When Traditional Gender Roles Clash With Contemporary Expectations: A Call To Redefine Success in the Modern World
What it means to be successful in many careers today is best captured by Slaughter (2012):
The American definition of a successful professional is someone who can climb the ladder the furthest in the shortest time.... It is a definition well suited to the mid-20th century, an era when people had kids in their 20s, stayed in one job, retired at 67, and were dead, on average, by age 71. (p. 17)Contemporary patterns of work and family life look markedly different with people commonly postponing marriage and parenthood in favor of postsecondary education and career preparedness. American homes are increasingly dependent on women's incomes (Glynn, 2016) and women today are becoming mothers at a higher rate than they were 10 years ago, which is especially true for women with advanced degrees (Geiger et al., 2019). This then creates a unique intersection between work and family life that is particularly complex for working mothers. For instance, both mothers and fathers today spend more time on child care than previous generations did, but women also are tasked with figuring out how to spend more time at work; indeed, employers increasingly are requiring workers to dedicate more hours to their profession in order to advance (Dotti Sani & Treas, 2016; Geiger et al., 2019; Goldin, 2015). Although both men and women report struggles with balancing contemporary work and family life, more mothers than fathers express this difficulty (Geiger et al., 2019).
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 01 April 2021
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