S/R #8

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Synthesis: Society has established clear rules for what a family should look like, and especially whom is fit to be parents within families, leaving those who don't fit the established guidelines without support, and even being suppressed from being parents or part of a family through the legal system.

Response: Throughout class and the readings this week, I became more aware of how strongly our society values the "proper" family unit, and how strongly entrenched the rules of what that family is supposed to look like and what"proper" roles for the members of a family are. A particularly strong societal view regarding families is that of women as mothers. There is an expectation that women should desire to have and raise children, with the accompanying expectation for them to be heterosexual and married in order to produce their kids. These expectations have a number of implications. The article we read about Shirley Glubka, in which she describes her experiences of giving up her role of mother was revealing of how contrary to society's belief that womanhood=motherhood, many women do not 'naturally' being a parent. She describes the awful feelings of guilt and consumed her as she realized she did not like being a mother, a result of our social conditioning that women are made to be mothers and to love that role. This idea has lead to a highly negative connotation associated with people "giving up" their children to others, something she thinks many more people would do if it weren't so stigmatized. Furthermore, she discusses how she sees this misconception hurting the well being of many children, as unhappy parents may trap their children in "subtle prison[s] of their parents' tension, anger, and unhappiness", or end up abusing or even killing their children. If society was more accepting of people recognizing their difficulty with parenting and giving their children to more positive growing environments, many children's situations would be improved.
Society's expectation for women to be active, loving mothers does not necessarily translate to society to expecting men to be active, loving fathers. "Dilemmas of Involved Fatherhood" describes how many men who try to stay at home end up struggling with discrimination, mainly with people's "skepticism about men's parental abilities", as well as dealing with stigmas about househusbands, as one man said in the article, he felt too "demoralized" to consider staying at home. Furthermore, employers often quaff at the idea of "paternal leave". Also, men are often paid more than women, and are therefore usually bringing in more money to a heterosexual parented family, making it harder for such families to have the dad stay home. Society has normalized the "distanced" dad, since the widespread idea is that men fulfill their family role by bringing in the money, and women should be the ones responsible for being involved in parenting their children.
As I mentioned before, there is also a strong societal belief that parents should be a heterosexual couple. The movie "Daddy and Papa" showed how this expectation can make parenting for those who don't fit this model so difficult. Not only are there many, many hoops to jump through, but there is a lack of social support for those who choose to do it. With legislature making gay adoption illegal, it's becoming impossible for many. This movie in particular showed how society's idea of what a family structure is supposed to look like leaves out other family structures that do an excellent job at parenting children, and limits many wonderful potential parents from realizing their dream.
By creating such harsh limits for the family unit, society is actually denying many children loving households, as can be seen in the condemnation of those who recognize they do not want to be parents, by not encouraging involved fathers, and not embracing gay adoption as a parenting option.