of this responsibility falls on women.
Women today not only work outside the home, but they also usually come home to their second job of looking after the family. Studies into housework show women still do more hours a week of housework than do men. When you add child care to the equation this workload increases further. And this is the same whether women are in the paid workforce or not. It is a lot of pressure to put on anybody, and given all the demands placed on them, it is understandable that eventually something has to give. Unfortunately, what often loses out is their adult relationship which, in the economic jargon of the time, is seen as being the most unproductive.
Women today no longer depend on men to be the breadwinners in the family. What they are looking for is a mutually supportive relationship, where both partners take equal responsibility and share equally in the rewards. This doesn't mean dividing the tasks into his or her jobs: it means sharing them. The majority of women either no longer wants to or are not economically able to stay home being full-time mothers. They need the money that a paid job brings, or the intellectual or social stimulation, or they need to continue to work to stay on their career path.
They also need support at home to be able to do it all. When that support is not forthcoming, it is not really surprising that relationships break down. When conducting research into single mothers one of the comments that was repeated time and time again by married women was "I am not a single mother - but I might as well be".
Women are not going to go back into the kitchen full-time. A return to the '50s ideal of the typical nuclear family is not going to happen. It didn't even work them. Women are no longer prepared to accept being treated as second best, and men need to adjust to this new reality.
Their are men out there who are accepting this, and they are discovering the joys of being active fathers, involved in their children's lives rather than being on the sidelines. They are also discovering the freedom of not being typecast into the role of breadwinner, and being able to negotiate more flexible work arrangements with their partners.
I'm not saying that this is an easy thing to do. there are many companies that remain unsupportive of flexible work arrangements. However, until men start pushing for and taking advantage of family-friendly work practices, it's not going to happen in vast numbers. It will still be considered a women's issue. And without that support women will continue to choose a role that in many ways reduces the pressure placed on them - single parenthood.
Kathleen Swinbourne is spokesperson on family issues for the Women's Electoral Lobby.
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