Gender Role Variation with Class

It is interesting to me how different gender roles differ with class.  Social status and money situations have a great impact on the jobs, as well as household and family roles.  In many working class marriages, it is most common for the woman and man to have full time jobs.  Most working class families do not have the leisure of a one-income lifestyle, and because of this their home life varies.  Depending on how demanding each individual’s job is may determine whether or not the man or woman does most of the household work.  In my experience, it still seems that the majority of Working class women also do most of the domestic work and family care on top of their jobs.

Middle class is slightly different.  Usually, one person has a fulltime job while the other most often has a part time job.  Mainly it is the man who had a fulltime job, and the woman who would have a part time job then handle the household work and childcare, etc.  The middle class lifestyle is easier on the family, because they are not having to focus on both parents having fulltime jobs while dealing with all of the housework and taking care of  the family.

Upper class may only have one individual working, most often the man.  In many upper class families, the wife is a stay at home mom/wife and takes care of the house mainly.  In some cases, if the family is wealthy enough, they may even have a maid or nanny to help the woman with the work.

The situations I just described are extremely stereotypical, but for the most part realistic to how families were run, at least in the past years.  In today’s society, things have shifted slightly in some aspects.  While still uncommon in the majority of situations, it is becoming increasingly more popular for the gender roles to be reversed.  Nowadays, many more men are becoming stay at home dads, as well as marrying women who earn a larger income than them.  With time, the gender role situation is becoming blurred slightly, but the differences in gender roles within different classes are still apparent.