Not-so Traditional Women means not-so Traditional Families
In the 1950’s, families were stereotyped to be “compassionate” and their primary focus was on their family. Today however, people believe that the “traditional family” from the 50’s is only a thing of the past. Women have dramatically changed in the past sixty years and are becoming more and more independent. This change is why our families are no longer traditional. In the 1950s, with a male-breadwinner and a female housemaker, parents were to be “friends and lovers”. This idea was about creating family togetherness as the primary source of emotional satisfaction and personal happiness. And for the first time in 100 years the divorce rates plateaued (Mintz, …show more content…
This is the start of women moving on from the traditional family lifestyle.
“Between 1970 and 2001, women went from being the minority to the majority of the U.S. undergraduate population, increasing their representation from 42 percent to 56 percent of undergraduates (Horn, Laura and Peter Katharin). Women increasing their education strengthens their ability to get better employment can become economically independent. 50 years ago, women were the caretakers and they married men who could support them and a family. Today however, with women getting better jobs and can support themselves economically, they don’t need to marry if they choose.
Coontz also states, “What’s new is not that women make half their families living, but for the first time they have substantial control over their own income, along with the social freedom to remain single or to leave an unsatisfactory marriage”(Coontz, Stephanie). A large part of families today being less “traditional” as they used to be is on how society views traditional. Things that used to be socially unheard of in the past, is socially acceptable today. And in all societies and cultures over the world, eventually change is something we, as a part of it, have to accept and move along with